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.
and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.
For darkness shall cover
the earth,
and thick darkness the peoples;
and thick darkness the peoples;
but the Lord will
arise upon you,
and his glory will appear over you.
and his glory will appear over you.
Nations shall come to your
light,
and kings to the brightness of your dawn.
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!
