I remember as a little boy hearing people sing the third stanza of Deck the Halls: “See the blazing Yule before us.” Afterwards I wondered to myself, why did they burn that poor mule?
You may have heard the one about the kid who made a drawing
of the Nativity scene for Sunday school. Everyone looked familiar except for a fat
guy standing alone in the corner. “Who’s that?” asked his teacher. “That’s
Round John Virgin,” said the kid. “You know, Round John Virgin, mother, and
child.” And before you classify that story as myth, remember: I really did
think they were roasting a mule…
I’m betting that much of what you think you know about the
first Christmas is based on those carols you learned as a child. It may come as
a shock that these are not an entirely reliable source of information. And I’m
not even talking about some of the more absurd notions like, those presented in
The Little Drummer Boy:
Shall I play for you, on my drum?
Mary nodded, the ox and lamb kept
time,
I played my drum for Him,
I played my best for Him,
Then He smiled at me,
Me and my drum.
Oh course we all know that pounding on a drum has long been a
favorite method of shepherds and cowboys to calm restless flocks and herds, so
we’d naturally expect one of the shepherd boys to be packing his trusty bongo. And
no first-time mother would ever
object to some strange kid banging away on a drum a just few hours after she endured
a difficult birth in a barn. And don’t even get me started about the ox and
lamb rhythm section…
Actually myths about miraculous animal activity associated
with the birth of Christ regularly appear in medieval times. So it should not
be surprising to see the line in the first stanza of Good Christian Men, Rejoice, “Man and beast before Him bow…” since
this ancient carol dates back to the 14th Century in its original
Latin version. Luke 2 makes no mention of any animals at all except for the
flocks of sheep out in the fields. While it is reasonable to assume that there
would have been animals in that stable, there is no reason to believe that they
acted in any way out of the ordinary—unless they may have been a bit uneasy at
having unexpected human company sharing their humble accommodations. You can
bet they weren’t talking, bowing down, or beating time to music.
Away in a Manger
Away in a Manger
was probably the very first Christmas carol that I learned to sing. Remember
those words in the second stanza, “But little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes…”?
The writer is anonymous but I have to believe he was a father who’d lost sleep
due to a crying baby. I’m reminded of the words of my Old Testament professor,
a man who was a practicing pediatrician when God called him into the ministry. Having
already earned one doctorate, he headed off to seminary and earned first a Master
of Divinity and then a Ph.D. His comment? “A baby that doesn’t cry is sick.”
Hark! The Herald
Angels Sing (or did they?)
Perhaps the most prevalent theme in our Christmas music is
the image of heavenly choirs of angels singing to celebrate the birth of our
Lord:
Ø
Hark! the
herald angels sing...
Ø
Angels we
have heard on high, Sweetly singing o’re the plains…
Ø
With the
angels let us sing…
Ø
Sing
choirs of angels, sing in exultation…
Ø
Whom
angels greet with anthems sweet…
I could go on.
Ø
From
angels bending near the earth, To touch their harps of gold…
Angels We Have Heard
on High has the shepherds joining the chorus.
The only problem with all this is nowhere in scripture does
it once mention angels singing.
What does Luke’s gospel actually say?
14“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”
In the New Testament singing is always mentioned in the
context of praise to God. There are several different Greek words that are used
to convey the idea. But the word translated praising
in Luke 2:13 is not the word usually used for singing.
But let’s face it.
We are talking about angelic voices
here. And somehow I suspect that prose from the lips of an angel would sound
like music to a human ear. So I’m willing to give Charles Wesley and Joseph
Mohr and all those other great hymn writers a pass on this one.
But lose the golden
harps.
Perhaps the biggest misinformation about that first
Christmas that song writers have contributed to has to do with the star and the
wise men.
We Three Kings of Orient
They adorn countless Christmas cards. They’re the most exotic figurines in a
traditional nativity crèche. They’re the
little boys wearing the paper crowns in the Christmas play. They are the subject of song, and myth and
legend. They are the wise men—those
mysterious figures from the East who came to worship and honor the infant
Jesus.
Just who were the
wise men? Were they, as the song says,
three kings of the orient?
The wise men are more accurately called the magi
from the Greek word mágoi. From
that same Greek root we get the words magic and magician. The term first referred to members of the
shaman chaste of the ancient Medes, a tribe in what is now western Iran. To the magi was ascribed the power to
interpret dreams. The Greek philosophers
regarded the magi not only as priests, but as teachers and philosophers as well.
Long before the 1st
Century magi had assumed a much broader meaning. The magi were thought to possess supernatural
knowledge and ability. They were
interpreters of dreams, soothsayers, astrologers, scientists, magicians, and
counselors to those in power. By Jesus
day the magi were no longer exclusively Persians. There were Babylonian magi, Arabian magi and
even Jewish magi such as the sorcerer Bar-Jesus in Acts 13. They ranged from charlatans like Bar-Jesus to
some of the most learned men in the ancient world. The magi in Matthew 2 are pictured has wholly
admirable characters, magi at their best.
Where were the
magi from? The Gospel simply says that they were “from the East”. Beyond
that, there are three locations that are usually suggested: Parthia, Babylon,
and the deserts of Arabia or Syria. Strong arguments can be made for each. Parthia
is the location most favored by the history of the term mágoi. The Babylonians had a long and highly
developed interest in astronomy and astrology. And camel caravans had long been
bringing gold, frankincense, and myrrh north from the southern end of the
Arabian Desert—the region of modern day Yemen.
If the magi were from Parthia, then their dress—belted
tunics with full sleeves, flowing trousers, and conical-shaped caps—would have looked
very much like the genie from Aladdin’s lamp!
Then there’s the theory
that the magi came from multiple locations, an idea closely associated
with several other legends, none of which have any basis in history. Like the
belief that there were three magi. The Bible doesn’t say how many there were. Three
are assumed because three kinds of gifts are listed. Or the notion that the
magi were kings. (Again, the Bible is silent on this point.) Various names have
been given them. Best known are: Balthasar,
Melchior and Gaspar which first show up in the 3rd Century.
By the 9th Century the tradition was established that they represent three
races. Balthasar was Asian; Gaspar a white European; and Melchior was a black
African.
We don’t know
precisely where the magi were from, only that they were “from the East.” So what do we know?
·
We know there were at least two, since mágoi
is a plural.
·
We know they were men, since these words have
masculine endings.
·
We can assume that they were men of some
financial means. Their gifts were
valuable. In the First Century
frankincense and myrrh were worth more than their weight in gold. They had the leisure and financial means to
make a long journey. Given the dangers
of travel in the border regions on the eastern end of the Roman Empire and the
value of their goods, they were probably accompanied by a large contingent of
armed guards.
·
We can assume they were men of some stature and
influence, since they were quickly granted a private audience with King Herod.
·
We can assume that they traveled some distance
to get to Jerusalem. If they came from
the closest possible location, the western edge of the Syrian Desert, then they
traveled at least a couple hundred miles—a good ten-day trip. However, if they journeyed from southern
Arabia or from Parthia, which is located well to the northeast of Babylon, then
conceivably they traveled as far as 2,000 miles, most of it through empty
desert, and most likely on camels. Such
a trip would have taken at least four to six months and possibly much longer.
·
We know that they were regarded as wise and
learned men in their day and that a part of their learning included a study of
the stars. Their statements to Herod’s
court were regarded as quite credible and were taken with utter seriousness.
Were the Magi present
on Christmas night? – The third stanza of The First Noel suggests as much.
We get a clue to the truth from Matthew 2:7 which reads, “Then Herod called the Magi secretly and
found out from them the exact time the star had appeared.” Herod did some
quick math. He assumed that the star
appeared at the moment the Messiah was born. We have no way of knowing that assumption
is correct. Did the star appear when Christ was born, or did it appear to the
Magi in advance, so as to put their arrival on the scene near the time of the
birth? There is simply no way for us to know. Luke’s account of the birth makes
no mention of the star at all. The shepherds saw a host of angels, but they
said nothing about a star. And being familiar with the night sky, we have to
believe that they would have noticed.
In Matthew 2:16 Herod ordered his swordsmen to kill all male
children in Bethlehem two years old and under. Many argue from this that Jesus
was two when the magi arrived. If so, why kill the newborns? The obvious answer
is that Herod wasn’t being all that discriminating—he just wanted to make sure
he got the right baby. But that makes as much or more sense if when Herod
issued his execution order he included children older than the age ascertained
from the Magi just to make certain that he found his target. If we know anything
at all about Herod the Great, we know that he never shied from shedding
innocent blood.
What we can
conclude from the text is that the Magi did not arrive the actual night that
Jesus was born, for it says in verse 11 that they found the family in a house not a stable. But that’s not much
help. I think it safe to assume that the morning after the birth Joseph’s #1
priority was to get his young family out that stable and into a house. Given
the realities of Middle Eastern hospitality, it is unthinkable that some family
in Bethlehem would not have opened their home to a young mother with a newborn
baby. For all we know the magi may have arrived the next night.
Why did the magi come? Why would important and
wealthy men journey great distances at considerable cost and risk with no
apparent prospect for personal gain? What drew the magi to Bethlehem? Well,
the Star drew them. It’s hard for a modern Western mind to understand the
way the ancients looked at reality. Let me illustrate with a couple events from
the night of November 5, 2001. I was in suburban Milwaukee when I learned that a
longtime friend and co-worker had just died.
Moments later I noticed something odd about the sky. It was a display of
the northern lights and with a degree of clarity and brilliance unusual for those
latitudes. Bright reds and greens danced across the autumn sky. It was the most
dazzling aurora borealis that I’ve ever seen. In fact, it was clearly seen in the Deep South.
Now all that this meant to me was that an unusually large
solar flare a few days earlier had sent a mass of energized particles hurtling
through space and those particles were now colliding with earth’s ionosphere,
resulting in an aurora. But had I been a magus in the ancient Near East, I’d
have interpreted those events very differently. I’d have seen an important
connection between my co-worker’s death and that atmospheric disturbance. The
aurora would have been interpreted as a sign with symbolic meaning.
Perhaps this helps us understand how seeing an unusual star
in the night sky would take on special meaning to those sages of old. It was a
sign, a portent of some important event that was happening or was about to
happen. It had meaning to the world at large and to them personally. They would
have gleaned clues to what nation was involved from the specific area of the
sky where the star appeared. Perhaps the star was in the constellation Leo.
They may have associated Leo with the Lion of Judah, the symbol of the royal
house of David. Some such reasoning process led them to conclude that the event
involved Israel. We do know that they were not led to Jerusalem
by literally following the star. That is common misconception. In verse two the
magi told Herod that they saw the star in the east. Later in verse nine we are
told that the star reappeared to them as they were leaving Jerusalem and led
them to Bethlehem—directly to the place where the child was located.
So what was this star? Was it some natural
phenomenon that was interpreted symbolically? Many theories over the years have
been offered with just such an explanation in mind. A supernova, a comet, or an
unusual planetary conjunction are among the better-known ideas. In 1975 Arthur
C. Clarke actually wrote a sci-fi short story, The Star, based on the supernova theory. All of these suggestions
raise interesting points and all have both strengths and weaknesses.
I’m not convinced that any of these hypotheses explain the
events recorded in Matthew. The first appearance of the star might be explained
as a primitive culture’s interpretation of an unusual natural event. But
the actions of the star in Matthew 2:9 defy any such naturalistic explanation.
Bethlehem was a scant five miles SE of Jerusalem. For a light in the heavens to
guide travelers from Herod’s palace to a specific location in Bethlehem means
that this light must have been very
low in the sky and had to have been moving very
slowly.
Imagine the difficulty of following a hot air balloon from
the ground. If that balloon were at 30,000 feet and being pushed by the jet
stream it would be impossible to keep up with and impossible to estimate when
you were directly under it. On the other hand, if that balloon were only a
hundred feet off the ground and drifting very slowly, you could easily keep up
with it in open country and would know with confidence when it was directly
overhead. Movement of this nature could not be attributed to a comet or a
supernova or a planetary conjunction or any known atmospheric disturbance, nor
could such phenomena begin to provide the kind of precise direction needed to
locate one specific person on the ground. And specific direction, after all, was
the whole point of the exercise! Whatever that star was it was no thing of
nature.
What we think of as an event limited to one night was
actually a series of events spread out over weeks or months.
First, the command of Caesar Augustus compelled Mary and
Joseph to make the difficult journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem. Whether they
arrived on the night of Jesus’ birth or a day or two earlier we don’t know, but
given their living arrangements they couldn’t have been there long.
The nighttime announcement of the angelic messenger inspired
the shepherds to leave their flocks and investigate.
Finally, one night a group of pagan scholars studying the stars
saw something totally unexpected. They concluded for reasons lost in time that
this signified the birth of a new King of the Jews. So they headed for the
logical place to look for a new Jewish king, the palace of the current Jewish
king, Herod the Great in Jerusalem. As they left Herod’s court on their way to
Bethlehem, that mysterious star reappeared and led them with precision to the
house where Jesus lay.
All of these diverse moving parts were under the direct control
of God: Roman imperial tax policies, the superstitious beliefs of pagan
astrologers, the natural curiosity of lowly shepherds, the fear and hostility
of a cruel despot, the seemly inconsequential travels of a poor peasant couple,
and the announcements of angelic messengers… all were skillfully combined, like
threads in a heavenly tapestry, to set the stage for the birth of the Son of
God.
No comments:
Post a Comment