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Christmas The Original Story
 
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Christmas The Original Story (Paperback)

by Margaret Barker (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
RRP: £12.99
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Christmas The Original Story + The Hidden Tradition of the Kingdom of God + Temple Theology
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Product details

  • Paperback: 192 pages
  • Publisher: SPCK Publishing (23 Oct 2008)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0281060509
  • ISBN-13: 978-0281060504
  • Product Dimensions: 21.2 x 13.8 x 1.6 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 241,340 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Review
"'Margaret Barker's interpretation of temple theology should not be ignored by anyone interested in Judaism and the origins of Christian faith.' John McDade, Principal of Heythrop College, University of London"

Product Description
In "Christmas, The Original Story", Margaret Barker explores the nature of the Christmas stories and the nature and use of Old Testament prophecy. Beginning with John's account, it then goes on to include Luke and Matthew, the apocryphal gospels, and the traditions of the Coptic Church, to throw light upon wise men and their gifts, the character of Herod, Matthew's use of prophecy, the holy family in Egypt.This book also discusses the stories we get from the Infancy Gospel of Jesus and the development of the Orthodox Christmas icon, as well as the Christmas story and the Mary material in the Koran.

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Christmas The Original Story
76% buy the item featured on this page:
Christmas The Original Story 4.0 out of 5 stars (2)
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Tantalising, but not always in a good way, 20 Dec 2008
By Jeremy Bevan (West Midlands, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
In this book, Margaret Barker analyses the events, language and imagery of the Christmas story as told by the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, and partially by the Infancy Gospel of James and excerpts from the Qur'an. Her aim is to demonstrate how early Christian readers and hearers would have recognised themes in the stories that pointed them to a `lost' world, whose richly symbolic understanding of the Temple of post-exilic Judaism held the key to making sense of the nativity.

That's the work's theme, in a nutshell. But it's really hard to know what to make of it, as is the case (for me) with others of Barker's books. On the one hand, unquestioned scholarship illuminates some of the symbolism behind the Christmas story in a fresh and potentially exciting way. On the other, the actual writing is dense, often lacking in cohesion and flow. It roams far and wide (so is sometimes unfocused), and ultimately fails to come to any real conclusion about the value of the `lost tradition' to which the abundance of evidence marshalled so tantalisingly points (possibly).

I also thought that the author's work wasn't really rooted in any strong socio-political context: we're never told why followers of `The Lady' (wisdom) lost out to others in the ferment of post-exilic Judaism, and it's surely questionable that everyone in Jesus' time was obsessed with the temple - an assumption seriously at odds with the Jesus of (for example) Marcus Borg's `Jesus: A New Vision', which sees the Lord as strongly opposed to the exclusivist priestly establishment of his time, which he criticised for hindering the poor and excluded from genuine, life-transforming encounter with their God.

Overall, then, a bit like panning for gold: flashes of brilliance, but lots of hard work sifting through to find it. Something precious there may be here, but a lot more work is needed to turn it into something useable.
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5.0 out of 5 stars A new light on the early Church understanding, 19 May 2009
By a_ntv (Italy) - See all my reviews
In this text M.Barker gives us the tools to understand the Incarnation events as they were seen by the early Christians. It explains why some secondary details are recorded, while the main events we can be interested in are omitted. It explains how Jesus was considered divine since the very beginning. It explains the mystic imaginary that is under the plain stories of Luke, Matthew and James. A must to read text.
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