Product Description

The Nativity is the very heart of the Christian tradition. For more than 2,000 years, the story of Jesus’ birth has been told and retold, mythologized and sentimentalized. In The Nativity, Geza Vermes untangles centuries of storytelling and places the birth and the events surrounding it within their historical context.

Vermes examines every aspect of the Christmas story: the prophetic star, the journey of Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem, the miraculous birth in the stable, the arrival of the magi, and the murderous decree of Herod. Delving into all the available evidence—including the New Testament Infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke, Jewish documents of the period, and classical literary and historical sources—Vermes explains where actual history ends and legend begins.

A masterful work of biblical scholarship, The Nativity penetrates the deeper meaning of the New Testament. By clarifying what belongs to real history and what derives from man’s hopeful and creative religious imagination, it gives readers a new and more powerful understanding of the events celebrated every Christmas season.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #502822 in Books
• Published on: 2007-11-06
• Released on: 2007-11-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 192 pages

From 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. (Nov. 6)
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Review
Praise for Geza Vermes and The Nativity

“The greatest Jesus scholar of his generation.” —Sunday Telegraph (UK)

“Vermes sets about painstaking literary and historical analysis with refreshing humor and enthusiasm and argues his case with clarity and skill as he uncovers how the events of the nativity were constructed by evangelists to fulfill Old Testament prophecies and Jewish traditions.” —The Guardian (UK)

About the Author

GEZA VERMES is one of the world’s leading authorities on Judaism in the age of Jesus. His pioneering work on the Dead Sea Scrolls and the historical Jesus led to his appointment as the first Professor of Jewish Studies at Oxford, where he is now Professor Emeritus. His Complete Dead Sea Scrolls—first published in 1962, since revised and edited, and now in its sixth printing—is widely considered a classic and foundational text. Since 1991, he has been the director of the Forum for Qumran Research at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, and he was elected Fellow of the British Academy in 1985 and of the European Academy in 2001.

Customer Reviews

Away in a manger
Here the respected scholar investigates the main events surrounding the nativity in an attempt to establish what really happened. He compares Christmas in Christian imagery with the gospel accounts of Matthew and Luke, which are contradictory and confusing in many aspects. They agree on only a few basic points but there are many complications and discrepancies. Vermes looks at how various Christian scholars deal with this, for example John P Meier in A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus and Raymond Brown in Birth of the Messiah.

The author performs a textual interpretation and analyses the evidence. Then the findings are compared to all relevant information from parallel Jewish documents and sources of literature and history, including the Dead Sea Scrolls. First the genealogies of Jesus in the aforementioned gospels are compared (including a side by side comparison) and Vermes succeeds in making even this subject absorbing in light of the strange discrepancies.

Next he looks at the concept of miraculous births in Judaism and Paganism: virginal conception, extraordinary birth stories in the Old Testament and the weird account in Genesis 6 that talks of celestial beings interbreeding with mankind that gave rise to a race of giants. The Hellenistic Jewish birth stories of the writer Philo are also considered.

Chapter Five: Virgin and Holy Spirit, explores the gospel accounts with the prophecy of Isaiah concerning a young woman who would give birth to a son. The earliest extant text of Matthew is in Greek so it is perhaps not surprising that the quote of Isaiah 7:14 comes from the Greek Septuagint not from the Hebrew Bible. This gospel was influenced by the Septuagint's rendering of "Almah" (young woman) as "Parthenos" (Virgin). There are many unexpected, surprising and confusing aspects to the version of Matthew.

The date and place of birth are discussed next. Needless to say, there are problems with the date between the gospel accounts and when measured against what we know about the history. The nearest safe conclusion is that Jesus was born before the spring of 4BC. And alas, even the town seems to in dispute, but here I don't fully follow Vermes when he questions the Bethlehem connection for lack of enough proof.

The Premonitory signs of the nativity are the announcement to the shepherds, the Magi from the East and the star. These are discussed in the light of history and the Old Testament. Next is the murder plot. Geza confirms that Herod had a murderous character. He compares the murder of the children with the murder of the Israelite boys in Egypt, looks at the infancy of Moses and the parallels between the two occurrences.

Chapter 9: The Settlement of Jesus in Galilee, deals with among other issues the meaning of the word "Nazarene." The words Netser (Branch) and Nazoraios (from Nazareth) do not come from the same root and Samson who was called a Nazirite is not a suitable type for Jesus. The last chapter deals with the two supplements to the infancy gospel in Luke: the birth of John The Baptist, including the Magnificat and the Benedictus which are cleverly combined anthologies of poetic abstracts from various parts of the Hebrew Bible, and the account of the young Jesus in the temple.

The Epilogue looks at the infancy gospels in retrospect. There is a summary of differences and a discussion of the relation of the birth narratives to the main gospels. Vermes believes that these were a later addition for the benefit of a gentile audience. It is the prologue just as the resurrection narrative is the epilogue. The Greek narrative was placed over a Semitic original and represents the final stage of the Greek development, manifesting in the virgin conception, the idea of the Son of God as God with us (Emanuel) and the full development of the Messiah Redeemer.

There is a map of the Holy Land and 10 woodcuts by Albrecht Durer. The book concludes with notes, a bibliography and index. This book raises many questions for the believer. My further research has revealed that according to church fathers like Irenaeus and Jerome there existed a Hebrew (or Aramaic written in Hebrew alphabet) version of Matthew that was used by at least two early groups of believers, the Ebionites and the Nazarenes. Called The Gospel of the Hebrews, it lacked the two chapters on the nativity.

Apparently the Ebionites rejected the pre-existence, virgin birth, divinity and resurrection. They emphasized the oneness of God and considered Jesus to be the biological son of Joseph and Mary. According to Jerome and Epiphanius, the Jewish believers called Nazarenes also used the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew and adhered to Torah but they did accept the virgin birth, the resurrection and the divinity of Yeshua. I highly recommend the work of David Bivin in this regard, especially the book Understanding the Difficult Words of Jesus.

Kabbalah of Yeshua by Zusha Kalet

The Passion: The True Story of an Event That Changed Human History by Geza Vermes

Restoring the Jewishness of the Gospel: A Message for Christians by David H Stern

Ruth & Esther: Shadows of Our Future by Frank Morgan

Yeshua: A Guide to the Real Jesus and the Original Church by Ron Moseley

Rampant Contradition in the Infancy Narratives of Luke and Matthew
It's well known that there is a contradiction between the Synoptic Gospels and the Gospel of John regarding the events leading up to the Passion and the dating of the crucifixion of Jesus.

However, this erudite little book in which Geza Vermes's eminent scholarship in nonetheless lightly worn shows further difficulties in the Christian testimonies. Namely, the Infancy narratives between Luke and Matthew are so divergent as to be difficult if not impossible to harmonize.

This of course is not what ecclesiastical authorities want to hear. But Professor Vermes shows conclusively why this must be so.

I confess the book astounded and agitated me. Surely, there couldn't be such confusion? I knew that Jesus was likely born in the spring and the acquisition of Christmas occurred by the co-opting of pagan solstice ceremonies. But to find almost all aspects of the Christmas story--no exact number of Magi, no old status to Joseph, as examples--to which I have spent a lifetime ascribing to is disconcerting to say the least. Vermes, however, makes his scholarship stand out for its effectiveness, simplicity, and brilliance.

The Nativity: History & Legend has much to commend it, if nothing else but to challenge the thinking of the doctrinaire Christian. One hopes all are made the better for it. As John Stuart Mill said, "He who knows only his side of the argument knows little of that."

The facts, nothing but the facts, Mam
It is refreshing and revitalizing to get legend separated from history. At the same time I love what one of my teachers, Fr. Vincent Vasey at the University of Dayton once said, not necessarily of the Infancy Narrative, "If it isn't true it ought to be true because it makes such a good story."