FINDINGS II
Epiphany
- C - January 3 and/ or 6, 2010
Isaiah 60: 1-6; Ephesians 3: 1-12; Matthew
2: 1-12
 By Harry T. Cook
12/28/09
RUBRIC
We will treat today of the readings appointed for Epiphany since
many congregations will already have had the magi hanging out in their cr�ches since
Advent and some of that many follow the recent Roman Catholic custom of
celebrating the Feast of the Epiphany on the Sunday preceding it (if Epiphany
falls on a weekday) and, finally, because the lections for Epiphany are too
rich in imagery to leave to a sparsely attended weekday liturgy.
WORKSHOP
The evangelist known as Matthew gave Christianity what
turned out to be one of its most misunderstood and therefore misused
narratives: the so-called visit of the magi to the child Jesus. Some commentators
-- even W.F. Albright -- have suggested that, for all of its evident
mythological trappings, the story has "on the face of it all the elements of
historical probability."/1
If that were true, why would we not encounter it anywhere else in early Christian
literature? And why any aspect of the magi story should be considered as
historical when the one preceding it in Matthew 1: 18-25 is not, save by
fundamentalists, Albright does not explain.
Let us say it: Matthew 2: 1-12 is mythology, though pretty
good mythology. Matthew chose to back up this myth in his typical fashion by
supplying a quotation from the Hebrew Bible via the Septuagint: Micah 5:2: "And
you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of
Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel."
The Hebrew of Micah 5:2 does not include the term "shepherd" and adds of "the
one who is to rule in Israel" that his "origin is from old, from ancient
days." This latter is probably a
reference to the half-mythical David, also reputedly from Bethlehem.
Matthew could as well have added Numbers 24:17 to his backup
material: "There shall a star from Jacob come forth, and a scepter from Israel rise
up . . ." Or even the text selected by the editors of the RCL to complement the
appointed gospel passage: Isaiah 60: 1-6: "Nations shall come to your light (as
in the star of Matthew 2:2) and kings to the brightness of your dawn." Kings
did not come. But Matthew said "wise men from the East" came. A "king" was
already in place - Herod who reigned from 36 to 4 or so B.C.E.
How did "magi" become "wise men" and then "kings" as thus
depicted in the bathrobe-and-crown church school pageants? Magi did exist in
several forms in Middle Eastern antiquity as Herodotus bore witness. He
identified them as a class or type of sages or maybe priests. They were also
named as priests of Zoroaster and, as such, located in Persia. The term "magus,"
whence our words "magic" and "magician(s)," was a generic term also applied to
those thought to be adept at sleight-of-hand and other more sinister craft.
The late Dr. Sherman Johnson in an exegesis of this passage alluded to the story of the magus Tiridates who, after he was made king
over Armenia by the emperor Nero, went to Rome with fellow magi to present
gifts to the emperor ca. 66 C.E. It is said that the magi returned to Armenia by
a way other than that by which they had come./2 Perhaps that otherwise
irrelevant datum somehow found its way to the author(s) or editor(s) of
According to Matthew.
A word about the "star:" What gives the star business a kind
of nervous verisimilitude is that several conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn
are said by astronomers to have occurred in 7 B.C.E. and Halley's Comet would
have been visible in the night sky of the Middle East ca. 12 B.C.E
"From the east" and "star at its rising" connect Gentile
lands and peoples with the star (a perceived phenomenon often associated in
antiquity with the birth of a major figure)/3 promised in Numbers -- suggesting to some that Matthew, with
his emphasis on the humble site of Bethlehem and his use of the Micah fragment
which stresses the commonplace nature of the foretold ruler, meant to turn the
world spotlight on that no-account-in-the-greater-scheme-of-things strip of
land along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean and upon the happenings in it
during "the time of Herod the king."
Depicting representatives of a Persian or other alien elite
studying the stars to discern the birth of a Jewish king and then coming to
worship him in his infancy or early childhood was a daring reach. Not that a
"Jewish king" was an unknown quantity. The Hasmonean dynasty consisted in a
series of "kings of the Jews." Formed in the wake of the 166 B.C.E. Maccabbean
victory over the forces of Antiochus Epiphanes IV, commemorated in the Jewish
holiday Hanukah, the Hasmoneans ruled in all for about 100 years (140-37
B.C.E.), and that independently until Hyrcanus II and Aristobulus II were caught
up in the Pompey-Julius Caesar conflict. By 37 B.C.E., Herod was installed as
the Roman puppet king.
However, by the time Matthew appeared in the form we now
have it, the idea of a Jewish king could only have been nostalgic fantasy. The
tableau of exotic wizards from an alien land bowing low before a child and
bringing gifts to him was one way for the evangelist (who, of course, knew the
end of the story even as he was crafting its beginning) to say that the gospel
he was promulgating was or could be a universal one -- so long, of course, as
the East was "westward leading, still proceeding" looking for that "perfect
light."/4
That note of universality was sounded by the editor of
Paul's epistles in Ephesians, the introductory encyclical or cover letter introducing
them. See 3:5: "In former generations this mystery was not made known to
humankind, as it has now been revealed . . . that is, the Gentiles have become
fellow heirs, members of the same body, and sharers in the promise . . ."
/1 Albright,
W.F and C.S. Mann, The Anchor Bible No. 26, p.13
/2 The
Interpreter's Bible (1951), Vol. 7, p. 257
/3 Several
sources suggest that contemporaries of Mithradates the Great, a king who
claimed to be a descendent of both Alexander the Great and Darius the Great,
insisted that star heralded his birth in ca. 131 B.C.E.
/4 "We
three kings" John Henry Hopkins, Jr., (1820-1891)
HOMILETIC COMMENTARY
There is no reasonably pastoral way to avoid the singing of Hopkins's
"We three kings" on the Feast of the Epiphany. And there is not much to be
gained by trying to tell a congregation that the magi were
neither kings nor wise men, at least in the sense of their having been public intellectuals. A homilist could mention that nowhere is the number of them
given as three, though the gifts they are depicted as bringing are three in
number. Also it is easier to outfit three Sunday school boys than an
indeterminate number, except perhaps in churches that have very large rummage
sales from which an ample supply of bathrobes and towels (for turbans) can be
fashioned to outfit an entire brigade of magi. Also the camels, which in the
Isaiah reading are promised to cover the chosen people in a multitude, are
nowhere present in Matthew's narrative.
A world of trouble awaits the homilist who will observe 1)
that supposedly "wise" persons from Persia (now Iran) came, westward led by the
star, to Israel to worship its king, 2) that Persians of antiquity thereby had
set an example for their 21st Century descendants and 3) that Christianity with
its Jewish roots is therefore the superior religion. This is not to say that one
is unable to hear that latter point relentlessly and unmercifully driven home
by evangelical preachers in every television market in North America.
The better tack for the homilist might be to reference the
universal phenomenon of religion that has arisen in every culture at least
since the recession of the last Ice Age, maybe even to quote John Calvin on the
subject: "We lay it down as a position not be controverted that the human mind,
even by natural instinct, possesses some sense of a deity . . . God has given
to all some apprehension of his existence,"/5 which is Calvin's
restatement of Romans 1:20 ("Ever since the creation of the world the eternal
power of the divine nature [has] been understood.")
The Calvin and Pauline quotations may be a bit much for the
non-theist, but they are helpful in witnessing to the universality of religion
and to the probability that religious beliefs are perceived through cultural
lenses and history. Every significant cultus known to scholars of comparative
religion includes in its literature or otherwise in its tradition some
variation of what Jews know as Hillel the Great's summary of Torah ("What you
hate, do not do to another") or the so-called Golden Rule ("Do unto others as
you would have them do unto you.")
That is to say, therefore, that no single religion is
innately superior to another, though the beliefs of every religion can be and
have been misconstrued, e.g., ultra-Orthodox Judaism in its unsupportable
claims of God-given land, Christianity in its monstrous rationale for the
Crusades and some sects of Islam in their misinterpretation of jihad.
/5 Calvin,
John, Institute of the Christian Religion, Book I, Chap. 3
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