What is the significance of Jesus' genealogy in the Gospel of Matthew? Why do we put and ox and ass at our creches? Why did angels appear to the shepherds? In "No Trace of Christmas?" Christoph Dohmen explains why the answers to these and other questions regarding our understanding of Christmas are to be found not in the New but in the Old Testament.

For the most part Christians regard the Old (or First) Testament as pre-history, a preparation for, or a promise of the New Testament and its proclamation of Christ. This is especially true during Advent, when the Christian liturgy directs our attention to the promise and its fulfillment. Yet Advent's status as the beginning of the Church year - as a turning point - calls us to look back in order to move forward. We read intensively from Old Testament prophecy texts with a special view toward their future meaning. Hence, Advent is the time of the year when Christians are reminded that they have one sacred Scripture in "two" parts, one Bible composed of the Old and New Testaments.

Since it was with the aid of the Old Testament that the early Church interpreted the event at Bethlehem, many of the images and biblical texts associated with Christmas can only be understood by following their Old Testament roots. Like the Magi who followed the star, we can, with Dohmen's help, follow in the liturgy of Advent and Christmas the traces that lead us into the Old Testament. Following those traces, we can arrive at a Christmas that appears to us in a new light, that of the Old Testament.

Chapters are In Search of Traces," "It al Began Before Christmas," "Addressed and Claimed," "A Gift from Heaven," "When Shepherds Become Prophets, "You Shall Make No Crib for Yourself " "Joseph, What Are You Dreaming?" "A New Age Is Beginning," "In Order That Might Be Fulfilled . . .," "In Our Midst," "Yad Vashem," "You, Bethlehem . . .," and "Following the Trace."

"Christoph Dohmen is professor of Old Testament Exegesis at the University of Osnabruck.""

English summary: The figure of Moses is closely connected with the belief in the one and only God, and this is why he is attributed a particular role in Judaism, Christianity and Islam alike. Yet our knowledge of this exceptional character, whose significance is not limited to religious concerns but cannot be overestimated either with regard to legal and ethical issues, stems exclusively from those books of the Bible that narrate his story and that are attributed to him. These Books of Moses present themselves as communications from God which Moses received and passed on. What becomes apparent in these biblical texts is confirmed by those traces that Moses has left in our Western culture: The particular quality of the Divine revelations is embodied by its mediator. In this figure we encounter not a person from a distant past but the valid word of Holy Scripture, and Moses has uniquely become this word. German text. German description: Die Gestalt des Mose ist eng mit dem Glauben an den einen und einzigen Gott verbunden, weshalb ihm eine besondere Stellung in Judentum, Christentum und Islam zukommt. Was wir von dieser grossen Gestalt wissen, deren Bedeutung nicht auf die Religion beschrankt bleibt, sondern auch fuer Recht und Ethik kaum zu ueberschatzen ist, wissen wir aber nur aus den Buechern der Bibel, die von ihm handeln und ihm zugeschrieben werden. Diese Mose-Buecher geben sich selbst als Mitteilung Gottes zu verstehen, die Mose empfangen und weitergegeben hat. Was sich schon in den Texten der Bibel zeigt, wird von den Spuren, die Mose in der abendlandischen Kultur hinterlassen hat, bestatigt: Das Besondere der gottlichen Offenbarung ist am Offenbarungsmittler abzulesen. In ihm begegnet uns nicht eine Person ferner Vergangenheit, sondern das bleibende Wort Heiliger Schrift, und Mose ist in einzigartiger Weise zu diesem Wort geworden.