Druid’s Mouth Opens For the Holidays
Telegraph - Archbishop says nativity ‘a legend’
The Archbishop of Canterbury said yesterday that the Christmas story of the Three Wise Men was nothing but a ‘legend’.
Dr Rowan Williams has claimed there was little evidence that the Magi even existed and there was certainly nothing to prove there were three of them or that they were kings.
He said the only reference to the wise men from the East was in Matthew’s gospel and the details were very vague.
Dr Williams said: “Matthew’s gospel says they are astrologers, wise men, priests from somewhere outside the Roman Empire, that’s all we’re really told. It works quite well as legend.”
The Archbishop went on to dispel other details of the Christmas story, adding that there were probably no asses or oxen in the stable.
He argued that Christmas cards which showed the Virgin Mary cradling the baby Jesus, flanked by shepherds and wise men, were misleading. As for the scenes that depicted snow falling in Bethlehem, the Archbishop said the chance of this was “very unlikely”.
Why doesn’t he add that there’s no such thing as Santa Claus?
December 21st, 2007 at 2:12 am
What a silly man he is. It’s just too too blush-making that he went to the same college as me (or rather I went to the same college as him).
Anyway, since he’s raised the subject, here’s a poem on the Magi that I love. I always read it on the feast of the Epiphany, but since he’s raised the subject now, why not share it?
(The quote at the beginning is from a sermon by the Jacobean divine Lancelot Andrewes. If you ever find yourself bored stiff by the banalities of Father Kumbayah, a handy hint is to take a book of Andrewes’s sermons and read that during the homily instead. He’s possibly the clearest prose stylist in the English language. Him and Orwell and Dean Swift.)
The Journey of the Magi
“A cold coming we had of it, Just the worst time of the year For a journey, and such a long journey: The snow was deep and the weather sharp, The very dead of winter.” And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory, Lying down in the melting snow. There were times we regretted The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces, And the silken girls bringing sherbet. Then the camel men cursing and grumbling And running away, and wanting their liquor and women, And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters, And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly And the villages dirty, and charging high prices.: A hard time we had of it. At the end we preferred to travel all night, Sleeping in snatches, With the voices singing in our ears, saying That this was all folly.
Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley, Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation; With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness, And three trees on the low sky, And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow. Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel, Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver, And feet kicking the empty wine-skins. But there was no information, and so we continued And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.
All this was a long time ago, I remember, And I would do it again, but set down This set down This: were we lead all that way for Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly, We had evidence and no doubt. I have seen birth and death, But had thought they were different; this Birth was Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death. We returned to our places, these Kingdoms, But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, With an alien people clutching their gods. I should be glad of another death.
T.S. Eliot
December 21st, 2007 at 8:33 am
Dang, I sent that to Judy.
December 22nd, 2007 at 1:35 pm
More proof that the Archbishop of Canterbury not only looks the part of the Grinch (or even Satan, perhaps) but he actually is.