The Extra Special Baby: What the Gospels Really Teach Us about Jesus's Birth

Product Description
In The First Christmas, two of today's top Jesus scholars, Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan, show how history has biased our reading of the nativity story as it appears in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. The First Christmas explores the beginning of the life of Christ, peeling away the sentimentalism that has build up over 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 familiar narrative afresh by answering the question 'What do these stories mean' from the perspective of both the first and the twenty-first centuries. They successfully show that the Christmas story, read in its original context, is far richer and more challenging than people imagine.
Review
"With meticulous scholarship and accessible language, "The first Christmas.".. uncover(s) the genuine meaning of...the Birth of Jesus."--The Progressive Christian

With meticulous scholarship and accessible language, The first Christmas ... uncover(s) the genuine meaning of...the Birth of Jesus. --The Progressive Christian
About the Author
Professor Marcus J. Borg is the author of many books, including Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time and The Heart of Christianity. Professor Emeritus John Dominic Crossan is the author of several best-selling books, including God and Empire and The Historical Jesus.

John Dominic Crossan is Professor Emeritus at De Paul University. He is the author of several bestselling books, including The Historical Jesus (T&T Clark 1992) and The Greatest Prayer (SPCK 2011).