Learning to dig

Hi, I’m David Singleton, partner and founder of L2Fluency, along with Paul May, bringing you the Christmas edition of the Greek Peek. This month we will looking to the skies to understand better the story of the Magi’s coming to visit Jesus after he was born. Join us for The Sky Speaks Volumes as we analyze the Greek language to illuminate why the Magi’s visit to Jesus was so magnanimous. 

One very frustrating limitation of translating is to try to translate a passage full of cultural information that the original language is representing in the minds of the speakers, but that the equivalent word meanings are devoid of in the language being translated into. When the words are: a star in the sky, what is in the mind’s eye? 

Another part of the dilemma is to know how much culture to incorporate if it is included. What is the image in the writer’s mind if more than one image exists? 

This year’s Christmas story for the Greek Peek is the story of the men from the East visiting Jesus in Bethlehem after gazing at the night sky, and it perfectly illustrates this dilemma. 

The verses recounting the story from Matthew 2.1-4 will show both the Greek text and the literal English rendering showing choices sometimes.  The modern English translation for the whole passage appears under the heading “The Story.”  After verse 4, the Greek and English literal translation disappears leaving only the modern English translation of the story of the Magi. The narration of the slides carries the knowledge base of what was probably in the minds of the people telling and listening to this story, rather than a reading of the translation. The aim is for the audience of this video to have the same information and the same amazement as the original audience even though the story is now many, many years distant from its occurrence.  

Matthew 2.1

Τοῦ δὲ Ἰησοῦ γεννηθέντος ἐν Βηθλέεμ τῆς Ἰουδαίας ἐν ἡμέραις Ἡρῴδου τοῦ βασιλέως

When Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of King Herod…

“When Jesus was born in Bethlehem… “ If you had grown up in Judea, you would have come to know that the King of the Jews, Herod, was a terribly corrupt king, who was a political creature, sidling up to the Roman powers, cavorting with the likes of Mark Antony, Cleopatra, and Octavian and often loathing his own people. However, he did what it took to coexist with the ruling Jews of the Sanhedrin Council so as to control them when he needed to. A Jew who followed the Law he was not, to put it mildly. He spent a gaudy amount of Judea’s money on new towns to host the Romans on the Mediterranean shores near Judea and on several castles of his own scattered around his kingdom.

ἀπὸ ἀνατολῶν παρεγένοντο εἰς Ἱεροσόλυμα…

From the land where the sun rises there arrived in Jerusalem…

If you had grown up in the Middle East, you would have heard about the people who grew up beyond your eastern horizon. In fact, if you traveled at all, you would have heard about the great trade route that connected the Roman provinces with those people.  In the west, where you lived, you had heard about the fabrics like silk, expensive perfumes and healing ointments like frankincense and myrrh, and the sheer amount of objects made from precious gold that the people all across the trade route would eagerly trade for when they had the money.  

Jerusalem in your land was a big enough city for some of the goods from the part of the world where the sun rose every morning to trickle into the marketplace. The trade route was north of your world, but traders coming to Jerusalem would talk about the people who sold those goods. They had no standing armies like the Romans who occupied your towns. People were good. They were busy living and enjoying their families and clans like you. Their religion was similar even though they called it by a different name. They believed in one God and lived by the same three mantras that you did – good thoughts, good words, good deeds. They even had priests that perpetuated their faith and taught people about good and evil and an afterlife for the soul. 

The people where the sun rose were a part of something immense and vibrant. Their lands stretched from as far as you could imagine in the east to the cities just north of where you lived. When they did raise men to fight in an army, they were able to defeat the dreaded Roman legions like they did 50 years before your time in a battle with the great Roman general Crassus. Their kings imprinted the kingdom’s coins with their likenesses and their title King of kings was embossed around the edge. People living in their provinces moved around freely, worshiped the creator god Ahura Mazda, and felt alive and free. 

Matthew 2.1

ἰδοὺ μάγοι ἀπὸ ἀνατολῶν

Magi from the land where the sun rises…

The realms of the east had men with vast knowledge of the world around them and the heavens above. Part of their job was to watch the skies to determine when events should take place, which events would take place, and to advise kings accordingly. They dealt with people’s dreams also, interpreting them to guide people in matters of their future. They passed on the world’s wisdom concerning God, religion, history, and astrology. They were venerated among the people and known for being people of the fire because they kept a perpetual fire going in their temples, representing purity, wisdom, and light for the human race. 

The Jewish people knew of this world. They themselves had roots in the ancient east as evidenced in the stories they preserved of Esther and Daniel in the Old Testament and the book of Tobit in the apocrypha. 

Matthew 2.2

λέγοντες · Ποῦ ἐστιν ὁ τεχθεὶς βασιλεὺς τῶν Ἰουδαίων; εἴδομεν γὰρ αὐτοῦ τὸν ἀστέρα ἐν τῇ ἀνατολῇ καὶ ἤλθομεν προσκυνῆσαι αὐτῷ.

Saying, “Where is the king of the Jews who has been introduced to the world? We have seen his star on the horizon and have come to honor and acknowledge him.”

And in God’s scheme of what should happen, this was the precise moment that east would meet west. The instable, corrupt, irreligious, and capricious king of the Jews in the west would meet the priests of goodness and light from the east.  The stars and planets in the heavens above had signaled that a king of the highest magnitude had graced the Earth with his presence, and they had made a three-month journey to honor him with gifts befitting such a royal person. 

Matthew 2.3

ἀκούσας δὲ ὁ βασιλεὺς Ἡρῴδης ⸃ ἐταράχθη καὶ πᾶσα Ἱεροσόλυμα μετ’ αὐτοῦ

King Herod and all of Jerusalem were unsettled by the news.

Herod was extremely careful in guarding and maintaining his power. He had killed Miriamne, his second wife, one of 10 wives, 8 years into a 32 year reign because she proved to be a threat by actively trying to secure someone from her family as the high priest.  He killed her two sons a couple of decades later along with her mother, father, and other relatives because they represented a threat to his throne. Finally, in the same year he died, he killed his oldest son, Antipater, from his first wife whom he divorced early in his reign, for the same reason. 

The Jewish high council and the leaders of the main two religious sects of the Jews knew they owed their own power to the good graces of the king, and they didn’t want the balance of power disturbed too much either. And on top of that fact was the opportunity for the Jewish leaders, representing all of Jerusalem to be front and center on the most important event to ever happen in Judea. They would want to be aware from the beginning of the promised messiah’s presence if what these Parthian priests said was true.

Matthew 2.4 - So he gathered all the city’s chief priests and teachers to learn where the Chosen One was going to be born.

When the God of the universe, the one who connects all the dots and puts exclamation points at the end of the dots, makes a move on the planet, he makes it so that everyone knows and can marvel at his majesty and power. He steps into the human scene allowing all to see that he can muster the best of good, knowledgeable, and wise people from regions far from Judea to acknowledge and honor the Earth’s highest king, his own son. 

Matthew 2.5/6 - They told him in Bethlehem of Judah because the prophet wrote:  You Bethlehem, in the land of Judea, are by no means insignificant in producing Judah’s leaders because from someone will come who will lead, guide, protect, and provide for my people Israel.

God had led these priests from the provinces of Parthia to the intersection of heavenly knowledge from the skies and Jewish written tradition. The Jewish religious leaders weren’t knowledgeable of the sky’s movements, so they turned to something they were expert in – the prophets who had written down the promises of the one, true God, which the Parthian priests weren’t privy to. 

Matthew 2.7 - Herod secretly called the Magi together to get a more exact understanding of the timing of the bright star.

This event went unnoticed by Rome’s emperor and senate. But in a far in a corner of Rome’s empire where their emperors were known as Lord or Preeminent One, Dominus or Princeps, he would introduce them to a force greater than any legion they could put in the field. He would allow the Lord of all lords to grow up in their midst, and their might in killing usurpers of their empire would backfire because it was the beginning of life redefined. This child would grow up to speak of their machinations in the world. “The enemy has come to kill, steal, and destroy,” he would say. “But I have come to give you life and something extraordinary” (John 10.10).

Matthew 2.8 - Then he sent them to Bethlehem, telling them to locate the child and report back to him when they found him so that he, too, could honor and acknowledge the child.

God knew of the ruse, of course, but had orchestrated the meeting so that the way he moves in the plans of humans could be highlighted in the years following the event. God wanted the disparity between the best of goodness and wisdom from the east and the depraved, unpredictable, political, corrupt, ostentatious, deceptive, and self-serving nature of the Roman-chosen king of the Jews to be crystal clear. 

Matthew 2.9 - After hearing what the king had to say, they went on their way, continuing to follow the star they had seen in their eastern home.

In a single meeting of Parthian priests with the leaders of his chosen people and the Roman-chosen King of the Jews, God announced to the world that the one he was introducing them to was above all human designations, King above kings, Chosen One, Lord above lords and Pre-eminent to anyone else. He coordinated his announcement in the heavens for all who could understand his celestial design.

Matthew 2.10 - It led them to the place where the child was and stopped above him.  They were ecstatic. 

These priests discerned the star to be the planet Jupiter, sign of kingly power, largest of all the planets. They had followed its retrograde path across the constellation Leo, the star group etched in the shape of the king of the beasts, the sign of royalty.  They had taken a 3 months journey following Jupiter until it had stopped at the end of its retrograde path, touching Regulus, the brightest star in Leo and one of the brightest in the entire sky, known in Rome as the prince of stars, in Parthia as Sharru, King of the four royal stars guarding the universe, and in southern Parthia as Miyan, the center. 

The priests of sky knowledge knew the triple conjunction in the skies was very significant.  And as they watched Jupiter after meeting with Herod, the planet reversed itself to regain its normal path across the sky, going south from Jerusalem. They must have left the next morning at dawn because Jupiter had traveled during the night to merge with the bright and morning star as it greeted them in resplendence right above the eastern horizon – the conjunction of Venus and Jupiter – shining on the new king’s house. That sign would have resonated deeply with them because the one they sought from the kingly symbols in the sky had just blended with the body of purity, beauty, and new birth. It must have been astonishing.

Matthew 2.11 - Once at his house, they saw his mother Mary with him, and bowed before him. They opened the trunk carrying their treasures, and gave him their gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

The Promised One written about in the prophets, the Most Royal of all Kings signified in the expanse above was revealed to them in the house they were led to. They met a toddler in his mother’s arms. They bowed before him with three gifts worthy of his majesty the king.  On this stage of Judea, in Bethlehem, there was no mistaking that the healing properties and sweet smelling fragrance of frankincense and myrrh and were not for the soul-bankrupted king Herod the Great, not for the emperor of Rome, nor the priests’ own Parthian king. And to punctuate that message, they offered him the most common sign of homage, gold from their kingdom.

Matthew 2.12 - Then they returned to their own country by a different route because they had been warned not to go back to Herod in a dream.

In our modern world we pause every year to pay homage to the same king of all kings, lord of all lords. We stop to see how we have been given life and something extraordinary and decide whether to believe in our country’s military and economic might or to trust the one whose sign is still shining in the skies, imploring us to follow him, bow to him, and offer three gifts – sweet fragrances of incense burned to honor him as deity and the most valued of all Earth’s gems and metals. He gives back to us the same frankincense and myrrh, but with its properties of a healing balm for our wounds, and returns to us the same gold, purifying our hearts of its wicked intentions.

Thank you God for orchestrating heavenly signs long ago to introduce your son. Our personal lives need that orchestration as well of a conjunction in our personal paths of a royal planet passing through the kingly constellation and touching a star named for its majesty. At this time of year we are reminded to be about good thoughts, good words, and good actions, today and in the year ahead. Along with the priests who saw God’s invitation in the stars and traveled 1000 miles to bow to a king above all kings, we celebrate the appearance on Earth of the most royal of kings.