What I've Been Reading: Before Bethlehem

In the name of all things Christmas, I had decided to try and do quite a bit of reading of books in the Christmas genre this year. Besides the 3 books I had purchased for Advent, I also purchased 4 other "Christmas" books.  One, by Melody Carlson (whom I loved to read as a teenager), was called "The Christmas Bus" and had all the makings of a Hallmark Movie.  Cute, clean, simple.  I found this book, Before Bethlehem, on my Book bub recommendation list and decided to purchase it.  If you haven't joined bookbub yet, stop reading this blog post, click on the link, and join.  Simply enter your e-mail address, what device you read on, and your favorite kinds of books, and you'll get a daily list of deals for your reader, many of which are free. 

While Before Bethlehem is entirely fictional, it was a nice read for Christmas time based on the Gospel.  I feel like sometimes, we read portions of the Bible so much, or we aren't really thinking about the big picture as we read them, and this book helped me to consider all of the different political elements that were going on at the time.  Sure, the Bible talks about Herod wanting Jesus killed and the Wise men telling Mary and Joseph about the potential harm Jesus was in.  But this book gave me a visual of what that really looked like. 

The book is told from the perspective of James, who the Bible identifies as Jesus' half-brother.  I know I've wondered a few times "how was he his half brother?"  Of course, if James was Mary and Joseph's biological son, it would make him half due to Jesus being incarnate.  Anyhow, this book acknowledges James as the half brother because of Joseph having had been married before.  His first wife died of fever many years previous to the setting of this story, and a Rabbi coerces Joseph into marrying Mary under the guise of protection for Joseph's family. 

Perhaps one of the most interesting things to me was the detail that was given to the variations of rock and stone that were written about in the book.  The author stated that the city of Jerusalem used stone that took on a white tone and I imagined to almost have a pearl effect.  I know this was a minor detail in the book and what the book was ultimately about.  However, just including it gave me such a better visual of what my eyes would have seen.  It also made me appreciate men a little (gasp!) because they so often notice these sorts of things, while I wouldn't have given it much thought. 

This book was just shy of 300 pages long.  I did enjoy it, but I really had to push myself through it quite often to get it finished.  It wasn't that it was boring per se.  It was very detailed and there was a lot that happened.  The book has over 400 reviews on Amazon, some of which were clearly upset that the author didn't give an exact account of the Birth Story as told from the Bible.  For instance, Mary went into labor before they reached Bethlehem, and a handful of Rabbi Shepherds delivered Jesus.  But if you just take the book for what the author states at the beginning that it is, a work of fiction, I think it's a very thoughtful and well written book. 

If you like history and the Bible, I think this would be a good book for you to read.