The First Christmas: What the Gospels Really Teach about Jesus's Birth - Hardcover

Marcus J. Borg; John Dominic Crossan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0061430706 ISBN 13: 9780061430701

Publisher: HarperOne, 2007

Synopsis

“Who could argue with the message the authors draw from the Bible’s Christmas stories? Light in the darkest time of the year, hope in a period of creeping despair—these are powerful and universal themes that can give everyone a stake in Christmas.”
—USA Today

In The First Christmas Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan—top Jesus scholars and authors of The Last Week—help us see the real Christmas story buried in the familiar Bible accounts. Basing their interpretations on the two nativity narratives in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, Borg and Crossan focus on the literal story—the inner truth rather than the historical facts—to offer a clear and uplifting message of hope and peace. With The First Christmas readers get a fresh, deep, and new understanding of the nativity story, enabling us to better appreciate the powerful message of the Gospels.

About this title

Review:

"The Last Week: 'One of the most careful and insightful readings of the Bible I've ever come across... [an] important, fascinating and well-written book.' Brian McLaren, author of A New Kind of Christian"

From the Back Cover:

In The First Christmas, two of today's top Jesus scholars, Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan, join forces to show how history has biased our reading of the nativity story as it appears in the gospels of Matthew and Luke. As they did for Easter in their previous book, The Last Week, here they explore the beginning of the life of Christ, peeling away the sentimentalism that has built up over the last two thousand years around this most well known of all stories to reveal the truth of what the gospels actually say. Borg and Crossan help us to see this well-known narrative afresh by answering the question, "What do these stories mean?" in the context of both the first century and the twenty-first century. They successfully show that the Christmas story, read in its original context, is far richer and more challenging than people imagine.

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperOne
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0061430706
• ISBN 13: 9780061430701
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 272