Pope Benedict published the last part of his trilogy on the life of Jesus, delivering an early childhood narrative which strongly reaffirms the doctrine of the Virgin birth as an “unequivocal” truth of faith.

God himself is constantly regarded as a limitation placed on our freedom, that must be set aside if man is ever to be completely himself

In the book, Benedict also urges his readers to stop seeing God as someone who limits personal freedom.

The Infancy Narratives: Jesus of Nazareth hit bookstores around the world in some 20 languages yesterday.

It is bound to be another international bestseller like the previous volumes. The Vatican said a million copies had already been printed and more runs were expected soon.

Divided into a foreword, four chapters and an epilogue, it traces and analyses the Gospel narratives from the birth of Jesus to his presentation in the temple at the age of 12.

The previous two volumes dealt with the adult life of Jesus and his public ministry.

One section of the book is called Virgin Birth – Myth or Historical Truth?

The Church teaches that Jesus is the son of God and was not conceived through sexual intercourse but by the power of the Holy Spirit, one part of the Divine Trinity.

In simple language that is at once academic but still easily accessible to a non-specialist readership, Benedict says the story of the Virgin birth is not just a reworking of earlier Greek or Egyptian legends and archetypal concepts but something totally new in history.

“It is God’s creative word alone that brings about something new. Jesus, born of Mary is fully man and fully God, without confusion and without separation...” he writes.

“The accounts of Matthew and Luke are not myths taken a stage further. They are firmly rooted, in terms of their basic conception, in the Biblical tradition of God the Creator and Redeemer,” he writes.

“Is what we profess in the Creed (a Christian prayer that includes belief in the virgin birth) true? he asks. He answers: “The answer is an unequivocal yes.”

Catholics should see belief in the Virgin birth and the resurrection of Jesus from the dead as “cornerstones of faith” because they are undeniable signs of God’s creative power.

“If God does not also have power over matter, then he simply is not God,” the Pontiff writes. “But he does have this power, and through the conception and resurrection of Jesus Christ he has ushered in a new creation.”

In two paragraphs that deal with the world today, Pope Benedict says that Jesus is still “a sign of contradiction” for many.

“God himself is constantly regarded as a limitation placed on our freedom, that must be set aside if man is ever to be completely himself. God, with his truth, stands in opposition to man’s manifold lies, his self-seeking and his pride.”

The Pope also tackles the “question of interpreted history,” or the attempt by the Gospels to understand events after they took place in the context of the word of God and their relationship to prophesies in the Old Testament.

“Hence the aim (of the evangelists) was not to produce an exhaustive account but a record of what seemed important for the nascent faith community in the light of the word. The infancy narratives are interpreted history, condensed and written down in accordance with the interpretation,” he writes.

In other sections of the book, he discusses the genealogy of Jesus, the figure of St Joseph, the story of the Wise Men who the Bible says paid tribute to the infant Jesus in the manger in Bethlehem.

He writes of the symbolism of Jesus having been born in a manger: “From the moment of his birth, he belongs outside the realm of what is important and powerful in worldly terms.”

The Pope dedicates a section of the book to the Bible story of the three kings who paid tribute to the infant Jesus.

Benedict says that while he believes in the story of the adoration of the Magi, no foundation of faith would be shaken if turned out to be an invention based on a theological idea.

In his two previous volumes on the life of Jesus, issued in 2007 and 2011, Benedict condemned violence committed in God’s name and exonerated Jews of responsibility for the death of Jesus.

Excerpts from The Infancy Narratives: Jesus of Nazareth

On Mary’s role in world history

"Yet most important of all is the fact that the genealogy [of Matthew] ends with a woman: Mary, who truly marks a new beginning and relativises the entire genealogy. Throughout the generations, we find the formula: “Abraham was the father of Isaac...”

But at the end, there is something quite different. In Jesus’s case, there is no reference to fatherhood, instead we read: “Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ” (Mt 1:16).

In the account of Jesus’s birth that follows immediately afterwards, Matthew tells us that Joseph was not Jesus’s father and that he wanted to dismiss Mary on account of her supposed adultery. But this is what is said to him: “That which is conceived in Mary is of the Holy Spirit” (Mt 1:20). So the final sentence turns the whole genealogy around. Mary is a new beginning. Her child does not originate from any man but is a new creation, conceived through the Holy Spirit.

The genealogy is still important: Joseph is the legal father of Jesus. Through him, Jesus belongs by law, ‘legally’, to the house of David. And yet he comes from elsewhere, ‘from above’ –from God himself. The mystery of his provenance, his dual origin, confronts us quite concretely: his origin can be named and yet it is a mystery. Only God is truly his ‘father’.

The human genealogy has a certain significance in terms of world history. And yet in the end it is Mary, the lowly virgin from Nazareth, in whom a new beginning takes place, in whom human existence starts afresh."

On the historical and theological framework of the Nativity story in Luke’s Gospel

“In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled” (Lk 2:1). With these words, Luke introduces his account of the birth of Jesus and explains how it came to take place in Bethlehem. A population census, for purposes of determining and collecting taxes, was what prompted Joseph to set off from Nazareth for Bethlehem, together with Mary, his betrothed, who was expecting a child.

The birth of Jesus in the city of David is placed within the overarching framework of world history, even though Caesar was quite unaware of the difficult journey that these ordinary people were making on his account. And so it is that the child Jesus is born, seemingly by chance, in the place of the promise. The context in world history is important for Luke.

For the first time, ‘all the world’, the ecumenen in its entirety, is to be enrolled. For the first time there is a government and an empire that spans the globe. For the first time, there is a great expanse of peace in which everyone’s property can be registered and placed at the service of the wider community. Only now, when there is a commonality of law and property on a large scale, and when a universal language has made it possible for a cultural community to trade in ideas and goods, only now can a message of universal salvation, a universal Saviour, enter the world: it is indeed the ‘fullness of time’."

On the joy of Christmas

"The angel of the Lord appears to the shepherds and the glory of the Lord shines around them. “They were filled with fear” (Lk 2:9). But the angel takes away their fear and announces to them “a great joy, which will come to all the people; for to you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord” (Lk 2:10f. ).

They are told that, as a sign, they will find a child wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger. “And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men with whom he is pleased’.” (Lk 2:12-14)

According to the evangelist, the angels “said” this. But Christianity has always understood that the speech of angels is actually song, in which all the glory of the great joy that they proclaim becomes tangibly present.

And so, from that moment, the angels’ song of praise has never gone silent. It continues down the centuries in constantly new forms and it resounds ever anew at the celebration of Jesus’s birth. It is only natural that simple believers would then hear the shepherds singing too, and to this day they join in their caroling on the Holy Night, proclaiming in song the great joy that, from then until the end of time, is bestowed on all people."