For 2,000 years the events surrounding the birth of Jesus have gripped the world’s imagination. As the record is so sparse, the simple story told in Matthew and Luke has too often been obscured by legends and mistletoe, myths and tinsel. Now Paul L. Maier, whose bestselling PONTIUS PILATE brilliantly reconstructed the close of Christ’s career, strips away the layers of folklore which have gathered around its famous beginning to tell “how it really was” in the world of the Nativity.
By thoroughly researching the sources, Roman history, Palestinian geography, Jewish
culture, and such recent discoveries as THE GOSPEL OF THOMAS, the author uncovers new and fascinating information. He lets the facts themselves tell the moving Christmas story.
Five magnificent full-color and 31 black- and-white photographs of places that appear in FIRST CHRISTMAS give the book the documentary quality of a motion picture. The illustrations include a reconstructed photograph of the night sky over Judea, showing the triple planetary conjunction of Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars which some astronomers believe was the Christmas star phenomenon. There is a full collection of the Christmas sites in Palestine. An unpublished color photograph showing all of Palestine was taken from Apollo 7.