Monday, January 13, 2020

Epiphany, January 6 , 2020 ~ St. Michael-and-All-Angels', Tucson




God is the Lord, Who has shined upon us

We have a lovely bird in the canyons called Phainopepla , Its black coat is glossy and its name means  shining robe in Greek. Often, in flight, it displays flashes of white at the end of its wings.  The phaino is Greek for shining. Same root is in epiphany, which we usually translate as appearance, but it too has the connotation of a flash or a sudden illumination. The literal meaning of epiphany is to shine upon – just like a star.
That may be one reason the Western Church decided to celebrate the Feast of the Epiphany as a commemoration of the visit of the Wise Men, who were guided by a Star. We remember Christ’s first appearance to gentiles. The Wise Men represent all the non-Jewish people in the world. The same Western tradition also came to identify these Wise Men as Kings.
We three kings-a Vorien Tar.  As a little kid, I wondered if vorien were a particular kind of tar, maybe the kind they used on the roads in the summertime, and you had to be careful not to get on your shoes! And I also wondered what it had to do with Kings. Well, my early confusion is only a more childish version of misconceptions that crept into our traditions about the Wise Men.  The Gospel passage we have just heard says nothing about either kings or the number of them. It mentions three gifts, but there might have been more than three men. And they were only later thought to be kings, partly because they were rich enough to make a long and dangerous journey, and also because of the prophecy and psalm we just read we, referring to kings bowing down and offering gifts to the Messiah, especially exotic kings from  the East:  Arabia and Saba – countries that are not exactly east of Jerusalem, but south and east, along the Red sea.
The Gospel calls these mysterious visitors not kings but Wise Men, magoi, in the original text. That word is related to our word, magic, but the magi - as we often call them - were not wizards or sorcerers, they were the scientists of their time. They were very well-educated, scholars who were experrts in astronomy and in the interpretation of dreams. They mapped the night skies and noted the movements of the “wandering stars,” or planets. Unlike our modern astronomers, however, the ancient magi thought there was a meaningful connection between the stars and human events. The position and movements of the stars could signify earthly events. Nowadays, we call that astrology. Not scientific at all, but a pseudo-science that encourages a superstitious outlook. Well, the ancient world had a different view of reality, and the magi were respected as highly learned and knowledgeable. By the way, the fact that they also paid attention to their dreams may have saved them from King Herod.
These traditions were particularly well-developed in Persia – the modern Iran, so much in our news at the moment – to the east of Israel.  Seven hundred years after Christ, the Arab conquest brought Islam to replace the old Persian religion, known as Zoroastrianism, which had emphasized the struggle between good and evil, symbolized by darkness and light. Fire was and is sacred to Zoroastrians, who wanted to identify with the Light. That is why they were so interested in the heavenly light of the stars. In Persia, the magi were religious authorities – priests – and they had to know about the stars.
Biblical religion, both Hebrew and Christian, takes a dim view of astrology, but it seems likely that the Wise Men of the Gospel were representatives of this Oriental tradition. They may not, however, have been Persian Zoroastrian priests. You see, a few centuries before their visit to Bethlehem, Persia had conquered its neighbors to the west, including the Babylonian empire, centered in modern-day Iraq. As it happens, there was a large Jewish community living there at the time. The upper classes had been dragged off from Jerusalem to exile and captivity about a hundred years before. The Persian conquerors let them return to Jerusalem, but many stayed on in Babylon, practicing their own religion, but at the same time absorbing the wisdom of the Persians, no doubt including some elements of Persian religion.
Some Persian influence, for example, might be detected in the light symbolism in the passage we read today, from the later chapters of Isaiah, which were probably written in Babylon:
Arise, shine; for your light has come,
and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.
For darkness shall cover the earth,
and thick darkness the peoples;
but the Lord will arise upon you,
and his glory will appear over you
.
Nations shall come to your light,
and kings to the brightness of your dawn.

The Lord will “arise upon you,”  like a star rises, and “shine upon” us.  Epiphany means “appearance” but it also means “shining upon”, like a star. Anyway, the Magoi who visited Jesus may well have been Jewish astrologers from Babylonia, who had over the centuries absorbed some Zoroastrian influence, and who loved the light – both the natural light of the stars and the Divine light called the Glory of God.
That was the view of the late Latvian-American astronomer, Karlis Kaufmanis, who became famous in his adopted home, my native Minnesota, for his beloved annual lectures on the Star of Bethlehem. [There are copies of it available in the back.] Prof. Kaufmanis thought that the “Star” that guided these Magi was really a series of conjunctions of two bright planets, Jupiter and Saturn, in the year 7bc. Modern biblical scholars are used to thinking of the story of the Visit of the Magi as a lovely fantasy, included to identify Jesus as the fulfillment of prophecies, but Prof. Kaufmanis showed that it might actually have happened!  

Before getting into that, let’s review the question of the date of Jesus’ Birth. There are various theories, but everybody agrees that He was not born in 1ad. We now know for sure that Herod the Great died in 4bc, so the Gospel itself rules out any divine birthday later than that. We got our numbering of years in the Christian Era only five hundred year later, when a Syrian monk calculated it. The wonder is that he got the date as close to correct as he did! But it wasn’t 1ad.  Astronomical evidence, on the other hand, points to 7bc. At least if we are willing to imagine some factual basis for the story of the Star of Bethlehem.

Modern scholarship confirms that Jewish scholars, exiled in Babylon, learned about Persian Astrology and adapted it to their own traditions, developing a system that identified certain stars and constellations with their own concerns.  For example, Jewish astrology identified Jupiter with the King, and Saturn with the Messiah. Pisces, or the House of the Fish, referred to Israel. In 7bc, there were several appearances of Jupiter and Saturn together in Pisces. They were apparently spectacular, because they are mentioned in Persian and even Chinese sources, where tablets repeatedly record, Jupiter and Saturn in Fish. Modern astronomy can calculate the exact dates of the conjunctions, and they correspond to these records.
But for Jewish astrologers, these displays would have been momentous. The King and the Messiah, arising in the House of the Hebrews. Karlis Kaufmanis argues that:
“There seems to be little doubt that the [Visitors] were Jewish astrologers from Babylonia who had followed the planetary motions watching for the signs that would confirm the birth of the Messiah foretold by the prophets.  But they had to wait for a long time.  It was not until April 12, 7 BC, that ….Jupiter and Saturn [rose just before sunrise] in the House of the Hebrews. [As the Gospel quotes the Magi, “we have seen His star as it rose, and have come to worship Him”] When the planets met for their first conjunction, [very close to one another] on May 27th, [so close, possibly, as to appear as a single super-bright star] there could not have been any further doubt: the long-awaited Messiah had been born in Palestine.”

Let me interrupt Prof, Kaufmanis to address another misconception about “following the star”. There is no way that any star could have literally shown the way from the East to Jerusalem. If the Wise Men “followed” the star, it was in the sense that they were motivated by the meaning they saw in an astrological omen: Jupiter and Saturn in the Sign of the Fish, King and Messiah in the House of the Hebrews. That omen guided them in the sense that it prompted them to travel to Jerusalem to find Him. They knew where Jerusalem was; they didn’t need a star to guide them there. Kaufmanis continues:

“Since, however, the month of May marked the beginning of the hottest season in Palestine, it is likely that the astrologers postponed their trip across the desert [from Babylon] until the cooler months of fall.  And when they had the second conjunction - on October 5 - even more impressive than the first one! -it must have encouraged them to leave immediately for Jerusalem.

“Having spent five to six weeks on their journey, the Wise Men could have reached Jerusalem by the middle of November. Their inquiries for the newborn King of the Jews brought them eventually to Herod, who asked them about the time the star had appeared.

“From Herod's conversation with his high priests and the astrologers, we gather that the star could not be seen at this time. That agrees with the astronomical data, for by mid­November the planets were far away from each other.  [This must have been a big disappointment to the Magi.  All that investment of time and money leading to a dead end. They probably didn’t feel like turning around and leaving right away. They might have had relatives to visit in Jerusalem, and a couple of weeks’ rest and reflection would have been welcome.] But while the Wise Men tarried in Jerusalem, the planets moved once more together, and on December 1st- for the third time [that] year! - came to a conjunction.  [This time] after sunset, the stars of the Messiah and the King would be seen side by side south of Jerusalem in the direction of Bethlehem, which was only a few miles away.

[Only now, can we imagine the Star literally guiding the Wise Men, indicating the direction they should go to find the Child and] “If the Magi really did follow the star, in about two hours they would have reached a place where the road forked: [one to the  south east going up into the hills, and the other to the] southwest. But by this time, the conjoined planets would have also turned westward and gleamed magnificently over the roofs of Bethlehem.  Thus, the astronomical calculations agree amazingly with the message of the Gospel,"...and, lo, the star, which they saw in the East, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young Child was."

Kaufmanis goes on to note that this final conjunction was joined by Mars. This was not a good omen, however, because Mars represented the enemy of Israel. At the very least the “One Who is born King of the Jews” might be expected to be in for some serious trouble.

I feel a little sheepish about relating this suggestion that the Star and the Wise Men is anything other than a lovely story someone made up in order to illustrate a deeper truth, such as Jesus as the fulfillment of prophecy, or the commendability of trusting in personal illuminations or intuitions of Light, or the very important truth that God’s Act in Jesus was not for the Jews alone, but for all nations. That is, after all, why the Western Church associates the pagan kings with the Epiphany, the Feast of the appearance of Christ to the Gentiles. [The Eastern Church, by the way, commemorates Epiphany as the Baptism in the Jordan, and Christ’s first public appearance to the people of His own nation.] 

Still, Prof. Kaufmanis’s  observations invite us to consider the Star itself.  He was a man of the old world – closer, perhaps, than we to the Hermetic sensibility that contemplated a unity of science and theology, the acknowledgement that  “As it is above so shall it be below,” the  startling recognition that there is a certain realism, something even more than symbolism and exalted poetry, in our exclamation that

The heavens declare the glory of God
And the firmament showeth His handiwork!



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