Kirkepiscatoid

With Epiphany coming up, I’m going to admit my Epiphany heresy, that makes the fundies run screaming from the room saying I’m going to hell.

Here it is: I don’t think the star had squat to do with the Epiphany, except that it was the catalyst for the Magi to want to go look.

Here are the things that I know I know from a scientific perspective:

1. We know from a lot of secular texts and from Roman coinage of that era that the years 4-7 BC were full of all sorts of phenomena—conjunctions and novas and comets and all kinds of stuff. Any one of those things would be called a “star” in the vernacular of that time. We know that priests and holy men dabbled in astronomy. They were trying to understand the sky b/c they saw more things in the sky than most people do now. Any one of these phenomenon could have been attributed to “the star” and that’s fine. It doesn’t matter, really.

2. We know the Magi already planned to be looking in Bethlehem b/c of the prophecy in Micah. So I don’t have to worry about the fact that celestial bodies “move” as the night sky moves. You can’t really “follow a star” without wandering all over hell’s half acre. I think this is more metaphorical and more linked to archetypes and the symbolism of the Messiah being “light”. People didn’t right history, per se, like they do now, they probably wrote more like “historical hagiography.”

Here is what else I know in a spiritual sense: Non-coincidences are real. The business in Matthew of the star “stopping” does not bother me, b/c in my mind, probably they simply saw it over a dwelling and something in them said, “This is the place”. More than likely, something inside of them made them stop, and the "star" just happened to be in the neighborhood.

So, to me, the star is great schmaltz in Matthew’s account, but it does not really play a major part in the Epiphany, except that some celestial event is what poked the Magi’s interest. This, of course, would cause me to be burned at the stake in several churches in Kirksville.

But then two funny thoughts have always occurred to me....

1. How many other, um, “Not-so-wise men” went chasing after all these other phenomena and came up empty? And how many other magi did Herod send out b/c he was wound up about this, because this rash of celestial phenomena was creating unrest in the area, because of the prophesy in Micah? I kind of imagine Bethlehem being a pretty touristy place from 4-7 BC, what with everyone looking for the Messiah, and all the stuff going on in the sky those few years. It might have been the perfect cover for Jesus’ birth! “Oh, shit, another bunch of foreigners looking for the Messiah. Quick, sell ‘em some khazrei!”

2. The other one is straight out of “Monty Python’s Life of Brian.” How many “wrong houses” did they go to? Again, maybe a lot of people in Bethlehem having boy babies were getting unexpected gifts and prizes. Maybe the locals had quite a racket on this. They’d see some foreign dudes wandering around town with treasure chests, and send them over to their cousin’s house who just had a baby. Or say, “Oh, you want to go to XYZ, over here," and when they got there, conk them in the head and take their camels and stuff!

Of course, the problem is, nobody is going to write down their screwups for posterity. No self respecting magus is going to put to papyrus, “We followed a star and never found squat, and we got hit in the head and had our gold and camels stolen.” But one thing remains the same. No one is going to go back to Herod and admit they screwed up, either, so I am sure there were tons of “not-so-wise” men that were fugitives.

What a movie that would make: “I Was a Fugitive from Messianic-related Justice!”

But again, I am also convinced it is all about "outcome", not whether the account in Matthew is "real", "partially real," or "mostly myth." The fact remains, there was an Epiphany. It is the epiphany itself that matters, not the details of the story of it. That is far more comforting to me and my realizations about my own epiphanies, because the details of my own cannot possibly live up to Matthew's gold standard of "this is what epiphanies are like." Knowing mine can be just as real helps me to accept them better...and isn't that what epiphanies are all about?