(138) Sat 4 Oct 97 10:40 By: Curtis Johnson To: All Re: Epiphany [1/3] St: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ @EID:b3b9 23445500 @PID: BWMAX2 3.20 [Reg] @MSGID: 1:261/1000.0 3437a981 >>> Part 1 of 3... From the 1912 Enc. Brit. (11th ed.), F.C. Conybeare: This installment further shows the complete confusion early Christians had about when Jesus was born. The second (and last, which I'll post later) shows the pagan influence for both date and ritual of the Epiphany feast. "EPIPHANY, FEAST OF. The word epiphany, in Greek, signifies an apparition of a divine being. It was used as a singular or plural, both in its Greek and Latin forms, according as one epiphany was contemplated or severalunited in a single commemoration. For in the East from an early time were associated with the feast of the Baptism of Christ commemorations of the physical birth, of the Star of the Magi, of the mircles of Cana, and of the feeding of the five thousand. The commemoration of the Baptism was also called by the Greek fathers of the 4th century the Theophany or Theophanies, and the Day of Lights; i.e. of the Illumination of Jesus or of the Light which shone in the Jordan. In the Teutonic west it has become the Festival of the three kings (i.e. the Magi), or simply Twelfth day. Leo the Great called it the Feast of the _Declaration_; Fulgentius, of the _Manifestation_; others of the _Apparition_ of Christ. In the following article it is attempted to ascertain the date of institution of the Epiphany feast, its origin, and its significance and development. Clement of Alexandria first mentions it. Writing c. 194 he states that the Basilidians feasted the day of the Baptism, devoting the whole night which preceded it to lections of the scriptures. They fixed it in the 15th year of Tiberius, on the 15th or 11th of the month Tobi, dates of the Egyptian fixed calendar equivalent to January 10th and 6th. When Clement wrote the great church had not adopted the feast, but toward A.d. 300 it was widely in vogue. Thus the Acts of Philip the Martyr, bishop of Heracles in Thrace, A.D. 304, mention the `holy day of the Epiphany.' Note the singular. Origen seems not to have heard of it as a feast of the Catholic church, but Hippolytus (died c. 235) recognized it in a homily which may be genuine. In the age of the Nicene Council, A.D. 325, the primate of Alexandria was charged at every Epiphany Feast to announce to the churches in a `Festal Letter' the dae of the forthcoming Easter. Several such letters written by Athanasius and others remain. In the churches so addressed the feast of Jan. 6 must have been already current. In Jerusalem, according to the Epistle of Macarius [1--For its text, see _The Key of Truth_, translaed by F. C. Conybeare, Oxford, and the article ARMENIAN CHURCH] to the Armenians, c. 330, the feast was kept with zeal and splendour, and was with Easter and Pentecost a favourite season for Baptism. We have evidence of the 4th century from Spain that a long fast marked the season of Advent, and prepared for the feast of Epiphany on the 6th of January. The council of Saragossa c. 380 enacted that for 21 days, from the 12th of December to the 6th of January, the Eiphany, the faithful should not dance or make merry, but steadily frequent the churches. The synod of Lerida in 524 went further and forbade marriages during Advent. Our earliest Spanish lectionary, the _Liber comicus_ of Toledo, edited by Don Morin (_Anecd. Maredsol._ vol. i.), provides lections for five Sundays in Advent, and the gospel lections [1--These are Matt. iii.1-11, xi.2-15, xxi.1-9; Mark i.1-8; Luke iii.1-18. The Pauline lections regard the Epiphany of the Second Advent, of the prophetic or Messianic kingdom.] chosen regard the Baptism of Christ, not His Birth, of which the feast, like that of the Annunciation, is mentioned, but not yet dated, December 25 being assigned to St Stephen. It is odd that for `the Apparition of the Lord' the lection Matt. ii. 1-15 is assigned, although the lections for Advent belong to a scheme which identified Eipiphany with the Baptism. This anomaly we account for below. The old editor of the Mozarabic Liturgy, Fr. Antonio Lorenzano, notes in his preface [section] 28 that the Spaniards anciently terminated the Advent season with the Epiphany Feast. In Rome also the earliest fixed system of the ecclesiastical year, which may go back to 300, makes Epiphany the _caput festorum_ or chief of feasts. The Sundays of Advent lead up to it, and the first Sundays of the year are `The Sunday within the octave of Epiphany,' `the first Sunday after,' and so forth. December 25 is no critical date at all. In Armenia as early as 450 a month of fasting prepared for the Advent of the Lord at Epiphany, and the fast was interpreted as a reiteration of John the Baptist's season of Repentance. In Antioch as late as about 386 Epiphany and Easter were the two great feasts, and the physical Birth of Christ was not yet feasted. On the eve of Epiphany after nightfall the springs and rivers were blessed, and water was drawn from them and stored for the whole year to be used in lustrations and baptisms. Such water, says Chrysostom, to whose orations we owe the information, kept pure and fresh for one, two and three years, and like good wine actually improved the longer it was kept. Note that Chyrsostom speaks of the Feast of the _Epiphanies_, implying two, one of the Baptism, the other of the Second Advent, when Christ will be manifested afresh, and we with him in glory. This Second Epiphany inspired, as we saw, the choice of Pauline lections in the _Liber comicus._ But the salient event commemorated was the >>> Continued to next message... --- Blue Wave/DOS v2.30 [NR] * Origin: Nerve Center - Where the spine is misaligned! (1:261/1000) SEEN-BY: 12/12 112/4 218/890 1001 270/101 353/250 396/1 3615/50 51 @PATH: 261/1000 1137 270/101 396/1 3615/50 218/1001 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ (139) Sat 4 Oct 97 10:40 By: Curtis Johnson To: All Re: Epiphany [2/3] St: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ @EID:f7b9 23445500 @PID: BWMAX2 3.20 [Reg] @MSGID: 1:261/1000.0 3437a982 >>> Part 2 of 3... Baptism, and Chrysostom almost insists on this as the exclusive significance of the feast:--`It was not when he was born that he became manifest to all, but when he was baptized.' In his commentary on Ezekiel Jerome employs the same language _absconditus est et non apparuit_, by way of protest against an interpretation of the Feast as that of the Birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, which was essayed as early as 375 by Epiphanius in Cyprus, and was being enforced in Jerome's day by John, bishop of Jerusalem. Epiphanius boldly removed the date of the Baptism to the 8th of November. `January 6' (=Tobi 11), he writes, `is the day of Christ's Birth, that is, of the Epiphanies.' He uses the plural, because he adds on January 6 the commemoration of the water miracle of Cana. Although in 375 he thus protested that January 6 was the day of `of the Birth after the Flesh,' he became before the end of the century a convert, according to John of Nice, to the new opinion that December 25 was the real day of this Birth. That as early as about 385, January 6 was kept as the physical birthday in Jerusalem, or rather in Bethlehem, we know from a contemporary witness of it, the lady pilgrim of Gaul, whose _peregrinatio_, recently discovered by Gamurrini, is confirmed by the old Jerusalem Lectionary preserved in Armenian. [2--Translated in _Rituale Armenorum_ (Oxford, 1905).] Ephraem the Syrian father is attested alrady by Epiphanius (c. 375) to have celebrated the physical birth on January 6. His genuine Syriac hymns confirm this, but prove that the Baptism, the Star of the Magi, and the Marriage at Cana were also commemorated on the same day. That the same union prevailed in Rome up to the year 354 may be inferred from Ambrose. Philastrius (_De haer._ ch. 140) notes that some abolished the Epiphany feast and substituted a Birth feast. This was between 370 and 390. In 385 Pope Siricius [3--Epist. ad Himerium, c. 2.] calls January 6 _Natalicia_, `the Birthday of Christ or of Apparition,' and protests against the Spanish custom (at Tarragona) of baptizing on that day--another proof that in Spain in the 4th century it commemorated the Baptism. In Gaul at Vienna in 360 Julian the Apostate, out of deference to Christian feeling, went to church `on the festival which they keep in January and call Epiphania.' So Ammianus; but Zonaras in his Greek account of the event calls it the day of the Saviour's Birth. Why the feast of the Baptism was called the feast or day of the Saviour's Birth, and why fathers of that age when they call Christmas the birthday constantly qualify and add the words `in the flesh,' we are able to divine from Pope Leo's (c. 447) 18th Epistle to the bishops of Sicily. For here we learn that in Sicily they held that in His Baptism the Saviour was reborn through the Holy Spirit. `The Lord,' protests Leo, `needed no remission of sins, no remedy of rebirth.' The Sicilians also baptized neophytes on January 6, `because baptism conveyed to Jesus and to them one and the same grace.' Not so, argues Leo, the Lord sanctioned and hallowed the power of regeneraton, not when He was baptized, but `when the blood of redemption and the water of baptism flowed from his side.' Neophytes should therefore be baptized at Easter and Pentecost alone, never at Epiphany. Fortune has preserved to us among the _Spuria_ of several Latin fathers, Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome and Maximus of Turin, various homilies for Sundays of the Advent fast and for Epiphany. The Advent lections of these homilsts were much the same as those of the Spanish _Liber comicus_; and they insist on Advent being kept as a strict fast, without marriage celebrations. Their Epiphany lection is however Matt. iii.1-17, which must therefore have once on a time been assigned in the _Liber comicus_ also in harmony with the general scheme. The psalms used on the day are, cxiii. (cxiv.) `When Israel went forth,' xxviii. (xxix.) `Give unto the Lord,' and xxii. (xxiii.) `the Lord is my Shepherd.' The same lection of Matthew and also Ps. xxix. are noted for Epiphany in the Greek oration for the day ascribed to Hippolytus, which is at least earlier than 300, and is also in special old Epiphany rites for the Benediction of the waters found in Latin, Greek, Armenian, Coptic, Syriac, &c. Now by these homilists as by Chrysostom [4--Hom. i. in Pentec. _op._ tom. ii. 458: `With us the Epiphanies is the first festival. What is this festival's significance? This, that God was seen upon earth and consorted with men.' For this idea there had been substituted that of the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles.] the Baptism is regarded as the occasion on which `the Saviour first _appeared_ after the flesh in the world or on earth.' These words were classical to the homilists, who explain them as best they can. The baptism is also declared to have been `Christ's second nativity.' `This _second birth_ has more renown than his first . . . for now the God of majesty is inscribed (as his father), but then (at his first birth) Joseph the Carpenter was assumed to be his father . . . he hath more honour who cried aloud from Heaven (viz. God the Father), than he who labours upon earth (viz. Joseph). [5--See the Paris edition of Augustine (1838); tom. v., Appendix, _Sermons_ cxvi., cxxv., cxxxv., cxxxvi., cxxxvii.; cf. tom. vi. _dial. quaestionum_, xlvi.; Maximus of Turin, Homily xxx.] Similarly the the old _orda Romanus_ of the age of Pepin (given by Montfaulcon in his preface to the Mozarabic missal >>> Continued to next message... --- Blue Wave/DOS v2.30 [NR] * Origin: Nerve Center - Where the spine is misaligned! (1:261/1000) SEEN-BY: 12/12 112/4 218/890 1001 270/101 353/250 396/1 3615/50 51 @PATH: 261/1000 1137 270/101 396/1 3615/50 218/1001 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ (140) Sat 4 Oct 97 10:40 By: Curtis Johnson To: All Re: Epiphany [3/3] St: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ @EID:0bb8 23445500 @PID: BWMAX2 3.20 [Reg] @MSGID: 1:261/1000.0 3437a983 >>> Part 3 of 3... in Migne, _Patr. Latina_, 85, col. 46), under the rubric of the Vigil of the Theophany, insists that `the _second birth_ of Christ (in Baptism) being distinguished by so many more mysteries (e.g. the miracle of Cana) is more honoured than the first' (birth from Mary). These homilies mostly belong to an age (? 300-400) when the commemoration of the physical Birth had not yet found its own day (Dec. 25), and was therefore added alongside of the Baptism on January 6. Thus the two Births, the physical and the spiritual, of Jesus were celebrated on one and the same day, and one homily contains the words: `Not yet is the feast of his origin fully completed, and already we have to celebrate the solemn commemoraton of his Baptism. He has hardly been born humanwise, and already he is being _reborn_ in sacramental wise. For to-day, though after a lapse of many annual cycles, he was hallowed (or consecrated) in Jordan. So the Lord arranged as to link rite with rite; I mean, in such wise as to be brought forth through the Virgin and to be begotten through the mystery (i.e. sacrament) in one and the same season.' Another homily preserved in a MS. of the 7th or 8th century and assigned to Maximus of Turin declares that the Epiphany was known as the Birthday of Jesus, either because He was then born of the Virgin or _reborn in baptism._ This also was the classical defense made by the Armenian fathers of their custom of keeping the feast of the Birth of and Baptism together on January 6. They argued from Luke's gospel that the Annunciation took place on April 6, and therefore the Birth on January 6. The Baptism was on Christ's thirtieth birthday, and should therefore be also kept on January 6. Cosmas Indicopleustes (c. 550) relates that on the same grounds believers of Jerusalem joined the feasts. All such reasoning was of course _apr`es coup_. As late as the 9th century the Armenians had at least three discrepant dates for the Annunciation--January 5, January 9, April 6; and of these January 5 and 9 were older than April 6, which they perhaps borrowed from Epiphanius's commentary on the Gospels. The old Latin homilist, above quoted, hits the mark when he declares that the innate logic of things required the Baptism (which must, he says, be any how called a _natal_ or birth festival) to fall on the same day as Christmas --_Ratio enim exigit._ Of the argument from the 6th of April as the date of the Annunciation he knows nothing. The 12th century Armenian Patriarch Nemes, like this homilist, merely rests his case against the Greeks, who incessantly reproached the Armenians for ignoring their Christmas on December 25, on the inherent logic of things, as follows: `Just as he was born after the flesh from the holy virgin, so he was _born_ through baptism and from the Jordan, by way of example unto us. And since there are here _two births_, albeit differing one from the other in mystic import and in point of time, therefore it was appointed that we should feast them together, as the first, so also the second birth.' The Epiphany feast had therefore in its own right acquired the name of _natalis dies_ or birthday, as commemorating the spiritual rebirth of Jesus in Jordan, before the _natalis in carne_, the Birthday _in the flesh_, as Jerome and others call it, was associated with it. This idea was condemned as Ebionite in the 3rd century, yet it influences Christian writers long before and long afterwards. So Tertullian says: `We little fishes (_pisciculi_), after the example of our great fish (_ichthyn_) Jesus Christ the Lord, are born (_gignimur_) in the water, nor except for abiding in the water are we in a state of salvation.' And Hilary, like the Latin homilists quoted above, writes of Jesus that `he was _born again_ through baptism, and then became Son of God,' adding that the Father cried, when he had gone up out of the water, `My son art thou, I have this day begotten thee' (Luke iii.22). `But this,' he adds, `was with the begetting of a man who is being reborn; on that occasion too he himself was being reborn unto God to be the perfect son; as he was son of man, so in baptism, he was constituted son of God as well.' The idea frequently meets us in Hilary; it occurs in the Epiphany hymn of the orthodox Greek church, and in the Epiphany hymns and homilies of the Armenians. --- Blue Wave/DOS v2.30 [NR] * Origin: Nerve Center - Where the spine is misaligned! (1:261/1000) SEEN-BY: 12/12 112/4 218/890 1001 270/101 353/250 396/1 3615/50 51 @PATH: 261/1000 1137 270/101 396/1 3615/50 218/1001