impossible; but it has also been shown that such a conjunction would, for various reasons, not answer the requirements of the Evangelical narrative, so far as the guidance to Bethlehem is concerned. But it does fully account for the attention of the Magi being aroused, and, even if they had not possessed knowledge of the Jewish expectancy above described for their making inquiry of all around, and certainly, among others, of the Jews. Here we leave the domain of the certain, and enter upon that of the probable. Kepler, who was led to the discovery by
observing a similar conjunction in 1603-4, also noticed, that when the three planets came into conjunction, a new, extraordinary, brilliant, and peculiarly colored evanescent star was visible between Jupiter and Saturn, and he suggested that a similar star had appeared under the same circumstances in the conjunction preceding the Nativity. Of this, of course, there is not, and cannot be, absolute certainty. But, if so, this would be 'the star' of the Magi, 'in its rising.' There is yet another remarkable statement, which, however, must also be assigned only to the domain of the probable. In the astronomical tables of the Chinese, to whose general trustworthiness so high an authority as Humboldt bears testimony [b Cosmos, vol. i. p. 92.], the appearance of an evanescent star was noted. Pingre and others have designated it as a comet, and calculated its first appearance in February 750 A.U.C., which is just the time when the Magi would, in all probability, leave Jerusalem for Bethlehem, since this must have preceded the death of Herod, which took place in March 750. Moreover, it has been astronomically ascertained, that such a sidereal apparition would be visible to those who left Jerusalem, and that it would point, almost seem to go before, in the direction of, and stand over, Bethlehem. [1 By the astronomer, Dr. Goldschmidt. (See Wieseler, Chron. Syn. p. 72.).] Such, impartially stated, are the facts of the case, and here the subject must, in the present state of our information, be left. [2 A somewhat different view is presented in the laborious and learned edition of the New Testament by Mr. Brown McClellan (vol. i. pp, 400-402).]
Only two things are recorded of this visit of the Magi to Bethlehem: their humblest Eastern homage, and their offerings. [3 Our A.V. curiously translates in v. 11, 'treasures,' instead of 'treasury-cases.' The expression is exactly the same as in Deut. xxviii. 12, for which the LXX. use the same words as the Evangelist. The expression is also used in this sense in the Apocr. and by profane writers. Comp. Wetstein and Meyer ad locum. Jewish tradition also expresses the expectancy that the nations of the world would offer gifts unto the Messiah. (Comp. Pes. 118 b; Ber. R. 78.).] Viewed as gifts, the incense and the myrrh would, indeed, have been strangely inappropriate. But their offerings were evidently intended as specimens of the products of their country, and their presentation was, even as in our own days, expressive of the homage of their country to the new-found King. In this sense, then, the Magi may truly be regarded as the representatives of the Gentile world; their homage as the first and typical acknowledgment of Christ by those who hitherto had been 'far off;' and their offerings as symbolic of the world's tribute. This deeper significance the ancient Church has rightly apprehended, though, perhaps, mistaking its grounds. Its symbolism, twining, like the convolvulus, around athe Divine Plant, has traced in the gold the emblem of His Royalty; inthe myrrh, of His Humanity, and that in the fullest evidence of it, in His burying; and in the incense, that of His Divinity. [1 So not only in ancient hymns (by Sedulius, Juvencus, and Claudian), but by the Fathers and later writers. (Comp. Sepp, Leben Jesu, ii. 1, pp. 102, 103.).]
As always in the history of Christ, so here also, glory and suffering appear in juxtaposition. It could not be, that these Magi should become the innocent instruments of Herod's murderous designs; nor yet that the Infant- Saviour should fall a victim to the tyrant. Warned of God in a dream, the 'wise men' returned 'into their own country another way;' and, warned by the angel of the Lord in a dream, the Holy Family sought temporary shelter in Egypt. Baffled in the hope of attaining his object through the Magi, the reckless tyrant sought to secure it by an indiscriminate slaughter of all the children in Bethlehem and its immediate neighborhood, from two years and under. True, considering the population of Bethlehem, their number could only have been small,
probably twenty at most. [2 So Archdeacon Farrar rightly computes it.] But the deed was none the less atrocious; and these infants may justly be regarded as the 'protomartyrs,' the first witnesses, of Christ, 'the blossom of martydom' ('flores martyrum,' as Prudentius calls them). The slaughter was entirely in accordance with the character and former measures of Herod. [3 An illustrative instance of the ruthless destruction of whole families on suspicion that his crown was in danger, occurs in Ant. xv. 8. 4. But the suggestion that Bagoas had suffered at the hands of Herod for Messianic predictions is entirely an invention of Keim. (Schenkel, Bibel Lex., vol. iii. p. 37. Comp. Ant. xvii. 2. 4.).] Nor do we wonder, that it remained unrecorded by Josephus, since on other occasions also he has omitted events which to us seem important. [1 There are, in Josephus' history of Herod, besides omissions, inconsistencies of narrative, such as about the execution of Mariamme (Ant. xv. 3, 5-9 &c; comp. War i. 22. 3, 4), and of chronology (as War i. 18. 2, comp. v. 9. 4; Ant. xiv. 16. 2, comp. xv. 1. 2, and others.)] The murder of a few infants in an insignificant village might appear scarcely worth notice in a reign stained by so much bloodshed. Besides, he had, perhaps, a special motive for this silence. Josephus always carefully suppresses, so far as possible, all that refers to the Christ [2 Comp. on article on Josephus in Smith and Wace's Diet, of Christian Biogr.], probably not only in accordance with his own religious views, but because mention of a Christ might have been dangerous, certainly would have been inconvenient, in a work written by an intense self-seeker, mainly for readers in Rome.
Of two passages in his own Old Testament Scriptures the Evangelist sees a fulfilment in these events. The flight into Egypt is to him the fulfilment of this expression by Hosea, 'Out of Egypt have I called My Son.' [a Hos. xi. 1.] In the murder of'the Innocents,' he sees the fulfilment of Rachel's lament [b Jer. xxxi. 15.] (who died and was buried in Ramah) [3 See the evidence for it summarized in 'Sketches of Jewish Social Life in the Days of Christ,' p. 60.] over her children, the men of Benjamin, when the exiles to Babylon met in Ramah, [c Jer. xi. 1.] and there was bitter wailing at the prospect of parting for hopeless captivity, and yet bitterer lament, as they who might have encumbered the onward march were pitilessly slaughtered. Those who have attentively followed the course of Jewish thinking, and marked how the ancient Synagogue, and that rightly, read the Old Testament in its unity, as ever pointing to the Messiah as the fulfilment of Israel's history, will not wonder at, but fully accord with, St. Matthew's retrospective view. The words of Hosea were in the highest sense 'fulfilled' in the flight to, and return of, the Saviour from Egypt. [4 In point of fact the ancient Synagogue did actually apply to the Messiah Ex. iv. 22, on which the words of Hosea are based. See the Midrash on Ps. ii. 7. The quotation is given in full in our remarks on Ps. ii. 7 in Appendix IX.] To an inspired writer, nay, to a true Jewish reader of the Old Testament, the question in regard to any prophecy could not be: What did the prophet, but, What did the prophecy mean? And this could only be unfolded in the course of Israel's history. Similarly, those who ever saw in the past the prototype of the future, and recognized in events, not only the principle, but the very features, of that which was to come, could not fail to perceive, in the bitter wail of the mothers of Bethlehem over their slaughtered children, the full realisation of the prophetic description of the scene enacted in Jeremiah's days. Had not the prophet himself heard, in the lament of the captives to Babylon, the echoes of Rachel's voice in the past? In neither one nor the other case had the utterances of the prophets (Hosea and Jeremiah) been predictions: they were prophetic. In neither one nor the other case was the 'fulfilment' literal: it was Scriptural, and that in the truest Old Testament sense.
FROM THE MANGER IN BETHLEHEM TO THE BAPTISM IN JORDAN THE CHILD-LIFE IN NAZARETH CHAPTER IX
(St. Matt. ii. 19-23; St. Luke ii. 39, 40.)
The stay of the Holy Family in Egypt must have been of brief duration. The cup of Herod's misdeeds, but also of his misery, was full. During the whole latter part of his life, the dread of a rival to the throne had haunted him, and he had sacrificed thousands, among them those nearest and dearest to him, to lay that ghost. [1 And yet Keim speaks of his Hochherzigkeit and naturlicher Edelsinn! (Leben Jesu, i. 1. p. 184.) A much truer estimate is that of Schurer, Neutest. Zeitgesch. pp. 197, 198.] And still the tyrant was not at rest. A more terrible scene is not presented in history than that of the closing days of Herod. Tormenteo by nameless fears; ever and again a prey to vain remorse, when he would frantically call for his passionately-loved, murdered wife Mariamme, and her sons; even making attempts on his own life; the delirium of tyranny, the passion for blood, drove him to the verge of madness. The most loathsome disease, such as can scarcely be described, had fastened on his body, [2 See the horrible description of his living death in Jos. Ant. xvii. 6. 5.] and his sufferings were at times agonizing. By the advice of his physicians, he had himself carried to the baths of Callirhoe (east of the Jordan), trying all remedies
