Epiphany B January 4, 2009

Gospel, Matthew 2:1-12

  The Magi were not themselves kings but, rather, a priestly group who sought knowledge from every imaginable source (the word “magic” is derived from their practices)and the ability to apply that knowledge to predict and prepare for the future. One of those sources of information came from watching the stars. According to the popular cosmology of the time, people believed the earth to be covered by a dome, across which God or gods caused the heavenly bodies to move in patterns thought to contain coded messages. Such was the logic behind astrology. From a science acceptable in our day, astronomers tell us that in 6 B.C. Magi in the region of Assyria and Babylonia would have been able to see Jupiter (which represented royalty) pass through Aries (representative of the Jewish people, perhaps due to their history as shepherds). The Magi would have interpreted this as a divine sign of the birth of a great Jewish king. On reporting their findings, their own king may have sent them as his representatives bearing gifts, a common way from kings of past to build alliances and secure peaceful relations.

King Herod ruled as King of Judah from 37 to his death in 4 B.C. Tyrannical and suspicious to the point of paranoia, he had all actual and presumed opposition eliminated including his wife and several other members of his own family. He built fortresses (including Herodium and Masada) around the country as places he could escape in case of a popular uprising. I have read that he had a list drawn up naming those most popular in every town and city of Judah with a standing order that they be killed in case of his own death…a unique sort of life insurance policy. His soldiers, however, refused to carry out the order when he did die. Such a person would be capable of commandeering soldiers to kill babies in Bethlehem on the possibility of one being a future king. No wonder both he and the people of Jerusalem, for different reasons, were troubled at the news brought by the Magi.

Placing Jesus’ birth a couple years prior to the death of Herod (the family was living in Egypt when they heard of Herod’s death) would put the birth of Jesus around 6 B.C. which aligns well with the appearance of the star. When the monk Dionysius Exiguus was commissioned by the pope in 525 A. D. to figure out the year Jesus was born and renumber all years accordingly, he was off by those six years…not bad given the information he had to work with.

Reading 1, Isaiah 60:1-6

  The Midianites were a nomadic group that originally lived in the Sinai desert. Ephah was a branch of the Midianite tribe. When Moses fled from Egypt after killing an Egyptian overseer of Jewish slaves, he found shelter with the Midianite chieftain Jethro and eventually married his daughter Zipporah (Ex. 2:15-23; 4:18-23). Centuries later when the Israelites had settled in the Promised Land, Midianites would raid Israelite camps and villages on their camels and make off with grain and sheep. Being adept with camels and life on the move, many Midianites became merchants, transporting goods from far-away lands on their camels. Sheba, located in the SW of the Arabian Peninsula, became prosperous as a port for international trade. The use of frankincense was restricted to liturgical uses among the Jews. It is the resin of a variety of rather scraggly desert trees found in the southern area of the Arabian peninsula. The imagery is of a renewed Jerusalem, prosperous as a center of trade and renowned far and wide, with the brilliance of a sunny day following the cold cloudy season.

Reading II, Ephesians 3:2-3a, 5-6  The word “Gentiles” means “the peoples” and referred to all who were not of the Jewish race or religion. Such people were allowed to enter the Temple of Jerusalem (the first large area on entering the Temple was called the Court of the Gentiles) and could join the Jewish religion as full members through circumcision or as associates or “God-fearing” members who, short of circumcision, shared beliefs and could attend the synagogue services. This latter group was rather numerous in the areas Paul visited on his missionary journeys and comprised a high percentage of those who became baptized Christians. Paul carried their cause to the Council of Jerusalem (c. 46 A.D.) which determined that they could be full members of the Christian community without need to be circumcised and follow the details of the Mosaic law.

Comments

[Gavin]

Just to be clear, Fr. Dempsey, you are instructing readers to accept as a historical fact Herod's dispatching of a specific grouping of 'Magi'--is that correct?

Wikipedia on 'The Massacre of the Innocents':

"The incident is not mentioned by the contemporary Jewish historian Josephus, nor in the other gospels, nor in the early Biblical apocrypha, its first appearance in any source other than Matthew being the 2nd century Protoevangelium of James 22. Most recent biographers of Herod therefore do not regard the massacre as an actual historical event"