they were gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Rise: take the babe and his mother and escape to Egypt, and remain there till I bring you word. For Herod is about to make search for the child in order to destroy him.” So Joseph roused himself and took the babe and his mother by night and departed into Egypt. There he remained till Herod’s death, that what the Lord had said through the Prophet might be fulfilled, “Out of Egypt I called My Son.”
Then Herod, finding that the Magi had trifled with him, was furious, and sent and massacred all the boys under two years of age, in Bethlehem and all its neighborhood, according to the date he had so carefully ascertained from the Magi. Then were these words, spoken by the Prophet Jeremiah, fulfilled, “A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and bitter lamentation: It was Rachel bewailing her children, and she refused to be comforted because there were no more.”
But after Herod’s death, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, and said to him, “Rise from sleep, and take the child and his mother, and go into the land of Israel, for those who were seeking the child’s life are dead.” So he roused himself and took the child and his mother and came into the land of Israel. But hearing that Archelaus had succeeded his father Herod on the throne of Judaea, he was afraid to go there; and being instructed by God in a dream he withdrew into Galilee, and went and settled in a town called Nazareth, in order that these words spoken through the Prophets might be fulfilled, “He shall be called a Nazarene.”
She asked them to notice how frequently the events were said to be “so that the prophecy would be fulfilled”: Bethlehem as birthplace, Rachel weeping for her children as a predictor of Herod’s massacre, the flight into Egypt so that the “out of Egypt have I called my son” and the residence in Nazareth so that “he will be called a Nazarene.” She remarked, “I understand that no-one has found any source for the Nazarene prophecy. Perhaps it’s from a book that didn’t make it into the canon.” There was some argument about the relation between the predictions and their fulfillments. Stephen thought that the idea of taking refuge in Egypt was a bit far fetched. “Why not just go to another village? Or to Nazareth? And the ‘out of Egypt, I called my son’ in its original context referred to the Exodus, surely, without any larger meaning.” They agreed, reluctantly, that if it were Midrash, it wasn’t so skillfully done.
Stephen wanted to go back to the star. He wondered, for starters, how a star could lead anyone except in a general direction. Any star directly overhead at Bethlehem will be directly overhead any other village in Judaea. Some looked a bit puzzled and he explained that stars were so far away that moving yourself a few miles didn’t change a star’s direction in any measurable way. Melanie needed to nudge him along. “There is a long history of people trying to identify the star of Bethlehem,” she said. “Newspapers publish, rather breathlessly, each December, the latest ‘discoveries’; sometimes a conjunction of planets, sometimes a meteor or, more recently, a supernova. It makes better sense to accept the ancient tradition that when a great person is born, there are signs in heaven to confirm the event.” But Stephen wouldn’t be denied. Evidently he had been doing his homework, for he quoted from the Book of Numbers, chapter 24, the text, “A star will come out of Jacob and a scepter will rise out of Israel.” He wondered why the author of Matthew didn’t quote this verse.
There was a feeling of restlessness, as often was the case when Stephen held the floor, partly because of his style but, on this occasion, because no-one could think of anything sensible to say. And while this didn’t always bring proceedings to an end, on this occasion, it did.
As she drove home, Melanie felt discontent with the evening; so much had been passed over so quickly. She had been hoping that someone would want to talk about the dreams mentioned in the text. So many dreams in the first two chapters and then only one more in the whole gospel: to the wife of Pilate. She wondered idly if Jesus ever dreamed. “Maybe the Kingdom is his dream.” Her rambling thoughts distracted her and before she knew it, she had missed her turn off the highway. Her way home would pass through unfamiliar parts of town but eventually she drew up, relieved, into her parking place. It had been another memorable evening.
Chapter 3
A small coffee shop near the Cathedral was a favorite hangout for locals and on the following Monday morning at about 10, Melanie, Al, and Webster had taken over one of its more remote tables for a discussion of progress to date.
She wanted their candid opinions and wasn’t disappointed; the two of them had obviously been in touch and had agreed that things were going well. They both acknowledged that, without serious commitment to “homework,” the Tuesday gatherings would be too much, too fast. Matthew’s Gospel had twenty-eight chapters and it was going to be a scramble to get through in one year. Melanie said, “It’s like being in a straight jacket. I am dreading the Sermon on the Mount chapters. It’s almost impossible to do justice to all that stuff!” But the other two thought it would be better to keep the chapter a week schedule. “Leave us something to read at home,” suggested Webster.
“Part of my trouble,” she grumbled, “is my idea that we should do more rather than less. For example, what about looking at the 1964 movie on Matthew’s Gospel by Pasolini? You might not know,” she said, addressing Al, “that I am a bit of a movie buff and have a copy at home. It’s black and white and takes a very literal approach but it has a power of a very special kind. But that would take a whole evening.” Webster replied, “If you want ideas along that line, I have a friend who teaches New Testament. He visits me occasionally and would probably be willing to come along and tell us what’s going on out there in the world of the scholars.”
In the end they agreed to keep going as best they could and Al suggested that Melanie would need to keep talkers like him “under control.”
Their conversation came to no clear conclusions but it was brought to an end when Al, indicating that he was about to depart, stood and raised his glass of Sprite, toasting their joint enterprise with the words, “I drink to your well-being!” before leaving to take his bicycle from the rack outside. Webster and Melanie exchanged glances. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking,” she said, “that we have a jester on our hands?” Webster grinned at her. “Indeed, it does occur to me that a sprite is a kind of water spirit, often associated with wells!” he said. “Watch out for Al’s sense of humor.”
Back in business the next evening, the group agreed that they had read Chapter 3 in advance so that the overhead was just a reminder. Several commented that the text displayed was not quite the same as what they had read. Melanie explained, “Aunt Matty was rather partial to the Weymouth Translation of 1903 because there was some family connection to Richard Weymouth. Since the overheads were already prepared, I have gone along with them and made a few alterations here and there when I think that Weymouth is a bit obscure!”
They looked impressed and she hastened to assure them that she was not a Greek scholar but had tried simply to smooth out the English.
So there it was:
About this time John the Baptist made his appearance, preaching in the desert of Judaea. “Repent,” he said, “for the Kingdom of Heaven is now close at hand.”
He it is who was spoken of through the Prophet Isaiah when he said, “The voice of one crying aloud, ‘In the desert prepare a road for the Lord: make His highway straight.’”
This man John wore a garment of camel’s hair, and a loincloth of leather; and he lived upon locusts and wild honey. Then large numbers of people went out to him—people from Jerusalem and from all Judaea, and from the whole of the Jordan valley— and were baptized by him in the Jordan, making full confession of their sins.
But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for
