The Nativity: History and Legend - Softcover

Vermes, Geza

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0141024461 ISBN 13: 9780141024462

Publisher: Penguin, 2006

Synopsis

In The Nativity: History and Legend Geza Vermes penetrates the deeper meanings of the New Testament story that evolved into the festival we call Christmas.

The Nativity is at the very heart of the Christian tradition. But what truth lies behind the Christmas story as we know it? Where does history end and legend begin?

Here Geza Vermes, the world's most respected Biblical historian, examines what really happened when, according to Church liturgy, Jesus was born on the 25 December. Taking us through the main events surrounding the Nativity: the prophetic star, the virgin and the holy spirit, the journey of Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem, the miraculous birth in a stable, the arrival of the magi and the murderous decree of King Herod, Vermes puts the story in its real historical context. He sifts through all the evidence - examining the New Testament Infancy Gospels of Matthew and Luke as well as parallel Jewish documents and sources from classical literature and history - to separate morsels of fact from centuries of legendary accretions.

'The greatest Jesus scholar of his generation'
  Sunday Telegraph

Geza Vermes is director of the Forum for Qumran Research at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies. His books, published by Penguin, include The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English, The Story of the Scrolls and The Changing Faces of Jesus as well as the 'Jesus' trilogy: Nativity, Passion and Resurrection.

About this title

Synopsis:

In a similar format to the astonishingly successful, The Passion Professor, Geza Vermes now turns his attention to the other key festival in the Christian calendar - Christmas. Vermes articulately and controversially disentangles the Christmas story as we know it, relating it to prophecies in the Old Testament and also to later Christian folklore, putting the nativity into its true historical context. This will be required reading for anyone wanting to know the true story behind the Nativity.

About the Author:

Geza Vermes was born in Hungary in 1924. From 1957 to 1991 he taught in at the Universities of Newcastle and Oxford. Professor Vermes is the editor of The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English (1997) and author of The Changing Faces of Jesus (2000), The Authentic Gospel of Jesus (2003) and The Passion (2005). He lives in Oxford.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0141024461
• ISBN 13: 9780141024462
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192