Three Men and a Stairway

I just finished Book I of Ben Hur, the 1880 novel of which the famous Chuck Heston movie is based. The 432-page paperback version I’m reading has eight such Books. Book I deals with the birth of Christ as experienced from the peripheral players, such as the magi, the shepherds, Herod, anonymous Jewish folk in Jerusalem and Bethlehem, and, of course, Joseph and Mary.

Two points I found interesting.

First, the three magi, or wise men, Caspar (called Gaspar in the novel), Melchior, and Balthasar. Now, they are never mentioned by name in the Bible. Nor is their number fixed on three. Tradition has given us their number and names, and, by extension, their places of origin. In Ben Hur we learn that Balthasar is from Egypt, Gaspar from Greece, and Melchior from India.

Upon their palaver after meeting in the desert west and south of Jerusalem, guided by the Holy Spirit, Balthasar expounds on their place in a historical context. After the Deluge, the three sons of Noah repopulated the earth. The lineage of the oldest, Shem, account for the peoples of the far, far east. The second son, Japheth, had descendants who repopulated Turkey, Greece, and lands to the north, presumably Europe. The youngest, Ham, has a lineage of descendants in Africa.

Thus, the dispersion of peoples after the Flood by Noah’s three sons is represented by the three magi:

Shem = Melchior = India

Japheth = Caspar = Greece

Ham = Balthasar = Africa

Second, the Star of Bethlehem. As the shepherds are resting their flocks in the cool night, they see a new star overhead. But its not a star, or at least a star in its familiar sense, for it does not seem to be a fixed, distant twinkling object. It seems to be over a distinct spot on the earth, a near spot. Something like a geosynchronous satellite, only instead of being 26,000-some-odd miles above, it’s only a bright beacon a mile or so up, in my 21st-century imagination.

But to the mind of a shepherd in the year 6 (or 4) BC, it appeared as Jacob’s ladder, the stairway to heaven seen by Jacob in Genesis 28. The mystical vision of the patriarch where angels traversed up and down a ladder or stairway, from the earth to heaven. Try thinking of that next time you hear the Star of Bethlehem mentioned during the mass readings and homilies this month.

Interesting, no?