The Nativity
History and Legend
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- USD 14.99
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- USD 14.99
Publisher Description
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 Nativity gives us a clearer idea than ever before of what belongs to real history and what derives from man’s hopeful and creative religious imagination, penetrating the deeper meanings of the New Testament story that evolved into the festival we call Christmas.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Despite the cover's gold-stamped Old English script and stylized medieval Nativity scene, this book does not belong in a display of inspirational Christmas gifts for great-aunts, unless the aunties are willing to consider that Matthew and Luke often contradict each other; that Jesus was probably born in the spring; that "virgin" may simply have meant prepubescent; that the census that supposedly brought Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem never happened (and anyway, Jesus was more likely born in Nazareth); or that virgin births and guiding stars were quite common in classical literature of the time. As Vermes notes, "the truth ...belongs only very slightly to history and mostly derives from man's hopeful and creative religious imagination." Vermes, perhaps the world's foremost authority on the Dead Sea Scrolls, writes as a scholar, not as an iconoclast. Dismayed that Christmas "has become the climax of a season of overspending, overeating and uncontrolled merrymaking," he wants to set the record straight. Some readers, however even those who value understanding the first-century historical and literary context may not be satisfied with his conclusion that "the ultimate purpose of the Infancy Gospels seems to be the creation of a prologue, enveloping the newborn Jesus with an aura of marvel and enigma."
