The Birth of Jesus the Jew

This is a short introduction to how the Jewish literary genre of 'Midrash' has shaped the infancy stories in the two canonical Gospels and some apocryphal works. It argues that these important faith testimonies are not ß history' in the sense that we tend to understand that term - Jesus, for example, was almost certainly born in Nazareth, not Bethlehem. When we read these stories through the lens of 'Jewish eyes', we are better able to appreciate their meaning both for the Jewish-Christians of the first century and for Christians living now. This slim volume is a contribution to encouraging further Jewish-Christian dialogue against the background of the long shadows cast by the Holocaust.