The first
time I realized that something extraordinary was happening was when my friend,
Melchior, came bounding up the outside stairs, all excited about a strange sign
he had seen rising in the sky.
"Balthasar!"
he was bellowing the moment he burst in, panting, but full of information, full
of questions.
I had been
fast asleep. I wasn't any longer. He kept pointing to the west with a scroll
he was waving about.
I could
have grumbled, but I was used to his enthusiasms, so I got up, threw on some
clothes, got out my spyglass and stepped out onto the parapet of the old
abandoned watchtower behind the palace that we called home into the clear,
crisp, very early morning darkness - and, yes, I saw it - a strange portent, as
if the morning stars had converged on one spot - as if all the handiwork of the
heavens were announcing something about their great Crafter - but what?
And that
message was moving, one – wait - perhaps two degrees from the look of its
bright tail, a steady flight from the east to the south and veering out to the
west toward the coastal land of Judea.
I stared at
it in amazement, as Melchior was fumbling around for my second best telescope.
And then his huge presence was beside me. "See it? See it?"
How could I
miss it?
"Did
you see it last night?" he demanded.
"No,"
I said, "and last night was very clear."
"Me
either."
We stood
for a while until our arms began to ache and, when I could no longer hold up the
telescope, I went back inside for my tripod, but, first, I got down my copy of
the TREATISE ON COMETS by Chaeremon the Stoic.
I spread
the scroll out on my worktable so Melchior could translate it too and we read
all about how comets were heavenly signs that – and I quote - "something
wonderful and great was about to happen."
Then my
friend unrolled the scroll he'd brought. As I suspected, it was Aristotle's
theory about comets as objects between the earth and the moon - a nice natural
balance to Chaeremon.
"What
do you think it means?" he asked me.
"Well,"
I said, "somewhere up on the shelf I have a scroll by Tsochhiu, the
Chinese astronomer who lived some 300 years ago, and he says: ‘A comet is like
a broom, signaling the sweeping away of evil.'
So, my guess is that this portent spells disaster for one king and the
joyful birth of another - a new reign for…," I looked back out at the trajectory
of the comet. "Yes, I think the Jews."
We looked
at each other. "Time to wake up Caspar," we said simultaneously and
we both laughed.
Caspar was
the oldest of us three former classmates, but, of course, we were all just in
our 20s. What made him unique was he had
this thing about the Jews.
We'd all
gone to school in Babylon together, which was mainly just astronomers and
mathematicians these days. Caspar was always
sneaking off to the Jewish quarter in the nearby city of Seleucia (where most
of Babylon’s former population had gone).
Caspar loved to reason with those descendants of the Hebrews that had been
exiled a few centuries earlier when first Assyria and then Babylon had been the
big kids in the yard. Now, of course, Rome was the bully of the block. Eventually, somebody - I think King Cyrus -
let a bunch of them go back - and then a scad more were permitted to go home by
Artaxerxes the 1st – under his cupbearer, if I remember my history right...
But, I
could certainly understand why these monarchs did it. No thinking person could
help but become fond of the Jews. They're such a decent people. I think
Artaxerxes even made a governor out of that wine taster. In fact, didn't his
father, Xerxes, who some call Ahasuerus – well didn’t he even marry a Jewess
and make her queen and her uncle his lord chancellor? His son might certainly be disposed, then, to
be kind to them, depending on which wife was his mother, don’t you think?
But, either
way, these Jews really impact us everywhere. You go farther south, down into
the Yemen peninsula, and the kings there have been professing the Jewish God since
they switched over some 100+ years ago! There really is something special about the
Jews.
Well,
anyway, the wind was rising now and blowing up the edges of the scrolls so that
we were beginning to have to hold them down. So, I shut up my window, threw a
cloak around my shoulders - with a good strong hood against the cold and damp
of this very early spring morning – then we bundled all the scrolls we needed
under our arms and went to find Caspar.
As I said,
all of us lived behind the palace, being sages to our king, so it wasn't hard
to find thin, wiry Caspar. Melchior spotted him first, teetering up on the top
of the tower, peering over the western wall. He too was up already, studying
the star.
I was
reluctant to call him and get him unbalanced from such a precarious perch, but,
of course, Melchoir bellowed out, "Caspar!" so loud the star could
have heard him and we almost had Caspar in our laps after he did a frightened
little dance up there.
Thankfully,
he's agile and we were all soon reclining in his room, talking over the new
comet, where it was heading and what it meant - especially since the previous year
three planets had massed and two years before Saturn and Jupiter had had
that triple conjunction - and now this,
the third and final sign: and a moving one at that!
Caspar, of
course, had it all locked down. He exclaimed: "The Jews keep talking
about an anointed one. A king, no, a god,
really. One who will come and end this
age and begin another. And their writings
even talk about a star and a scepter rising out of Israel and having
dominion!"
We were
staggered by that news and intrigued. An era-changing god - in our time! It
was too fascinating to let it go. We felt like, if we did, we were going to
miss the most important event to happen in our whole lives - maybe our whole
era.
I kept
thinking about what Zarathushtra said.
He’s considered by some of our teachers as our founding sage. He had taught back at the beginning - hundreds
of years ago, before the populace polluted his faith with its own lesser gods
and superstitions - that the One Great God, whom he called “Ahura Mazda,” that
is, “the Wise Lord,” had fathered two sons. One chose life and goodness, the other non-life
and wickedness. Since then they had been
warring against each other. The good one
was stronger, the true son of the Great High God, and he created our good
world. The other lesser god was evil and tried first to make an evil creation of
demons and other lesser spirits, but finally settled on attacking the good
world and bringing death and destruction wherever he could. He even killed the first man and first
animals. But, those of our teachers who
followed this faith taught us that Zarathushtra had promised that good was
ultimately stronger than evil and at the very end of the present dispensation a
great, miraculous, and final savior would come and bring the Last Judgment and
the coming of a new world. All of us
were thinking the same thing - could this be the promised One these teachers claimed
was coming? But, none of us dared to
speak it out so plainly. Instead, we
simply marveled at the signs, as Caspar with his inquiring mind into the finer
points of Hebrew lore was connecting up all the universal pieces for us.
"Let's
go see him!" said Melchior all excited.
"Let's
go worship him!" corrected Caspar devoutly.
"This
is going to take some planning," I said, hesitating, but I really wanted
to go too. After all, where had I ever
been? Home in Mesopotamia. Then to school in Babylon and now working here as
a sage - each place only about one week’s journey from each of the others. I'd never really been anywhere. And now I was stuck next to a desert. I'd certainly
never been west. I was working for a king, of course, but I'd never seen one
whose birth was announced in the sky - who was special to heaven - much more
than a king - a god - and, perhaps the promised savior among us! It was irresistible.
Still, at
the same time, I realized, you don't just march up to a monarch and announce
blithely, "Good morning, Your Majesty.
And how are you this fine spring morning? You feel good? That’s wonderful. So, do we, so we thought we’d let you know
we're leaving, Your Highness. Yes, that’s
right. We thought we’d like to take a couple
of months off to go traipsing over to see what's up in Judea. Is that fine with you?"
As you can
see, that’s a surefire way to fall out of favor – fast! We needed an angle – something to show our
trip would be to the king’s advantage – and, best yet, make him think it’s his
idea for us to go.
As I mulled
it over, it suddenly occurred to me, well, we professional sages do make homage
visits all the time. That’s part of our
job description as intelligence officers. And a goodwill visit to a neighbor
like Judea couldn't hurt, particularly given this propitious sign. Every way I looked at it I liked it. Yes, that would work. I couldn’t wait to tell the others. And I wasn’t disappointed. They both beamed on me, said the nicest
things about my parents’ lineage gifts not being wasted on me, made me the spokesperson,
and so we had our plan.
See, even if Rome does keep the Pax Romana, there's always a lot of
other ways an enemy can subtly interfere with trade or slander you to the
empire. And, in the same way, a friendly ally can help your nation. Two countries rising together with mutual
support. Yes, I could see selling it to
the king as a goodwill visit.
And, of
course, he liked us, which was both a help and a hindrance. Like I said, we were all in our mid-20s or so and
still fairly young and full of enthusiasm. In fact, to assure our loyalty, he was trying
to marry each of us off to some of the rather cute daughters of the remoter
members of his harem, children of his concubines. And, although we weren't yet his top advisors
on signs and wonders, he was pruning us up for the job, so that we would be someday
when those who were there at this time finally joined the fixed stars. Still, I
figured, it might take a while – months, even a year - before we could pry ourselves
loose and he let us go on our adventure, but I was wrong. As a matter of fact, it didn't take any time
or much persuasion at all. It was
remarkably easy.
See,
everything those days was in relative peace and the king himself was planning
to head to his hunting lodge around the border near the ancient site of Erech, just
north of what had been Ur of the Chaldees, with twenty two of his real sons and,
probably not wanting us all underfoot while his regent was trying to maintain
order - like all of us sneaking around trying to pick out our own wives through
the lattice work - he decided it was a good idea to send us off for two to
three months, since he could see we were obviously excited and raring to go. This would keep us busy and doing something
constructive, and – who knows? – it might even help. Diplomacy, we could see him reasoning, never
hurts.
The king
himself, who was a generous soul, sent the gifts: a box of gold from his full
coffers and some princely spices chosen on Caspar's recommendation -
frankincense, that incense holy in Israel to God alone, and the ever-popular
myrrh, the spice that in Jewish lore had been personally sent by the Hebrew patriarch
Jacob to his exiled son Joseph in Egypt (I vaguely knew the story). And now this spice was popular all over
Israel for everything from anointing to embalming.
Then our
monarch gave us other gifts for the present king of the Jews, one Herod by
name, and provided us with camels and bearers and provisions, outfitting us
like real royal emissaries.
Then he
hugged each of us. Told us we were like sons to him, reminded us that we
really had to settle down and he would solidify our nuptial agreements when we
got back, and essentially told us this was our last big fling and youthful adventure,
so make the most of it!
That middle
point, by the way, was a continuing sore spot with our real fathers, since they
wanted to marry each of us off to our kinswomen, which, they claimed, was the
way of the Magi. But, let's face it - we knew all of our
kinswomen – we’d grown up with them. At
the same time, by close peering through the royal screens at auspicious
moments, we'd gotten some glimpses of that bevy of lovelies who had been
mothered by some of the most sweet-natured, accomplished, and altogether beautiful
women of the land, since the king had first pick. So each of us told his father, “Sorry, dad,
but a king makes the rules! One can't
countermand the monarch and stay healthy– not even once!” And so far that ploy was working.
Well, that
was the end of the audience, so we bowed down low before our sovereign, hugged
his feet, wished him the blessings of three adopted sons to a beloved father, blew
surreptitious kisses to the girls huddled behind the screens who all giggled, and
we set out to follow the comet, which had moved perceptibly farther now toward
the western horizon but was still quite discernible in the quiet sky. And, we reasoned, having followed it to its
destination, we were set to see a god.
The last
days of preparation were hectic ones for the route we had to take was down the
old Dumah trade road out across the wilderness.
Every road between here and Israel, of course, led across the desert – but,
being spring, the caravans were starting up again. We only had to wait a week for one, because,
of course, you can't go by yourself. But,
even with that little wait time, we were chafing at our bits like a bunch of
spring camels.
By now, the
king had gone hunting. The regent was in charge and he didn't have the time
of day for us, so we were free to pack and repack and, when the day of
departure finally came, we were there hours before the rest of the caravan, our
mounts stomping and snorting, as eager to go as we were.
The old
Dumah route runs across a wasteland of stone and sand and tiered hills and
nomads and precious few oases. Rabbah,
the first sign of fertile ground, is a long way off and the far outpost of the Hebrews.
The desert nights are cold as bronze and the days hot as flame and we nearly cheered
aloud as the swept plains of wind and sand and wilderness began to break up
into scrub shrubs and short grass.
Soon
enough we were straining to glimpse the bright fig and olive orchards in the
valley where the flowing Jabbock River first rises as a spring and the flocks
of sheep dotting the hillsides signal the notoriously fabled Rabbah, the old
center of the Ammonite kingdom, but now oddly called by some by its Greek name,
“Philadelphia,”“the city of brotherly love.”
Intended by its inhabitants to be the welcome mat as the first great caravan
center off the desert, it was the Dumah trade route’s destination.
Well,
Rabbah was as I’d been warned. “Brotherly
love” looked rather thin here. This town
was less like a welcoming prince and more like a street child, thrown out to
survive on its own devices, abandoned on the border. Now grown crafty, fierce, and dissolute, it
rushed up on visitors, plucking at your sleeve, suggesting every conceivable
way to get your money. Our caravan was
all too willing to rest up and waste a week in its fleshpots after a month in
the desert, eating dust, and stepping over scorpions, but we were anxious to
press on.
Besides,
our caravan of merchants was planning next to wind north along the usual route
to Gerasa, then up to Damascus in Syria, while the star was pointing down past
Jericho. So, we left on our own and
skirted around the tip of the fabled Dead Sea - it really does exist!- and we headed
steadily, I might now say inevitably, toward the ancient capital of the Hebrew nation,
Jerusalem. Jerusalem: legendary among
the Jews we'd met back in Babylon and Seleucia.
The star
was still as resplendent in the early morning sky as when we'd first seen it
and still moving one to two degrees a day steadily from the east to the
southwest.
We had all
traded in our camels for new mounts in Rabbah, swift, sleek horses and sturdy
little pack mules that knew the wilderness and shortened our travel time. So,
with several days cut off, we were soon riding through the city’s outskirts -
not desert exactly, but plenty of wilderness that lay around it. And, finally,
there ahead loomed up the dusty ancient gates of Jerusalem itself - Salem of
the Jews - the Hebrew city of peace.
Outside those
gates, we stopped to take it all in.
But, this
was not as tranquil an experience as you might think, since a bunch of street
hawkers were already thronging about and crowding us, as they jostled each
other, waving at us every conceivable item one could ever think of buying.
But, we
ignored them all and managed to reorganize our retinue as best we could to look
like a true diplomatic mission. And
shortly, with our servants in the lead, bearing our small but attractive and costly
gifts for Herod from our king, we squeezed through the gates without trampling
a single one of the street sellers and beggars and with each of us riding in as
stately a style as we could muster, we entered Jerusalem.
The bored
residents regarded us as I was afraid they might as yet one more lower level
pack of sycophants - from who knows where - here to curry some favor or other
from Herod (and lots of luck with that bootless mission), but still maybe good
for a couple of shekels and so they called to us from their street stands with
false camaraderie.
But, we
rode on, determined to do what we had set our minds to do, veer neither to the
left nor to the right, but steadily onward to present ourselves at the palace.
Let me tell
you, the years spent in and out of Seleucia and the recent trip to Rabbah was
good preparation to keep some of our star-struck gaping to a minimum. We cantered through those narrow streets of
the city, pressed on every side right up to the palace gates. And, as we slowly progressed, I became
increasingly aware from their speech and what they were offering us that the
Jews in Jerusalem were very different from the Jews we'd met out in Babylon
with their easy interest in astrology and their get-along attitude, always
eager to please. This was a much fiercer
lot.
That impression
became more pronounced when we were halted at the entrance of the palace. Solemn, no-nonsense guards looked us over
silently for a while, sized us up correctly, I think, as a bunch of young magi
from some distant kingdom out on a lark, and then stared off into the distance,
effectively holding us in place, as much with their lack of regard as with
their poised but ready shields and spears.
The lower level officer who was bundled down to greet us and send us
packing was certainly considerate enough, but obviously no great shakes in the
palace with no real power. "And
your visit is in regards to what?" he asked politely.
"Actually,"
Caspar said - now our ad hoc spokesmen since we were dealing with Jews -
"we were wondering, where is the one born king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east and we came to
worship him."
The lackey
blinked at him, gasped, and said suddenly, "Excuse me," and dashed
rapidly back into the palace.
We sat there
looking at each other, all of us still mounted, our steeds snorting and stamping
and evidently wondering themselves if they were ever going to get food and rest
or were they just going to stand there until they fell down, whereupon they
would simply lay unattended until they congealed. At least that’s what we were wondering.
But, within
two small notches on the sundial he was back with a complete change of
demeanor. Now he was hurriedly escorting
us in to refreshments and shortly - within an unbelievably brief space of time –
before the servants even had a chance to wash our feet – we were ushered into the
actual presence of King Herod himself.
Of course,
it could have been simply a very strange protocol. Officials, even lower level ones as
ourselves, couldn't very well pass through someone else's domain and not pay
one's respects - especially given our two countries’ strained relations in the
past. We had to see him. And, as well, on his part, King Herod had to
entertain traveling emissaries, as it was good policy to let us stop by and pay
him court, even if he made us wait a month while assistants to assistants
proferred increasingly elaborate excuses. Sometimes, of course, those
amenities finally did get lost with protocol officers bowing and scraping and
apologizing on both sides - but not this time!
Not at all! Herod was anxious - no,
eager - no, actually he was falling all over himself to see us.
And what
did we see? King Herod, the Jews in
Babylon had told us, had been a great warrior in his youth, a relentless hunter
whose lance and arrow never missed and, being young ourselves, though of a more
sedentary persuasion, we were searching to see a hint of that. Had we been a little more seasoned, we might
have realized we were confronting instead a loathsome weasel of a man, as
unctuous as a snail and as deadly as a pit viper. That despot would murder his
own heir, if he thought him a security threat, and, indeed, he had done just
that - repeatedly! He hunched down in
the middle of his domain spinning out his snares and traps so that traveling through
his kingdom was like trying to negotiate a huge and sticky web of a most venomous
spider. Everywhere you turned, you got caught in one of his intrigues.
We, of
course, were totally innocent and oblivious to all this. Herod met us with what
we learned afterwards was the usual paranoia - his royal reception a thinly
veiled interrogation ordeal to ferret out what we were up to on his sorry sand
hill.
Within five
minutes, I found myself longing for the green streams of Mesopotamia, even for
the desert and the fatherly king I had been so eager to leave behind. This
harsh half-wilderness of Judea was breeding some strange, pathetic, troubled
leaders, the worst of whom was Herod. The remnants of a great warrior tribe
led by an unpredictable madman who saw assassins lurking in every shadow – and
for good reason, given his record, as we learned afterward.
Well, he
did spend most of the time pumping us for information. But, we had nothing to
hide. Openly we told him about the star, the prophecy, the coming king. At
that last point, he sat bolt upright and the color drained from his face.
Suddenly, he was barking orders at his underlings. Gone was the gracious host and out was the
madman in full display.
His scribes
were bustling about, unrolling a library of scrolls - and people were piling up
on every side, pouring like ants out of the corridors into the throne room.
He called
together his entire court of sages: all the high priests past and present, all
his scribes. See, there were nearly a
dozen of us, what with Melchior, Caspar, and me with all our retinue, our
bearers and servants, but we were dwarfed by the mob Herod summoned up.
And the
common denominator running through the whole lot of them was fear. All of
them. They were terrified.
Herod, we
learned afterward, was not even a Jew but an Idumean, one whose family had
converted to Judaism, so more a cousin to the Jews, that is, an Edomite on his
father's side and an Arab on his mother's side, a kinship he paraded in front
of us. His strategy was clearly to use
his Gentile heritage (as the Jews called anyone who was not a Jew) as a wedge
entitling him to pry all the information out of us that we knew.
The funny thing is, we've learned since we've
been home - on very good authority - that Herod's lineage
might actually be vaguer than he let on. His grandfather, another Herod, was from
Ashkelon, a former Philistine city, renowned for its temple to Aphrodite,
sacked by the Scythians and the Babylonians, taken over by Tyre, then the Greeks
under Alexander, and finally the Romans. It was never basically a Hebrew city. In fact, I heard several times from the
merchants around the campfires that his grandfather Herod was a temple slave to
Apollo, whose son, Antipater, this Herod's father, was kidnapped by Idumean bandits. Granddad was too dirt poor to ransom him and
the bandits were stuck bringing the kid up. Caspar, of course, scoffed at the
account, claiming he’d never heard anything like that from the Seleucian Jews.
But, I half believe the rumor, because Antipater, who had a reputation for
being seditious, certainly had passed on
plundering ways to the current Herod. A
more scurrilous bandit I've never found since on either throne or
scaffold!
He
certainly wasn't eligible to be king of Judea. No wonder he was so worried
about a legitimate contender!
"Where
is the Anointed One to be born?" he demanded.
Some king.
He didn't even know the sacred scriptures of the people he presumed to
rule.
The chief
priests got out a double set of scrolls, one in the Hebrew language that only
Caspar among our party could kind of puzzle through and then a translation in
Greek that we all knew - since we were speaking that international language to Herod.
The scribes
found the place and the current high priest, a permanently worried looking man
who had probably aged rapidly trying to placate Herod, said in an anxious but
firm tone: "In Bethlehem of the
Jews" (I wondered later if the old guy was taking a muted shot at this
usurper king with that designation - but without blinking an eye or giving himself
away, if he was - he retreated onto the safe support of the sacred text).
"For just as it is written in the prophet:
‘and you, Bethlehem, land of
Judah, are by no means insignificant in the reckoning of Judah, for out of you
will come the reckoner [or the ruler] who will shepherd my people Israel.’"
"That's
Micah the Prophet," hissed Caspar in my ear. "I recognize that! I
should have remembered it. The Jews back in Babylon were always prattling about
that. Can you imagine? It came
true!" He stopped for the silence
in the room was so profound it was pressing against our hearts.
The whole
assembly was hushed, hovering with a palpable fear. And they were all staring at Herod.
"Dismissed!" he barked and the lower
level official rushed us out as the rest scattered down the hallways.
We were
packed into some rather nice rooms and left unceremoniously to our own desserts
until late that night when we were suddenly summarily summoned back to Herod
and that's when the real pumping for information took place.
Herod was
by himself with only eight bodyguards just out of earshot and we four sat down
to a table with a banquet fit for our own king piled before us.
We stuffed
ourselves, since we only had had those refreshments way back in mid morning,
but Herod didn't eat at all. He just kept plying us with question after
question, wanting the most candid detail. He seemed particularly interested in the first
two celestial signs we'd seen before the comet and wanted to know in precise
detail:
·
the
exact time of the first sign: the triple conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter two
years previously;
·
the
precise moment Mars joined them for the three planet massing;
·
which
of us saw the comet first, at what hour and on what date particularly and where
exactly in the star-field it was;
·
how
fast we calculated it was traveling;
·
where precisely it appeared to be heading;
·
and
on and on and on.
He kept
reminding us of his Gentile connections and spoke in the most affectionate
terms of our "dear king," though I know for a fact our monarch had
never met him, but we were there to be amiable and would have answered him
anyway without any ruse - which we did - fully - and presented our gifts, which
we'd forgotten in the rush before, and tried to be good peace emissaries.
Basically,
he ignored everything except the answers to his questions and, then, when he'd
asked each of them about twenty times, he sat back and his demeanor changed
entirely. He suddenly dropped the grand inquisitor mode and got extremely friendly
and full of that fake kind of chumminess that a camel trader has - you know
what I mean!- and with the most sickening display of piety. Then he draped his arm around Caspar's thin shoulder
and confided to us in his most cordial and ingratiating manner: "Go and make a careful search for
information concerning the child - and as soon as you discover it, send to me
that I may come and worship him."
With that
free access to his countryside, Herod sent us along, and we didn't hesitate - everyone
of us wanted to be out of his lair and on our way as quickly as possible.
The next
morning we were up in the dark and there was the star almost vertical - like a
sword in the sky – pointing to a spot just beyond the city.
After all
we'd done in these last two months, this final leg of our journey was a
remarkably swift one. Little Bethlehem, the "house of bread," as the
name means in their Hebrew language, was only six miles due south of Jerusalem.
We covered it in two hours (most of which was spent trying to get out of
Jerusalem!) and were entering the town just as some people were still waking
up.
It didn't
take too long to discover whom the celestial sword was singling out, for the
first person we accosted was a garrulous old man up to fetch fire wood, who,
upon hearing our mission, pointed immediately to a small house up an adjoining
street. He told us a most remarkable
tale about the baby born recently in the stable of the local inn, a sturdy
enough stucco over wood structure (as were most of the simple houses) with a
hollowed out cave behind it for the animals. Local shepherds he knew personally all his
life had sworn to an astonishing account of angels appearing in the sky, and
the townspeople, who had watched the comet with wonder these past months as it
came to stand over their city, had no problem believing them.
He left us
a very happy man, scurrying back into his home to show his family the collection
of 3 gold coins we gave him, each of us handing him one in turn along with our
thank yous.
The street
he pointed to was a simple, small-town lane and our nearly a dozen mules and horses
thumping down it awoke the rest of the citizenry.
I was
almost beside myself with excitement and I could see Caspar and Melchior were
bursting with great joy. We had found our king.
We
dismounted and crowded around the entrance, as the door opened and a common
peasant man in a homespun coat looked us over with a milder surprise than I
expected and simply motioned us in. I
guess he was getting used to miracles.
Inside was
very dark, but full of moving shadows chased fitfully by the flickering light
of a little clay lamp set in a cubbyhole in the wall. Throughout the room it spread a sweet, though
slightly rancid, smell of old olive oil.
And beside a simple rude chest, on a stool, sat a young girl of about
sixteen or seventeen, and in her loving embrace was a tiny child, but more than
an infant and, perhaps, more than simply a child.
The babe was just months old. I couldn't calculate the ages of children,
being not yet married, but its gaze was so serious and grave and steady.
It looked
at large Melchior first and then at me and fully at Caspar, who immediately fell
to his knees as we all did.
I could
feel a radiance - as if the sword of fire above it, fading in the dawn sky, had
poured its light into this tiny figure - as if heaven and earth met in it and
cast a light of truth and life around everything he touched, everyone who entered
his presence. When I saw him, I was not amazed that angels had heralded his
birth, as heaven signaled his coming.
And I also knew instinctively why Herod had feared him. Rightly, he
should. This child spelled the end of Herod's reign, in fact the end of every
merely earthly rule. In the glory that l sensed about him, I felt the Presence
of something so much greater than a king. I knew, as Caspar had known all along, that we
were in the presence, not just of a god, but of the high God, present somehow
on earth as in heaven.
I saw what Zarathushtra
had glimpsed, what Micah had prophesied, the great and final Judge and Savior
here in this little house, in this little alley, in this little town at the
center of the universe.
They gave
us simple refreshments: water the young mother insisted on fetching from the
village well and barley bread, olives, and fruit, with salt on the side, which
her spouse provided from what was obviously to be their morning meal.
We
presented our king's treasure boxes of gold and the spices. They thanked us in Greek in the most humble
manner (though they spoke to each other in Aramaic) and the baby regarded each
of us so seriously and yet so gently as if he knew us somehow by name. Through the long day, we sat with them and
even played with the little one and - wonder of wonders - saw him smile. It was
an unforgettable moment.
At length,
toward dusk, full of the goodwill of heaven and on first name basis with this
delightful, precious, holy family, we sought out the inn where the child had
been born and took rooms for the night, stabling our animals in the very stalls
that had witnessed his birth.
That night
we expected sweet and pleasant dreams. Far from it!
Each of us
was shocked out of sleep by a simultaneous dream of horror, coldblooded murder
of that precious child by that devil Herod.
Caspar ran
back literally on foot to rouse up the family and tell them in no uncertain
terms what heaven had revealed to us.
We learned
later from a reliable source that, as soon as we'd left them, the husband,
Joseph, received the same portentous dream, too, and, packing up their meager
belongings, with our gifts as a stake for the trip, within a few days, they were
heading toward Egypt and safety.
As for us,
we roused our exhausted servants out of their sleep and, buying all the provisions
left in the inn from the drowsy but happily greedy proprietors, we took hurried
directions and by noon the next day were heading toward Hebron on a back route
that took us away from Jerusalem, curving at Arad, down to Zoar at the southern
tip of the Dead Sea, then up the King's Highway through Kir-hareseth, Dibon,
Heshbon and finally back to Rabbah, where we were not long in finding a caravan
to which to attach ourselves and, once again on camel back, taking the route
toward Dumah and home.
In that
way, we made certain Herod could not find our little band, losing ourselves
among the travelers who packed the King’s Highway and with the safe, vast
barrier of the Dead Sea between us.
Since we've
returned, I've commissioned a Jewish scribe to make a copy for me of the Greek
translation of the Hebrew Scriptures (with a thank you copy for the head of the
local synagogue). I've been reading
these sacred books as he translates them and now I understand so much more.
Zarathushtra had a little part of the truth
- now I've learned the rest!
The advent
of this world savior is both a time changing as well as a life changing event. It has certainly changed our lives. Hopefully, he will be received by others with
the joy that filled Melchior, Caspar, and me and not with the fear that was
Herod's.
The child's
star may be gone from the sky, but its light now radiates in my heart. May the
coming of this heavenly Ruler fill every honest seeker with the repentance and
the blessing that we three magi know and may his coming light every life with
God's everlasting love.
So I Have Written. Farewell.
Balthasar the Magi,
Advisor-in-Training to the King.
A Note from the author Bill:
This story was originally presented as a narrative monologue sermon at Pilgrim Church of Beverly, Massachusetts, an urban storefront
church I helped plant and which I helped pastor for thirty years. The
story of the visitors from the East is a wondrous part of the whole Christmas
story. It reveals the scope of the Lord
Jesus’s appeal from rich to poor, east to west, nation to nation across the
sweep of our present world. Truly, when
the Son of Humanity was lifted up, he netted in all people to himself, as he
promised (John 12:32).
Readers who
might, themselves, want to enact it, might find a little data about my
experience with each of them helpful. The
tale took forty minutes to deliver, about twice as long as an ordinary sermon,
since it was a special presentation. I increased the font size of the
manuscript to 18, double-spaced, which helped keep eye-contact with the
congregation without losing my place in the manuscript. Since this was a special, festive Christmas
service, I dressed in a robe and with a faux jeweled cap that I’d picked up in
Istanbul, Turkey and spoke behind a little table filled with rolled up paper to
look like a pile of scrolls to make it appear that I was being visited by the
congregation in my observatory by the palace.
The Bible
was my chief resource, and I translated every passage myself in order to catch
the nuances. I have also been blessed to
have visited many of these biblical cities and sites on location in our various
trips to Israel and Greece and this helps with describing terrain. Other sources were: Robert L. Thomas and
Stanley N. Gundry’s The NIV Harmony of
the Gospels; Eusebius’ History of the
Church from Christ to Constantine, Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews and Wars
of the Jews, Emil Schürer’s The
History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ; Edwin Yamauchi’s
“Did Persian Zoroastrianism Influence Judaism?” Artifax (Winter, 2013); The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible; Collier’s Encyclopedia; articles in the Bulletin of Biblical Research; commentaries in the International
Critical Commentary series; R. K. Harrison’s Major Cities of the Biblical World; Oxford Classical Dictionary; Hammond’s
Atlas of the Holy Land; Hans Dieter Betz’s The Greek Magical Papyri and the Demotic Prayers; Henri
Daniel-Rops’s Daily Life in the Time of
Jesus; Joachim Jeremias’s Jerusalem
in the Time of Jesus. The sermon is
copywritten William David Spencer c. 2003.
