The First Christmas: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus's Birth
A Christmas, History, New Testament book. We can now see that the fundamental difference between those divergent visions of earths final kingdom is not...
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...
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- Filetype: PDF
- Pages: 272 pages
- ISBN: 9780061430718 / 61430714
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More About The First Christmas: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus's Birth
We face a similar choice each Christmas, and so each Advent is a time of repentance for the past and change for the future. Do we think that peace on earth comes from Caesar or Christ? Do we think it comes through violent victory or nonviolent justice? Advent, like Lent, is about a choice of how to live personally and individually, nationally and internationally. Marcus J. Borg, The First Christmas // Christmas is not about tinsel and mistletoe or even ornaments and presents, but about what means will we use toward the end of a peace from heaven upon our earth. Or is peace on earth but a Christmas ornament taken each year from attic or basement and returned there as soon as possible? Marcus J. Borg, The First Christmas // Participatory eschatology involves a twofold affirmation: we are to do it with God, and we cannot do it without God. In St. Augustines brilliant aphorism, God without us will not; we without God cannot. We who have seen the star and heard the angels sing are called to participate in the new birth and new world proclaimed by these stories. Marcus J. Borg, The First Christmas //
This may be a weird book for an atheist to read. But despite my beliefs, I am quite interested in religious ideas. Having read the authors' The First Paul, which I found to be quite intriguing, a very interesting take on Paul's theology, I was curious how they would approach the birth stories of Jesus. They definitely didn't disappoint.... The message here is the same as Borg's message always is: we may need to re-interpret what scriptures mean for us today, but first we have to understand what they meant to the people who wrote them. What were their concerns, their fears, their problems, the points they were trying to make, and why?In that context, Borg, as always, does... This was somewhat slow going, if not tedious, for meor at least it seemed sobecause they do go into plenty of detail to make their case. They see the Matthew & Luke stories of conception & birth as parable in nature and as overtures stating the theme for the rest of the gospels. As might be suspected by one who has read any of their...
