In Search of the Birth of Jesus

Quick, what do tennis star Andre Agassi and renowned conductor Zubin Mehta have in common? They are both Zoroastrians. What, exactly, does that mean? Well, according to Paul William Roberts, the influential marks of Zoroastrianism are still visible in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, despite the Roman Catholic church's assiduous efforts to erase them over the centuries. In Search of the Birth of Jesus is a book of such stunning complexity and marvelous wit that to call it a travel book is to slight its profundity; to call it an exhaustively researched theological history is to deny the rollicking good read that it is. Roberts re-traces the steps of the Magi according to a tip in Marco Polo's Travels, and the self-styled "good Christian" then commences dismantling every common notion of the Nativity story with an iconoclastic aplomb.