Second Thoughts about Three Kings

This time seven years ago, I wrote a blog post skeptical of two seasonal hymns — the Christmas hymn “In the Bleak Midwinter” and the Epiphany hymn “We Three Kings“. After several years both to learn and mature, during today’s Epiphany I observance I feel compelled to modify that earlier position.

What do we know about the visitors from the East?

• Matthew 2 refers clearly to “wise men”
• We assume there were three of them because there are clearly three gifts. 
• There is no mention of kings

Rather than summarize the old post (available via the magic of hyperlinks), let me summarize the arguments as I now see them. Arguments against “three kings” are

1. There is no mention of kings and if there were really kings they would be mentioned
2. It is illogical to expect they are kings, either because multiple kings aren’t going to travel months (or years) to Jerusalem, or because “wise men” (magoi, μάγοι) aren’t going to be kings.

Let me come back to #1. For #2, one of our clergy points out that in some nations of the East, there would be multiple kings because a king is more like a governor, duke or prince than an emperor or pharaoh. Meanwhile, there are examples of wise kings in the line of David, and the rulers before Saul (the Judges) tended to be chosen for their wisdom rather than their inheritance.

Arguments in favor of the “three kings”:

1. Tradition, dating to the first millennium. This is enough for many Anglo-Catholics.
2. Predictions from the Old Testament

I was struck by the latter today, from both the psalm and old testament readings of morning prayer:

The kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall give presents; * the kings of Arabia and Saba shall bring gifts. (Psalm 72:10)

A multitude of camels shall cover you,
    the young camels of Midian and Ephah;
    all those from Sheba shall come.
They shall bring gold and frankincense,
    and shall bring good news, the praises of the Lord.  (Isaiah 60:6)

So the question is: is this prophecy fulfilled by the birth of Jesus? Such argument would require

• Accepting the principle that OT prophesies are fulfilled by the NT
• Concluding that these prophesies refers to a coming Messiah and not some other event
• Deciding that this specific is fulfilled by the events of Matthew 2

The earlier posting was accurate in suggesting that many theologians and other Christians reject the idea of kings visiting Joseph, Mary and baby (or toddler) Jesus. It was inaccurate in suggesting that there was only one possible conclusion, because clearly more than one interpretation is possible. It also raised (but did not answer) the question of what doctrine should be presented in hymns if the theological issues are not conclusively resolved.

Favorite Lutheran Epiphany hymns

Last Tuesday, the listeners of Issues Etc. answered an open call for their favorite Epiphany hymns. Host Todd Wilken hosted a 56 minute session with the various listener comments.

As Pastor Wilken noted, Epiphany has three roles in the liturgical year

• The eponymous feast, commemorating the visitation of the Magi, representing more broadly the expansion of the mission of the Church to reach the Gentiles.
• The transition between Christmas and Lent (which IMHO is more about Christmas at the beginning and explicitly pre-Lent at the end)
• The home of specific feasts, such as the Baptism of our Lord and (for Lutherans) the Feast of the Transfiguration

As with other shows, the audience was primarily (if not entirely) Lutheran — and thus the votes represent a LCMS audience (presumably picking their hymns from the Lutheran Service Book or The Lutheran Hymnal).

The two most popular choices (with four votes each) were the first two Epiphany hymns in the LSB:

• “Songs of Thankfulness and Praise” (LSB: 394; TLH: 134; H40: 53): text by Christopher Wordsworth. In the LCMS hymnals they use a St. George by 19th century English organist George Elvey. However, the Anglicans (ironically) use Salzburg, written by 17th century German Protestant composer Jacob Hintze (working for the Calvinist Great Elector of Brandenburg) and harmonized the great Lutheran Kapellmeister — J.S. Bach himself.
• “O Morning Star, How Fair and Bright” (LSB: 395), with text and tune by 16th century Lutheran pastor Philip Nicolai. The earlier translations were “How Lovely Shines the Morning Star” (TLH: 343) and "How Bright Appears the Morning Star” (H40: 329),

Other hymns from the Epiphany section of the LSB that were mentioned (and would be familiar to Anglicans) were As with Gladness Men of Old (LSB: 397, TLH: 127; H40: 52), Hail to the Lord's Anointed (LSB: 398; TLH: 59; H40: 545) and Brightest and Best of the Sons* of the Morning (LSB: 400, TLH: 128; H40: 46).

Note that for the latest hymnal for the “conservative” LCMS, the title phrase “Sons of the Morning” in Reginald Heber’s 1811 text was inexplicably changed to politically correct "Stars of the Morning" in the LSB.

As was true seven years earlier, the German Lutherans (and their hymnals) omit two of our favorite Anglican hymns for the season: “What star is this, with beams so bright” (H40 #47) and “Earth has many a noble city” (H40 #48).

A 21st century Lutheran canon of Epiphany

On his blog Thinking Out Loud, pastor Rick Stuckwisch lists the LCMS hymns for the Advent, Christmas and Epiphany seasons from the Lutheran Service Book (2006).

Since I haven’t written about the canon of Epiphany, the list by Rev. Dr. Stuckwisch got me thinking. Many of these would be familiar to the Anglican singers — and to readers of this blog.

Some — like “Wake, awake, for night is flying” (Hymnal 1940 #3) and “Break forth, O beauteous heav’nly light” (H40 #25) I would consider to be an Advent hymn or a Christmas hymn, but since they are both originally German, I’ll assume the LCMS (founded and populated by German-Americans) knows what they’re doing.

Others are recognizable from the Epiphany section of Hymnal 1940, including “As with gladness men of old” (H40 #52) by William Chatterton Dix and “Songs of thankfulness and praise” (H40 #53), which both have English words and German music.

Sadly, his list (and perhaps the LSB) seems to omit two of the prettiest Epiphany carols. One is the Prudentius poem “O sola magnarum urbium”, i.e. “Earth has many a noble city” (H40 #48). The other is “What star is this, with beams so bright” (H40 #47), with the tune Puer Nobis by Praetorius. While I don’t own a copy of the LSB — and there is no Lutheran equivalent of Oreumus — neither hymn is in my copy of The Lutheran Hymnal (1941), the LCMS counterpart to Hymnal 1940.

So while there are many important overlaps between Anglican and Lutheran worship — and of course between Anglicans and Catholics — we still have important divergences.

Oldest Christian B-side

Back when I was growing up, teenagers still bought their new music on 45 rpm disks. The artist (or record company) would pull some sort of hot song from the new album and put it on the front of the 45, and then fill the back (the “B-side”) with something else that was unlikely to be a hit. (Occasionally, they underestimated the potential of the B-side and the buyer got two good songs for the price of one.)

Normally when Christian musicians think of the Christian poet Aurelius Clemens Prudentius (348-c. 413), we think of his incomparable Christmas song, Corde natus, or, as translated by J.M. Neale:

Of the Father’s Love begotten

Ere the worlds began to be,

He is Alpha and Omega,

He the Source, the Ending He,

Of the things that are, that have been,

And that future years shall see,

Evermore and evermore!

But during Epiphany, we get a second Prudentius hymn:

O sola magnarum urbium

Maoior Bethlem, cui contigit

Ducem salutis caelitus

Incorporatum gignere

Today, we don’t sing it in the Latin, but as “Earth has many a noble city,” hymn #48 in Hymnal 1940 (or #127 for those who use Hymnal 1982). [Conjubilant with Song also blogs on this hymn during this Epiphany season.]

The text was translated by Edward Caswall. As with “Of the father’s love,” both Hymnals use the version from Hymns Ancient & Modern (1861). Somehow the 1982 crew resisted the temptation to bowdlerize the text (perhaps because the M-word was absent.)

Of course, this is not really a B-side. Ignoring the lack of 120V AC and phonographs in the 5th century, the tune for both hymns is an anachronism — in this case, the ever-popular Stuttgart (1715) attributed to C.F. Witt. (Although Stuttgart is better known for the Advent favorite “Come thou long expected Jesus,” it was actually introduced to Anglicans with this hymn in Hymns Ancient & Modern.)

Still, it’s a fun mental exercise to think of how Prudentius gave us the words to these two timeless hymns, and how a 5th century entrepreneur might have packaged them for the faithful to enjoy together.

Traditional non-sense

January 2018: Slightly updated; see postscript.

Regular readers know how a major focus of this blog is preserving traditional hymns. I love the old hymns, and am particularly suspicious of changes in hymn doctrine that have occurred in the 30-40 years.

Tradition is even formally part of our theology, at least for Anglicans who argue that our theology is based on a “three legged stool” (scripture, tradition & reason) or “four legged stool” (scripture, tradition, reason & experience) attributed to Richard Hooker. (A minor problem with such formalizations is that they are a 19th or 20th century fabrication because Hooker never said that.)

Certainly tradition is certainly an important (if not more important) consideration for our Catholic and Orthodox brethren. At the same time, one of the major arguments for Luther and the other Protestant reformers was that Tradition had improperly subordinated the plain text of Scripture.

During the 12 days of Christmas, I’ve found two good examples where older, popular, long-established hymns do not make sense when laid against what we know from Scripture. As it turns out, on Sunday I sang both of the hymns in church — one twice at two different churches. (Providentially, these are the same two hymns that I selected on Christmas Day to blog about later on.)

Exhibit A is Epiphany’s greatest hit and certainly one of my childhood favorites: “We three kings of Orient are.” The antiphonal arrangement of Hymnal 1940 (#51) as opposed to more prosaic presentation of Hymnal 1982 (#128). The carol was written by John Henry Hopkins, Jr. in 1857 and published in his 1863 book of carols. (The 1872 edition is on Google books).

Various modern sources (correctly) note the dissonance between Hopkins and the story of the Wise Men given by Matthew 2. We know they brought three gifts, but there’s no direct Biblical evidence that they were three, let alone kings. In general, Many of today’s theologians might be comfortable with “Wise Men” or even “Three Wise Men,” but would say that the “kings” are a fanciful concoction. (In addition to scripture and tradition, we also have external astronomical evidence that suggests of a “star” that appeared over Bethlehem appeared around 2 B.C.)

So what should we do with the hymn that has misled (if not indoctrinated) generations of Americans into assuming that the visitors from the East were kings? It’s a fun song, but what if it’s unbiblical? Should a rector schedule this hymn believing that it is in knowing the error? Does it even belong in the hymnal? Or is it up to the PC police to bowdlerize the text for the next edition of the hymnal?

Exhibit B is the poem (ca. 1872) by Christina Georgina Rossetti: “In the bleak midwinter.” Certainly the major attraction of the hymn is that English composer Gustav Holst composed a tune for the poem for The English Hymnal (1906). While the details have more ambiguity, the condensed argument against the hymn is that “bleak” is a description of 19th century English winters, not 1st century winters in Palestine.

Bethlehem is only 6 miles from Jerusalem, and Wikipedia says both are at an elevation of 2500’: it seems reasonable to assume a nearly identical climate. Anecdotally, snow does fall in Jerusalem — occasionally dumping several inches on the city. However, such heavy snow is not frequent, according to a scientific study of the mid-20th century, and in recent times, the snow quickly turns to slush or melts off.

Of course, today’s TV-era climate is neither Rosetti’s 19th century or that of Mary and Joseph. In terms of long-term climate, we know that in the middle of the “Little Ice Age,” 1600 A.D. was more than 2°F colder than the 4000-year average, while 2-4 B.C. and 2009 are right near the average.

Even if there was an occasional snowfall 2000+ years ago in the ancient capital of Judah, the image conveyed by Rosetti implies a much deeper and more durable cold:

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.

Based on my travels, “water like a stone” seems like a place with daytime highs below 32°F for several days. Nowadays, the median winter high in Jerusalem is in the 60s, even if the lows are in the 40s. While random variation would be outside this range, it seems highly unlikely that the Bethlehem high today (or during any similar climatic period) would be below freezing for any significant period.

Here, this is just an error of fact rather than doctrine. (As far as I know, no denomination has a doctrinal position about mean winter snowfall or low temperature in Bethlehem.) But is this also a case where a rector (or hymnal editor) should nix a hymn due to errors?

The rest of both hymns are less problematic: who can argue with a description of gold, frankincense and myrrh? If the suspect verses were buried later on, they could be dropped — but in both cases, these are the opening, most familiar, title verses.

I don’t have an answer to either case because I am personally torn: they have been such a part of my worship life for so long. Still, if a theologian, musicologist or cleric identifies a gap between lyric and doctrine (or lyric and fact), it seems dishonest not to advise the congregation of this. And if the song is flawed, how can you keep it and use it? I don’t want to lose either one, but on the other hand I don’t see how to keep them, either.