So, I took the opportunity of the Feast of the Epiphany to transmutate that to literary epiphanies.
Now, it’s time . . . given that spirituality is a sub-genre of where I would like to apply my skills . . . to talk about the actual feast.
This is an interesting year for it. The actual Feast of the Epiphany fell this past Friday. For probably a couple decades now, the Roman Catholic church has observed this feast on the closest Sunday, or today. Unfortunately, due to a combination of health and transportation challenges, I do not have the opportunity to attend. Though I have many options for private observances at home. Overall, though, we have a whole weekend of potential observance.
The Catholic view of the spiritual Epiphany involves discovery or revelation, also.
It involves the disclosure of Messiah, Christ, God’s Chosen , the Annointed One to the gentiles of the world of that time.
This is represented in the visit of the Magi, or Wise Men, or Three Kings in the Biblical story.
When I was a child, we set up a manger in a very particular way. Mary and Joseph and the angels and so on came. We were not allowed to put the child in the manger into the manger until on Christmas had passed.
Similarly, we set up the Magi with their camels, and represented their progress toward the stable in a slow, solemn procession. They were not allowed to “arrive” until January 6th.
In historical reality, the probability is that Mary and Joseph had found a home and the child Jesus was nearly two before the Magi/Kings/Wise Men actually appeared at that home.
That is why you read accounts of Herod ordering the massacre of all male children “under the age of two.”
I saw a documentary about five or six years ago that indicated that the reason there are no historical records of such a massacre is that it was not historically significant. Bethlehem was a very small town: even with the influx of visitors, rather than the hundreds of children we envision, the massacre probably at most involved 20 male children under the age of two, and possibly closer to 10 victims.
As to converting into later tradition: there are still some cultures that celebrate Epiphany, rather than Christmas, as the day of revelation. The day that involves the arrival of gift givers. Sometimes the gift givers are the Magi. But other cultures invoke gift givers for children on this day, other than the Magi such as LaBefana.
All around, however, this feast . . . which the Catholic Church observes today on the closest Sunday . . .deals with knowing one’s own heart and soul and understanding the Great Plan as well as human intellect and soul is able to do so.
Happy Feast of the Epiphany.
Forgive my skepticism, but it seems to me more likely that the reason there are no records (outside of the Gospels) of Herod's massacre of male children is that the event was a literary embellishment, meant to evoke the story of Moses. In other words, its literary significance is greater than its literal truth.
ReplyDeleteBut then, I'm not really committed to the doctrine of biblical inerrancy.
The Catholic perspective on the Bible isn't 100% literary accuracy, unlike the Fundamentalist perspective.
ReplyDeleteCertain of the Biblical stories are clearly meant as analogy or symbolic: not least of them the parables of Jesus.
The person that made that comment on a television program was a Biblical scholar; and I don't believe Catholic. I believe he was an Orthodox Christian.
I am not convinced that the Bethlehem massacre did not actually occur, and the Catholic Church does recognize it as an actual occurrence because there is a liturgical feast day soon after Christmas dedicated to the Holy Innocents, the collective designation of the children slaughtered in Bethlehem.
I do, however, see your perspective on this and there are probably scholars and exegeticists who would give credence to it.