This book, like most books, has a multitude of ancestors and a number of midwives. Its ancestors include a host of predecessors and contemporaries in the world of scholarship. Because we have written this book with the barest minimum of footnotes, they remain largely unacknowledged by name. There are two reasons. One is a convention of contemporary publishing; publishers prefer that a book written for a general reading audience not be encumbered with what can be the intimidating apparatus of academic writing. The second reason is about us. Together, we have been involved in the scholarly study of Jesus for over ninety years. Over that time, there has been an enormous accumulation of indebtedness to our academic forebears, and we find it virtually impossible to identify our specific academic debts.
However, for readers who want to know more about the scholarly study of the birth stories, we especially recommend these recent books. All happen to be by Roman Catholic scholars. Joseph A. Fitzmyer’s two-volume The Gospel According to Luke (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1981–85) covers the infancy narrative. John P. Meier, in the first volume of his ongoing and multivolume A Marginal Jew (New York: Doubleday, 1991), devotes to “Roots of the Person,” with chapters about Jesus’s birth. Raymond E. Brown’s The Birth of the Messiah (New York: Doubleday, 1993) is the most thorough; that second edition is 752 pages long. Finally, Robert J. Miller’s Born Divine: The Births of Jesus and Other Sons of God (Santa Rosa, CA: Polebridge, 2003) is a 337-page treatment.
Our book’s midwives include especially several members of the staff of HarperOne, our publisher. They include Mickey Maudlin, Mark Tauber, Claudia Boutote, Terri Leonard, Jan Weed, Emily Grandstaff, Lisa Zuniga, and Ann Moru.
To all of them, we are grateful.
NOTES
Chapter 2: Parables as Overtures
1. Barbara Tuchman, The Guns of August (New York: Macmillan, 1962), p. 522.
2. Tuchman, Guns of August, p. 523.
3. Stephen E. Ambrose, Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), p. 19.
Chapter 4: Genealogy as Destiny
1. Raymond E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke (New York: Doubleday, 1993), p. 74.
Chapter 6: In David’s City of Bethlehem
1. John J. Collins, The Scepter and the Star: The Messiahs of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Other Ancient Literature (New York: Doubleday, 1995), pp. 68, 209.
2. Collins, Scepter and the Star, pp. 13, 204.
3. Adolf Gustav Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East: The New Testament Illustrated by Recently Discovered Texts of the Graeco-Roman World, trans. Lionel R. M. Strachan, Limited Editions Library (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1965), p. 349.
Chapter 9: Joy to the World
1. Jim Wallis, God’s Politics: A New Vision for Faith and Politics in America (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2005), p. 142.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
MARCUS J. BORG is Hundere Distinguished Professor of Religion and Culture at Oregon State University and author of the bestselling Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, The Heart of Christianity, Reading the Bible Again for the First Time, The God We Never Knew, and Jesus.
JOHN DOMINIC CROSSAN is the author of several bestselling books including God and Empire, The Historical Jesus, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, The Birth of Christianity, and Who Killed Jesus? He lives in Minneola, Florida.
Visit the authors online at www.marcusborg.com and www.johndcrossan.com.
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COPYRIGHT
THE FIRST CHRISTMAS: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’s Birth. Copyright © 2007 by Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition SEPTEMBER 2007 ISBN: 9780061743641
Version 02072014
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