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October 31, 2018
New in the Kiosk: How the Story of Jesus' Birth was Cobbled Together from Jewish Sources (2018) by Robert Shaw
It's that time of the year when the story of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth begins to pervade the everyday lives of people in the West. In this article, Robert Shaw looks at the origins of the story in first-century Palestine. Neither the earliest Gospel nor the earlier letters from St. Paul to fledgling Christian churches around the Mediterranean make any mention of the circumstances of Jesus' birth, but later embellishments are weaved together with contrived reinterpretations of Old Testament passages to bolster Jesus' messianic credentials.