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.

Customer Rating:
Summary: The Parable of Parables
Comment: There's more to Christmas than shepherds, wise men and virgin births...This book puts Christ's birth--what it was--what it meant--to the people of that day and what it means or should mean to the people of our day into perspective....

An outstanding piece of work in putting the Christmas story in context and perspective of the time in which it occurred, so we can understand and appreciate it better and in more meaningful ways. The story is far more meaningful and politically charged than even the most devout Christian might imagine.

In dealing candidly with the inconsistences and contradictions of the gospel stories, one comes to the conclusion, as did the authors, that it's not nearly so important how it happened, but that it did happen.

The last chapter alone is worth the price of this interesting, provocative and ultimately inspiring book.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: must read for the holiday season
Comment: Very good book. For those of you looking for a different perspective than what you are used to on the story of Jesus' birth then this is the book for you.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Encountering the Christmas Story Again for the First Time
Comment: Borg and Crossan fill us in on the contemporary events of the Roman Empire in 4BCE which cause Matthew and Luke to tell the (quite political) stories they do. Writing of that time was in parables, not the factual history which marks our age. Pretty intriguing. Don't despair in the heavy bits; keep going...for the plain-English insights of these clear-thinking scholars. Marvellous!

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Customer Rating:
Summary: The First Christmas (What the gospels really teach about Jesus birth)
Comment: This book provides a refreshing approach to the christmas stories and helps one to understand the gospel message with greater meaning for the 21st Century.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Fascinating new look about the birth narratives
Comment: The birth narratives in Matthew and Luke are so familiar, heard every Christmas in church and on the radio, that I wasn't sure there was much more I could learn about them. How wrong I was! Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan's book started brilliantly; within the first chapter I was hooked on what they unfolded. They approach the birth narratives as parables/metaphors, not particularly addressing modern-day ideas of historicity but instead looking at the narratives and their structure in terms of what the gospel writers might have wanted to say. It becomes clear that Matthew and Luke are very different, with Matthew presenting Jesus as the New Moses, reflecting many images and ideas from Jewish writings, and Luke's emphasis on the stories as an overture to his larger themes of women, the marginalised and the Holy Spirit.

The book goes step-by-step through some parts of the nativity stories, explaining the historical context for many of the events, showing the parallels and the differences between the gospels, relating parts to historical or metaphorical events. I found the book began slightly to drag by the end but I was really taken by much of what they said, particularly the links Matthew makes between Jesus, Moses and Caesar. Some more conservative Christians will probably find the liberal tone of the book too much to stomach which is a real shame as there are some real gems in here, but for those with an open mind and an interest in understanding more about the world of the time of Jesus this is an unmissable book.

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