FINDINGS II


Epiphany - A - January 2 or 6, 2011

Matthew 2: 1-12


Harry T. Cook


 


 


 

Matthew 2:1-12 

During the reign of Herod and after Jesus was born in Bethlehem, astrologer-magicians from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, "Where is the child born king of the Jews? We observed his star at its rising, and we have come to pay him homage." Herod heard about this and was frightened about it [anxious that his heirs not be deprived of the throne], and all of Jerusalem, too. He called together a council of the priests and scribes of the people and asked where Messiah was supposed to be born. "In Bethlehem in Judea," they replied, ["as predicted by the prophet Micah."] Herod made quiet inquiry upon seeing the astrologer-magicians in person and subsequently learned from them when they had first seen the star of which they spoke. He asked them to locate the child and bring him word so he could also go to pay homage. The astrologer-magicians started out and set their course by the star until they found the place, whereupon they saw Mary and the child, knelt before him and presented him with the gifts they had brought: gold, frankincense and myrrh. And having deduced that Herod was up to no good, did not return to him but went home another way. (Translated and paraphrased by Harry T. Cook)


 

RUBRIC


To what great lengths the author(s) of Matthew went shows in the merging of the Persian magoi (in the Greek: one "magus," two "magoi") with the birth narrative of Jesus, the incorporating of an actual astronomical phenomenon with the reign of Herod, and throwing in messianic predictions for good measure. Unwittingly, Matthew cursed the modern American church with the annual bathrobe-and-turban ritual as children depict the magi and their gifts in pageants in every time zone. By way of his text, Matthew also gave us one of the most popular Christmas carols set in poetic line and memorable tune by John Henry Hopkins, Jr. (1820-1891). The carol We three kings of orient are is actually for the Feast of the Epiphany, but it is nonetheless used across the long Christmas season -- from mid-October to Christmas Day.

 

Our task in this essay is to de-mythologize the text and to extract and distill its significance for our own time.


 

WORKSHOP


Except for assistance from obscure allusions at Isaiah 60:6 and Psalm 72:10b-11, Matthew is entirely on his own with the story of the "magoi from the East." Nothing in the other synoptics or John in any way parallels this text. One suspects the story serves a peculiar Matthean agendum, and it might be the work Matthew set out for himself in the task of including Gentiles in the emerging Jesus Judaism communities toward the end of the first century ce. Already in 1:1-16 and 18-25, Matthew has legitimized Jesus for Jews; now he demonstrates that Jesus is accessible to Gentiles as well.

 

"Magoi" were certainly not unknown in antiquity. Herodotus identified both priests called "magoi" among the Medes, and their descendants as priests of Zoroaster. The book of Daniel (see 1:20, 2:2) mentions magoi. They were generally associated with pre-astronomy. So the type would have been known outside of the communities from which Matthew's gospel emerged. In addition, Luke in Acts 8:9-13 writes of one Simon who "had previously practiced magic (mageuōn) in the city."

 

Modern astronomy accords a flicker of verisimilitude to Matthew's tale, for a triple conjunction of Jupiter, Saturn and Mars occurred in 7-6 bce, at about the time the one or ones called "Jesus" would have been born, if the cross-referencing of dates in biblical and extra-biblical sources is correct. Herod died in 4 bce, according to Josephus in Antiquities, Book 17, chaps. 6 and 9. We may assume that Matthew, writing around 80-85 ce,would have heard of what must have been an extraordinary celestial display fewer than 100 years before, and combined it with his and others' knowledge of Persian astrologers to create the story of the magoi and the Star of Bethlehem.


Matthew's placing of the words "king of the Jews" on the magoi's lips has an effect similar to his bold declaration in 1:1 and 18 that already Jesus was the Christ. How could Matthew imagine it would be credible to have the wandering magoi know that a star heralded the birth of a Jewish king? Was this an allusion to Numbers 24:17 ("There shall star from Jacob come forth, and a scepter from Israel rise up")?

 

Certainly Herod, a Roman puppet of Jewish blood, would not have been interested in competition from the people of the land, which is what the Jesuses we meet in the synoptic gospels would have been. Perhaps Matthew's story is a veiled way of saying that Rome had no puppet in Jesus as he would become in the movement of Jesus Judaism an icon of leadership, if not a king. Herod was also the great renovator of the Second Temple that, in the eyes of late first-century Jesus Jews, had been replaced by the "risen Christ."

 

Where Matthew goes from there, as the magoi are dispatched by a troubled Herod who meanwhile has found out from his priests about Micah's prophecy (5:2), is through three more dream sequences -- each, as it were, a literary deus ex machina. The first and second serve to get Joseph, Mary, and Jesus into Egypt and, after Herod's death, out again; the aim is to fulfill, as Matthew would say, Hosea 11:1: "Out of Egypt have I called my son." The third is to get them to Galilee, possibly to fulfill Isaiah 11:1: "And a shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots." It is interesting to note that the Hebrew word we translate "shoot" and "branch" is the probable root of "Nazareth," the name of a village in lower Galilee. The presentation of costly gifts as befits royalty may have been Matthew's way of saying to the Jews of his community that Gentiles may become adherents of Jesus Judaism, but it will cost them.



HOMILETIC COMMENTARY


Matthew has created one of the most memorable stories in scripture. Although it was long ago co-opted for the celebration of Epiphany, its imagery is by common consent part of the Christmas tableau. Those who teach or preach this passage will want to treat it for what it is rather than what it is not.  Matthew 2:1-12 is surely not an account of something that actually occurred.

 

What we're dealing with here is an imaginative word-picture, almost a tone poem that conveys a sense of temporal and spatial expansiveness to the appearance of the Jesus figure.


Whoever the real Jesus was, if he was real, he would have been born just as any other human being is born. In first-century ce Galilee he would probably have been from peasant stock or just a cut below, if his father really was a "tektōn," i.e. a day laborer. It was the various reports about his early adult life that set him apart and caused messianic hopes to be assigned to him. Some believed he was not only the Anointed One (messiah) of Jewish expectation, but a figure of such universal import that celestial phenomena would cause alien priests to seek him out. All that's missing is a 100-piece symphony orchestra and Dolby wraparound sound.

 


� Copyright 2010, Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.


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