A review by booksrockcal
The First Christmas: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus's Birth by John Dominic Crossan, Marcus J. Borg

hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

I thoroughly enjoyed this book I read for our EfM book group. The authors are famous and well known for their progressive and academic takes on the Gospels and this did not disappoint. The authors take apart the two nativity narratives in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. They focus on the words of the stories and place them in their political, social, economic, theological contexts. They start with the theory that history and our own ideas of what the stories say based on experience  have biased our readings of these stories; we are all so familiar with the nativity story that we don't really pay attention to it and we just accept it as a given. How many of us actually reflect on (or even knew about) the differences between Matthew and Luke?  The authors make the reader look at the stories in new and enlightening ways. I learned a lot and enjoyed the book so much I bought it even though I had it out of the library.