#11──結論：《智者的啟示》的意義──CONCLUSION: THE MEANINGS OF THE “REVELATION OF THE MAGI”

CONCLUSION: THE MEANINGS OF THE “REVELATION OF THE MAGI”

What are the most important things we learn from the Revelation of the Magi? Is it merely a colorful and captivating piece of fiction? Or does it tell us anything about the Magi and the Christmas story that we wouldn’t otherwise know? What might be the broader significance of this ancient tale – not just for scholars who specialize in early Christianity, but for a wide range of lay readers as well? Two points especially come to mind. First, the Revelation of the Magi is an outstanding example of how much influence writings outside of the Bible can have on our conceptions of biblical texts, people, and events. Of course, some readers may deny that their understandings of the bible are determined by anything other than the Bible itself. But to illustrate how apocryphal writings can shape our views of biblical stories, I’d like you to ask yourself this question: in the Christmas story, how do Mary and Joseph get to Bethlehem?

I would imagine that many of you said that they used a donkey. Indeed, some of you may have been more specific: that Mary rode the donkey while Joseph walked. But take a look at Luke 2:1-7, the most famous account of the Christmas story and of the census that brought Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem.

In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the two of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in hands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

Do you see the familiar donkey mentioned anywhere? Why isn’t it mentioned? The reality is that although it has become common knowledge that Mary and Joseph and a donkey to get to Bethlehem, this information isn’t found anywhere in Luke or, in fact, in the rest of the Bible.

The famous donkey first appears in the Protevangelium of James, a second-century apocryphal Infancy Gospel. Here is what that writing says:

He [i.e., Joseph] saddled the donkey and seated her [i.e., Mary] on it; and his son led it along, while Joseph followed behind. (Protevangelium of James 17:2)

From its debut in the Protevangelium, the donkey appeared in other ancient retellings of the Christ-mas story, and from there to Christmas pageants, greeting cards, carols, and so forth – despite its never being mentioned at all in the Bible! Might the Revelation of the Magi, like the Protevangelium, also have elements that have influenced our understanding of the Christmas story?

To my knowledge, there is nothing in the Revelation of the Magi that has filtered into the version of the Christmas story that we know today, certainly not like the donkey has. Yet the Revelation of the Magi has not always been as invisible as it is now. In fact, for European Christians in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, this story had an immense influence.

How did the Revelation of the Magi, an ancient Syriac writing, become such a powerful influence in medieval and Renaissance Europe? Recall that in the introduction, I mentioned a summary of the Revelation of the Magi found in the Opus Imperfectum in Matthaeum, a fifth-century Latin commentary on the Gospel of Matthew. When I discussed it before, its significance was as a key witness to the Revelation of the Magi, helping us to learn how old the text actually might be. But my very brief mention of the Opus Imperfectum does not do justice to how influential this text became in the centuries after which it was composed.

We don’t know who wrote the Opus Imperfectum; all we can infer is that it was written in the fifth century and that the author lived somewhere close to the great city of Constantinople. But for reasons unknown, it became incorrectly attributed to Saint John Chrysostom, a major Christian thinker and bishop in fourth century Antioch. Because it was believed to have been penned by Chrysostom, the Opus Imperfectum continued to be copied and read throughout medieval Europe.

And this meant that its legend about the Magi also entered the world of medieval Christianity. Several pieces of artwork are reproduced in this book that show unquestionable influence from the Revelation of the Magi. Consider the two paintings associated with Rogier van der Weyden and his school, which today reside in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin and the Cloisters Museum in New York, respectively (see frontispiece and page 51). In each of these, the three Magi stand in awe of the Christ child, who prominently hovers above them I the form of a star! As I said in the introduction, the Revelation of the Magi is the only ancient Christian text to identify the Star of Bethlehem with the celestial Christ himself, which makes it virtually certain that this legend is the source of these paintings. Further details confirm this. Behind the Magi stands their sacred mountain, the Mountain of Victories. And in the Cloisters painting, the Magi again appear in the background, immersing themselves in their Spring of Purification. The influence of the Revelation of the Magi is also evident in the depictions of the Magi found in manuscripts and printed books of the Speculum Humanae Salvationis (Mirror of Human Salvation), an immensely popular devotional writing of the fourteenth century (see Speculum Humanae Salvationis belows).

Apart from inspiring artistic representations of the Magi, this legend also captivated Christian thinkers as distinguished as Saint Thomas Aquinas. In the Summa Theologica, his greatest work, Aquinas uses the Revelation of the Magi as evidence that the Star of Bethlehem was a clear and unmistakable way for God to tell human beings about the birth of Christ. Even if the meaning of the star wasn’t obvious to everyone, it certainly was to the Magi, who knew about its coming through Seth’s books of revelation and were waiting attentively for it.

The Revelation of the Magi even influenced the way explorers of the New World understood the indigenous cultures they encountered (see Adoration of the Magi belows). Two examples will suffice. First, there is the seventeenth-century Augustinian monk Antonio de la Calancha, who studied the Incan culture of Peru. He was impressed by the similarities between Andean traditional religion and Christianity, and he believed that the Apostle Thomas and the Magi must have missionized the region together, just as the Opus Imperfectum indicated. Second, the Franciscan missionary and historian Juan de Torquemada described the belief among some of the Aztecs that the conquistador Cortés was the god Quetzalcoatl with recourse to this legend. Just as the Magi had stood atop the Mountain of Victories awaiting the fulfillment of their prophecy, Torquemada notes, so, too, did the Aztecs anxiously await the foretold return of Quetzalcoatl, and were all too willing to accept Cortes as the returned Quetzalcoatl when Spanish ships appeared off the Mexican coast.

So the legend found in the Revelation of the Magi was demonstrably important for Christians in Europe half a millennium ago. And it is a powerful example of the way that an apocryphal writing can strongly influence understandings of biblical events, even if it does not figure into the portrayal of the “Wise Men” in the Christmas story as we know it today.

But as my second and final remark, I want to suggest a different reason that the Revelation of the Magi may be especially relevant for today’s world. Speaking for a moment as a theologian rather than a historian, I think that the most important thing about the Revelation of the Magi may not be what it stays about the Magi, but what it says about Christ.

Recall that in the introduction I asked the question of why the Revelation of the Magi has been so neglected by modern scholars of early Christianity that it has only now been translated into English. The answer I gave there was that it had the misfortune of being preserved in a language few scholars knew, and of being part of not one but two neglected spheres of early Christian literature – stories about Jesus’s birth, and writings that were not included in the New Testament.

But one might as willingly believe, if so inclined, that the introduction of the Revelation of the Magi to a wide audience at this precise moment in time is hardly a matter of chance. As already discussed, the Revelation of the Magi has a very unusual understanding of the origins of the world’s religious traditions. Instead of seeing non-Christian religions as products of human vanity or demonic inspiration, as most ancient Christians did, the Revelation of the Magi sees potentially all revelations as coming from Christ himself. Moreover, because the star-child never reveals himself to the Magi as Christ, the Revelation of the Magi apparently believes that having an experience of Christ’s presence is much more important than being a Christian.

Taking this radical viewpoint, the Revelation of the Magi practically stands along among early Christian writings in its positive appraisal of religious pluralism. So, another way of answering the question of why the Revelation of the Magi is now beginning to be studied more closely is that such a text could be fully appreciated only in a moment such as today. Now more than ever before, religious diversity is a fact of life in many parts of the world. And this religious diversity has given birth, in recent decades, to a great deal of theological reflection on the place of Christianity among the world’s religious traditions. It has become more intellectually challenging to insist on the obvious and exclusive truth of one’s religion when one lives and works in close proximity to other people who cherish their own religious tradition just as much. Are those who did not share our religious beliefs foolishly misguided? According to the Revelation of the Magi, the answer of Christ to the Magi appears to be no:

And I am everywhere, because I am a ray of light whose light has shone in this world from the majesty of my Father, who has sent me to fulfill everything that was spoken about me in the entire world and in every land by unspeakable mysteries, and to accomplish the commandment of my glorious Father, who by the prophets preached about me to the contentious house, in the same way as for you, as befits your faith, it was revealed to you about me. (13:10)

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