The First Christmas 
It is good but not nearly as good as The Last Week. It is very repitious; really belabors the point.
Great book for study groups! 
A wonderfully researched and complete look at the biblical accounts of the first Christmas stories - and their place in our faith journeys today. A bit tedious in spots, and redundant in others, but overall very informative, interesting, and enlightening. Some in our study group found the language a bit academic at times, but all found it worth reading, and discussion was lively and exciting.
First Christmas
For a non Christian a magnificent interpretation of the times when Jesus was born and of the message of Christmas story in the evangiles.
It combines respect and love for the Christ with an historical explanation of what happened in this first years of the first century and why the evangelists told the story of his birth the way they did.
reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4
"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."
first christmas, christmas, first
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based on 16 reviews
