or
Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering.
 
 
More Buying Choices
26 used & new from £1.66
Have one to sell? Sell yours here
 
   
The Nativity: History and Legend
 
 
Share your own customer images
Search inside this book

The Nativity: History and Legend (Paperback)

by Geza Vermes (Author) "There are three versions of the Nativity play ..." (more)
4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
RRP: £7.99
Price: £4.98 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
You Save: £3.01 (38%)
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
In stock.
Dispatched from and sold by Amazon.co.uk. Gift-wrap available.

Want guaranteed delivery by Tuesday, November 17? Choose Express delivery at checkout. See Details
17 new from £3.05 9 used from £1.66

Frequently Bought Together

The Nativity: History and Legend + The Resurrection + The Authentic Gospel of Jesus
Price For All Three: £15.95

Show availability and delivery details

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

The Resurrection

The Resurrection

by Geza Vermes
4.0 out of 5 stars (2)  £4.98
The Passion

The Passion

by Geza Vermes
4.5 out of 5 stars (2) 
The Authentic Gospel of Jesus

The Authentic Gospel of Jesus

by Geza Vermes
3.5 out of 5 stars (4)  £5.99
Who's Who in the Age of Jesus

Who's Who in the Age of Jesus

by Geza Vermes
£8.99
The Changing Faces of Jesus

The Changing Faces of Jesus

by Geza Vermes
3.5 out of 5 stars (4)  £8.99
› Explore similar items

Product details

  • Paperback: 192 pages
  • Publisher: Penguin; 1st Edition edition (2 Nov 2006)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0141024461
  • ISBN-13: 978-0141024462
  • Product Dimensions: 19.2 x 12.8 x 1.6 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 50,749 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in these categories:

    #59 in  Books > Mind, Body & Spirit > Mythology > Encyclopaedias
    #83 in  Books > Religion & Spirituality > Christianity > Church History

    •  Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

Customers Viewing This Page May Be Interested in These Sponsored Links

  (What is this?)
   The Catholic Gift Shop opens new browser window
www.catholicgiftshop.com.au  -  Huge Range Of Catholic Gifts WYD 08 Official Gifts Sale! 
   Christmas at Molton Brown opens new browser window
MoltonBrown.co.uk/Christmas-Gifts  -  From luxury gift sets to classic favourites. Free gift wrap & sample 
   Christmas Nativity Plays opens new browser window
www.learn2soar.co.uk  -  (Ages 3-11) Inexpensive-Easy to use Great Feedback-Downloads Available! 
  
 

Product Description

Product Description

In a similar format to the astonishingly successful The Passion Professor Geza Vermes now turns his attention to the other key festival in the Christian calendar - Christmas. Vermes articulately and controversially disentangles the Christmas story as we know it, relating it to prophecies in the Old Testament and also to later Christian folklore, putting the nativity into its true historical context. This will be required reading for anyone wanting to know the true story behind the Nativity.


About the Author

Geza Vermes was born in Hungary in 1924. From 1957 to 1991 he taught in at the Universities of Newcastle and Oxford. Professor Vermes is the editor of The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English (1997) and author of The Changing Faces of Jesus (2000), The Authentic Gospel of Jesus (2003) and The Passion (2005). He lives in Oxford.
Inside This Book (Learn More)
First Sentence
There are three versions of the Nativity play. Read the first page
Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Search inside this book:

Tags Customers Associate with This Product

 (What's this?)
Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
 
(1)
See all 3 tags...

Your tags: Add your first tag
 
See most popular tags

What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

The Nativity: History and Legend
79% buy the item featured on this page:
The Nativity: History and Legend 4.3 out of 5 stars (3)
£4.98
The Authentic Gospel of Jesus
7% buy
The Authentic Gospel of Jesus 3.5 out of 5 stars (4)
£5.99
The Passion
6% buy
The Passion 4.5 out of 5 stars (2)
Who's Who in the Age of Jesus
4% buy
Who's Who in the Age of Jesus
£8.99
Explore similar items
 

Customer Reviews

3 Reviews
5 star:
 (2)
4 star:    (0)
3 star:
 (1)
2 star:    (0)
1 star:    (0)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.3 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
Share your thoughts with other customers:
Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Food for thought, 12 Jun 2008
By Pieter "Toypom" (Johannesburg) - See all my reviews
(TOP 10 REVIEWER)   
In this book the respected scholar investigates the main events surrounding the nativity in an attempt to determine 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 problem, for example John P Meier in A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, and Raymond Brown in Birth of the Messiah.

He analyses the evidence through a detailed textual interpretation, then compares the findings to all the relevant information from parallel Jewish documents, literary and historical sources, 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 examines the concept of miraculous births in Judaism and Paganism: virginal conception, extraordinary birth stories in the Old Testament and the strange 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 of Alexandria 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 place 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 discusses 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. 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. The book The Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew by Bart Ehrman is very informative in this regard.

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 also recommend the work of David Bivin, like Understanding the Difficult Words of Jesus: New Insights From a Hebrew Perspective and that of Larry Hurtado, especially Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity. All of Vermes' books are worth reading but I found The Authentic Gospel of Jesus to be particularly valuable.
Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)



 
9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars What I wanted to read, 27 April 2007
By R. P. Sedgwick "Grim Rob" (UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)      
What I wanted to know was the truth about the birth of Christ free of religious dogma and this book does just that. I wanted to read facts not faith and that's just what we are given in a very accessible way for the lay reader. Vermes looks at issues such the conception of Jesus, the virgin birth, the stable story, the wise men and the star. Many of these familiar parts of the tale are found to be inconsistent and contradictory both within and between the different gospels and other sources, and a good few of them culled from earlier myths or parts of the Old Testament.

I have to disagree with the previous reviewer's comments. Vermes quite clearly in this book doesn't comment on the teachings of Christ in his adult part of his life at or make any conclusions on these teachings which form a large part of the Christian faith. However it's hard to see after reading this book how to take anyone seriously who takes large parts of the New Testament literally.
Comment Comments (2) | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)



 
6 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars over long, 28 Jan 2007
By R. J. de Bulat (UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
I found the arguments in the book overly laboured and made at too great a length: I feel that this book could be made shorter and would serve better as a chapter in a work on the subject of Jesus as a whole.

My second point is that Vermes scores an own goal: he goes to great length in describing the nativity stories as being similar to the myths surrounding the births of other great characters from the ancient and classical world including those of the patriarchs. From a logical perspective, this would seem to debunk the whole of biblical history. What he misses in this book is the issue of faith that makes sense through the drawing of parallels that make these stories as much as the Bible as a whole, a kind of allegory suitable for teaching rather than a subject of proof.

He is succesful to the extent that he makes a strong case for discounting the stories of Jesus' birth, historically, but cannot dent the fact of his life and influence, subsequently, on the development and progress of the Christian faith. I haven't read other works by Vermes', but if they are of a similar pattern I doubt their value: this book is not so much scholarly as pedantic, which is a shame as there is much that is interesting here, but too much that is laboured.
Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)


Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
 
 
 
Only search this product's reviews


Customer Discussions

This product's forum
Discussion Replies Latest Post
No discussions yet

Ask questions, Share opinions, Gain insight
Start a new discussion
Topic:
First post:
Prompts for sign-in
 


Active discussions in related forums
   
Related forums

Listmania!

Create a Listmania! list

Look for similar items by category

Look for similar items by subject









i.e., each product must be in subject 1 AND subject 2 AND ...

Feedback

Ad

Your Recent History

 (What's this?)

After viewing product detail pages or search results, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in.