Episode 126 - Ancient Prophecy, Divine Flesh, And The Magi’s Visit Reconsidered

A sealed prophecy said to come from Adam. Royal visitors who call a newborn “true God” without hesitation. A blade that cannot cut divine flesh. From the first minute, we dive into the Armenian Infancy Gospel’s startling claims and the older currents that shaped Christian imagination: a six-thousand-year promise, the symbolism of the sixth day, and why timekeeping itself becomes a theological thread in the Nativity.

We walk with Joseph as he hides the Magi’s gifts and quietly provides for the poor, and we meet Josies, the younger son who guards Mary and nearly joins the Twelve. The scene in the cave unfolds with intimacy and weight: fifteen dignitaries kneel, not to poetry but to a person they confess as God. That confession challenges the idea that a high view of Jesus came late; here it sounds native and immediate, woven into the earliest stories.

Then the narrative tests modern nerves. The circumcision scene raises a paradox: can incorrupt flesh be wounded, and on what terms? We explore consent, prophecy, and an old strand of sacred craftsmanship linked to Wayland Smith, a figure who, in medieval art, sometimes travels with the Magi. The point is not myth for myth’s sake; it is metaphysics and devotion. If no part of the Word-made-flesh sees decay, liturgy, craft, and courage converge to explain how the Passion could happen by design, not by force.

We close with the temple presentation, a year of hidden life near the cave, and a hard look at Herod’s massacre, including the tradition that Zechariah, father of John the Baptist, dies at the altar to protect his son. The arc is fierce and tender: a world of kings and smiths, prophets and parents, calendars and covenants, all bending toward a child who restores Adam and renews creation. If you’re ready to revisit the Magi with fresh eyes and deeper sources, press play and journey with us. If this episode reshaped your view of Christmas, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a review telling us which insight stayed with you.

The theme music is "Wager with Angels" by Nathan Moore

Chapters

• 0:00 Setting The Stage: One More Magi Episode
• 1:40 The Adamic Document And A Six-Thousand-Year Prophecy
• 4:59 Six And The Calendar: Birth, Friday, And Time
• 8:24 Fifteen Visitors And High Christology
• 12:49 Gifts Hidden, Joseph’s Care, And Josies
• 18:39 The Uncut Flesh: Circumcision Dilemma
• 24:13 Wayland Smith, Sacred Blades, And Relics
• 30:03 Temple Presentation And A Year In The Cave

Transcript

Rev Dr PRB: 0:30

Well, welcome to the Christ-centered cosmic civilization. We're doing one more episode on the Magi. We have actually tons of documents we wanted to go through, but we'll have to save those to another year. Next year, maybe we'll have a look at some more stuff. This is enough for this year. We'll get through whatever we can in this episode, and then we must stop. Because we want to get back to there's episodes on um the immutability of God that we were that was a series that I was running and we interrupted it for lots of Christmas material and Nicere and things. So let's do that, and then after that, who knows what we'll get into. But let's get back to the Mage. So what it is is Jesus, the baby Jesus, has told them to read out to him the document that they brought that's been handed down since Adam, Noah, and so on. And it's this is I'm gonna read now from the Armenian Infancy Gospel. It says This is the beginning of the document that was written and sealed for keeping, which the Magi consider themselves unworthy to open or to give to any of the priests to read and for the people to hear, as they were deemed unworthy, since they were not children of the kingdom and were to denounce the Saviour. So it's like oh yeah, only people who are sufficiently worthy and appointed are able to read this document. But here's the text of it. It says this, and I'm quote, I'm gonna just read it now. After the expulsion of Adam from the garden and Cain's killing of his brother Abel, Adam mourned over his son's death more than his own expulsion. God gave Adam a son, Seth, which means son of consolation. Since Adam first desired to become divine, oh, this is a commentary on that now. The Magi comment on it and say, Since Adam first desired to become divine, God condescended to become human because of his abundant compassion and love for humankind. Through his intercession God vowed and swore to the forefather to write a document and to seal it with his finger, that, quote, in the sixth thousandth year, on the sixth day, I shall send my only begotten son, God the Word, who shall come to take a body from your descendants. My son shall become the Son of Man, and I shall restore you to your former glory. Then shall you, Adam, become bodily immortal, divine, united with God as one of us, knowing good and evil. So that's the text of the document. Adam is con is comforted with this new son, Seth, but then the promise is given in the six thousandth year on the sixth day, the only begotten son will become human, come flesh. And then through that, Adam's immortality will be restored, and then he will know good and evil the right way through Jesus. So isn't that fascinating? So here the idea, because six is the number of humanity, because humanity is created on the sixth day. So here it's in the six thousandth year of the of the world, Jesus would be born on the sixth day. So born on a Friday, yeah. Oh yeah? Yeah, born on a Friday. Because he's got to have a perfect life that begins and ends on the same day, even the same moment, if it's God, you know, he's got to have the most perfect life. That is uh a definite idea that it's so it's got to be exactly the same. And if you've got a totally lunar calendar, the days of the month are the same. If you've got a solar calendar, each month the days just change each time. Whereas in the second temple sort of stuff, and really as the Bible has it, because you get in the Law of Moses, he says on this day of the month it will be a Sabbath, so he knows it's all he knows it's a Saturday based on what day of the month it is. Whereas once you've got lunar solar, that stops working. Uh so it yeah, it is that they're literally the exact same day following a lunar calendar, and we should do because in Genesis. Yeah, we definitely have should have a lunar calendar, yeah. Yeah, in Genesis, that's why he made the moon. It's crazy we never use the moon. I know, so and and we follow the Julius Caesar scheme, which is completely pagan with midnight, and we like Julius Caesar for other reasons, but yeah. Anyway, so there it is. There's this document been passed down to since the time of Adam. Adam was promised that that God would be born, but after six thousand years on the sixth day, and that birth of God would reverse all that had gone wrong with Satan. Amazing. I love that the text of the actual document handed down from Adam. So he reads it out, it's read out, and then it says, going back to the Armenian infancy thing, the kings and princes had spent three days at the cave fulfilling their vows and petitions. Taking counsel, they said, Let's go together to the cave and bow down to him and confess him as God, then go forth on our way in peace. And they all agreed. So they do the kings and princes, so that's again that idea of the three plus the twelve, and we get that fifteen number, which is in the Bible and it's in all these traditions. So I think we gotta be confident on this. That there are three, but there's also twelve, and we end up with fifteen. So the fifteen and Joseph's possibly managing them, but they enter the cave together, bowed down to Jesus, confessed him, and said, You are true God and son of God. And then they left the cave with great rejoicing, glorifying God. That's interesting, isn't it? A very high Christology just naturally coming out of their mouths, without the later Nicene and post-Nicene sort of philosophical abstractions. They're just confessing this, you know, in their own for way of saying it. Yeah, and as we thought when because it's still the 16th centenary year of uh Nicaea, yeah. Uh, as we thought when we were doing that series, uh, anti-Nicene creeds do refer to this sort of true God, do refer to Jesus as true God. So that is a very ancient way of referring to him that is totally in line. That is what everyone would have said, so that's not at all a sort of late development, as people might imagine. Yeah, because often that idea is like John must have been written later, because he has a high Christology, a very clear view of Jesus as God. Yeah, well, yeah, he does, but so does Mark, so does Matthew, so does Luke, so does everybody. And why do you think that's late? Like, that's literally as the case as he's been born, you've got these people coming from all over the world just openly confessing, he's gone. Like, so it's it's early Christology, it's not late Christology. So that that is just nonsense. Anyway, so after these events, the told don't go back to Herod. Obviously, we know that. Like, don't go back to Herod, he's a loser. So after these events, I'm quoting now again from the Armenian Infancy Gospel. After these events, Joseph and Mary with the child stayed quietly in the cave so no one would know. But listen this, Joseph kind of has the he's like an amazing man. He's one of he is one of my favourite characters in the Bible. It says this Joseph took all the valuable gifts and items from the treasure the Magi had given and hid them. And then Joseph went out daily to towns, villages, and farms to provide for their physical needs. And then it says, whenever Joseph went out for food supplies, for food and supplies, his son Josiah, or Josies, the youngest of the brothers, was appointed as guardian and attendant to the Holy Virgin Mary. I think this is a lovely little insight into the holy family, where there's Josiah, Josiah, presumably Joseph, is there looking after Mary, and he's from Joseph, so Joseph's son, but looking after this new Mary as his stepmum, sort of thing. But also Joseph's saying, Oh, well, we've got lots of resources now, and he's not thinking, therefore, we will live the high life. They're carrying on, presumably living in whatever circumstances that I think they do get move into a house in Bethlehem because it says later, I think Matthew references a house. So people come to the house, so they maybe use some money, possibly, I don't know, to like you get some, but whatever. But basically, he's using all these resources just to go around and help needy people, yeah. It is amazing, and it's worth that uh Josy's guy, because what he gets mentioned early in Acts, they also almost make him one of the 12 apostles, and they they pick Matthias and said, Oh, the Lord picks Matthias, but everyone thinks, oh, you've got to have Josies. So he's an incredible person, and uh Saint Papias had all s loads of stories because he I think he may have known Josies or he may have known people who knew Josies. He's an incredible person, so it's lovely to see him again because there's loads of fascination with uh James, the brother of God, because he gets mentioned by Josephus and Hegespus and so on. Uh, but then Josies often gets overlooked, especially because he gets so people are like Matthias got picked, so he must have been rubbish. It's like, no, not rubbish. He was like, you know, and then the Lord had something else planned for him, and he did this other sort of ministry that the 72 have, and he did a great job, as Papias and others tell us, and he was totally humble, he was he had no sort of ambition or pride, he didn't attack Matthias or anything like that. So he he's a great person. So I do love seeing any more data we can get on Josie's because we know there was loads that Papias had, and we know Armenians loved Papias, so this might even be from his own memoirs that Papias uh had. We don't know, but uh I always love finding out more about him. Nice! Now, what comes next is something that some of us might find unusual, so I'm just gonna brace everyone for this. This is good this is something which, if you're used to the ancient ways of thinking about the baby Jesus and the life of Jesus, you'll you'll have come across this before. But for modern people who are very a bit like Pope, remember when we started with Pope Leo and he wanted to emphasize that there were that Jesus was absolutely normal human, and there was nothing nothing unusual about his humanity at all. Pope Leo's a kind of an outlier there, like most ancients knew. No, no, he is he wasn't totally normal human in that sense. This is divine flesh, and there's a lot about that. I'm gonna we're I'm I'm trying not to be too distracted by it at the moment. I'm gonna read a section of the Armenian Infancy Gospel now. It's about the circumcision of Jesus, and you'll hear there's something very unusual, and then we'll ask PJ to comment about this and and how did they solve this problem that they had. So here it is. It says, When the child was eight days old, Joseph said to Mary, What should we do since the law requires circumcision on the eighth day? Mary replied, Let it be as you wish, do as you please. Joseph quietly went to Jerusalem and brought back a wise, good, compassionate, and God-fearing man named Joel, who was well versed in the divine law. They came to the cave. When they drew the knife, it would not cut the child. Seeing this, they were greatly amazed and says, said, Look, no blood dripped from this child. He was given the name Jesus as the angel had named him. So they made the normal arrangements. The sir a guy comes to do the circumcision, tries to do it, but cannot cut the flesh of Jesus, and then there were given no solution. Like, how did they then carry out the circumcision? First of all, what's going on here? Why can't they circumcise him? And then in a minute we'll think about what possibly they they did to solve this. So no part of Jesus can see decay. We're told that in the gospels, also in prophecy. So the idea that you just can, you know, just as easily as anything else, just cut off bits of Jesus, and then you've got lots of well, yeah, that's the question. If you cut off a bit of Jesus, will that become living and then never die and never decay? Well, you'd think you'd have to if he ever did. Uh it's literally impossible for his flesh to decay. Implied behind this, though we won't we won't think about it now, is all that idea of the holy grail and capturing his blood in a cup and all this. Because modern people just don't bother with that, or Western, modern Western people would in the main tend to go, yeah, whatever, like who cares? It does, it's just human flesh, it's just human blood. But ancients and medieval, and still a lot of people today know, no, no, this is God's blood, God's flesh, this is not like anything else, and and so similarly, you can't just like cut a bit off the flesh of God, uh, because one, what would happen to it, and we may think about that as well, but also how do you how do you make damage God's flesh? And on that, uh Sir Ian Paisley does in his Christian fundamentals as a fantastic uh defence of the holy grail. So, as you were saying, like uh in the West we've lost the Holy Grail, sort of, but uh it has had its defenders. It's like the ultimate Protestant, the Reverend Dr. Ian Paisley, the ultimate Protestant, is actually the most intense advocate for the for the reality of the Holy Grail. If you don't know about that, uh just look it up, and you he's uh he's very, very strong on the physicality of the of the grail and the blood of God and so on. But what about this? They can't cut his flesh because you can't harm him, and the the ancient prophets would say this. So, how is it done? Unless he allows them to do it. So, one solution is that they ask him, Is it will you allow us to cause damage to your flesh? And then, of course, we've seen that people do chat to the baby Jesus, and he replies. So, one possible solution is they did that, and of course, later when it comes to his death, he says, No man can take my life from me, no one can harm me. And I must kind of allow them, I must lay down my life, allow myself to be killed, then I can be killed. Jesus teaches this openly in the Gospels. So perhaps they did that and said, Look, baby Jesus, will you allow us to harm your flesh to carry out circumcision? And that's one solution. But there's a there's another tradition that means like because Joel just brought a normal kind of blade that from that would work on normal human flesh. But there is a kind of tradition that either that the Magi provided such a blade, like a blade that had been secretly prepared in advance, that was sanctified for this purpose, or that there is a particular kind of blacksmith that could that was kind of set apart or and filled with divine power to produce such a blade. Is this right, PJ? Yeah, so we think about Samson, he's got he's got a lot of parallels with Jesus, uh, and he sort of a key theme towards the end of his life. Uh Delilah knows, he knows how to he's because he's anointed, so he just can't be killed no matter how much people try. He is a Messiah in the in the Hebrew, he's a immune to damage, cannot be overwhelmed, yeah. Yeah, so then there has to be specific tools have to be gotten, specific preparations have to be made, and you know, you get uh as Jesus dies, it's the same sort of thing. There's all these prophecies, it's like this will happen. And because like Samson isn't supposed to drink anything related to grapes, and then Jesus has to have vinegar on the cross, and then he has to you get all of these are ways of making it possible for his body to be injured. Yeah, so there is that that there's there are preparations that can be made, but like Jesus has to tell you, and you know, he doesn't just freely tell everyone how to do it, and he you know, but he does he does, and he sort of it somehow mysteriously instructs the centurion Longinus and his, and we know Longinus is very tapped into spiritual realities, and he gets stuff no one else does. So that is obvious, in a sense, from the Gospels, that is what's going on, and from Samson's life and in in other places that a m a a Messiah, and certainly not the Messiah, can be killed in this way. So there are in Anglo-Saxon art, they Anglo-Saxons think a lot, and not just Anglo-Saxons, Franks, Alamanians, and Norse and everything. Think about a particular figure called Wayland Smith. He's an Englishman. We love him. Yeah, he's an Englishman who sort of understands the power behind words and behind smithing. So he's able to create blades, especially blades, other sort of artifacts, that have powers that uh really like humanity should have access to all of this when we make stuff, but we're we've our minds. We're swollen and broken, aren't we? And we we have trouble making anything really. And when we do make things, they break down and all that. But we're supposed to make things like Wayland could still do. So among his famous swords, he has made, and he supposedly can still make them. He lives in uh a parallel sort of world. The Fey World. Listeners of this podcast know about the Fey World. So he yeah, he's busy. He does a lot of stuff, this Wayland guy. So one of his swords is called Durindale, and that was wielded by one of Charlemagne's paladins, and it's totally unbreakable. It's still there. It was hurled by Roland, was it? Yeah, it was hurled by Roland into a mountain, and because it could not be broken, it split the side of the mountain. You can see it to this day. There is Durendale in the wall and all of that. Doesn't the English monarch have a Whalens? Yeah, he's got Cortana. Cortana! Roland! Right. And you've got an AI named after Cortana and that um from Halo. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. So yeah, they Wayland's got amazing sort of power and knowledge and all of that. And so he in English stuff and in Frank, there's a Frankish casket that depicts him, but other stuff as one of the wise men that comes to see Jesus. So he could have been in the entourage. Yeah. And as we thought, there are those stories. Other people who are tuned into heavenly realities can see the star, and then people whose minds are darkened, like Herod and the people of Jerusalem, they can't see the star. But then obviously Wayland could. If he's able to craft Durandel, if he's able to go to the Faye realms, apparently more or less at will, he's able to do this. So they say he's he's perhaps been instructed by the baby Jesus, but he's got the skill to carry out Jesus' instructions to create the blade necessary to create the divine circumcision to remove the divine propuse and then to create you know what often gets called like the inch of God, you know, there's a little bit of precipice, yeah. There's a little bit of God because it can never decay, and we thought about that. There's a little bit of that around, so it's something that has a huge amount of thought throughout history, and then people since the 19th century just get very squeamish, they're like, Oh, forget about it, don't think about it. But then it's like the Bible, no part of his flesh can decay, a bit gets cut off. What happens? You know, what does that mean? And wars get fought over the ownership of this piece of the flesh of God, of course. Uh, and it it disappears in is it the 1970s because someone steals it. This sort of thing happens a lot to all the greatest relics, they disappear and then they come back again as constant signs. They have to be mirac miraculous things, have to bring things back in like the Ark of the Covenant is a great example of a relic that keeps having miraculous things that uh preserve it or reveal it and so on. We get that a lot in Judges and in Samuel, and yeah. So we know this sort of thing happens, so it is in the Bible, but this sort of thing happens even after the Bible. So, yeah, the divine flesh that is cut off, either partly because Jesus allows them to do it, but also perhaps there is this thing the idea that they that there's a special blade prepared for this very task, and Wayland may have been. There's the legends that he was accompanying the Magi, or may have been one of the Magi, and and has a suitable blade which he which which he could leave. You can only imagine the cave of mysteries would have the sort of information necessary. The cave of mysteries, of course, that they they may well have had that blade, or at least how to make it. So that's interesting. All we can say from the Armenian Infancy Gospel is that they were unable to just at least they they couldn't just do the circumcision easily. Someone suggested though that they were able to cut off his flesh, but it was no blood came forth. So that that was the point being said in the Armenian Gospel. I'm not sure though, because it just says it wouldn't cut the child at all. Anyway, whatever happens, they do obviously eventually able to complete the circumcision because the Bible says that he was actually circumcised and given the name Jesus. Okay, now after that, the child grew, and I'm reading again now from the Armenian Infancy Gospel. The child grew and increased in grace and strength. Joseph and Mary stayed in the cave until the beginning of the 40-day fast. Now so they're in the cave, that's where the birth happens. There is the hostel, because remember, this cave is attached to this house, a lodging house, isn't it? And the Magi are in Matthew, the Magi originally go to the motel and then are directed to the dumpster round the back where Mary and Joseph are. But they but so Mary and Joseph stay and they stay for until the beginning of this 40-day fast. The Magi Herod's unhappy because he figures out what's happened that the Magi have not returned to him. We'll come back to them in a moment, but first of all, Joseph and Mary take Jesus to be presented at the temple, along with many gifts and sacrificial offerings received from the Magi. And when so the Magi have things that they then take to the temple to give. They present him at the Holy Temple in accordance with their tradition with a pair of turtle duffs, two young pigeons. There's Simeon, and he's like, gives his prophecies and so on. Then they return to Bethlehem, stay in the cave for many days until the beginning of the new year. So that this document has him there for like an entire year, basically. His entire first year living in secret in the cave. Maybe they get to use some of the facilities at the motel, I don't know. Or some people have speculated that they could have used some of the money to get better lodgings. But here they say no, he's in the cave for the whole year. Or if it's in January and then 40 days brings you to February, so then isn't the beginning of the year March? Oh, it could be as quick as that. Like okay. Could be as uh Passover's to be the first month. Yeah, okay. But here it says when the child Jesus was nine months old, he was no longer fed from his mother's breast. Observing him, they were very surprised and kept asking each other, what child is this? He neither eats nor drinks nor sleeps, but stays up wakeful and watchful day and night. Wow. So they have it as like he only needed sustenance for the first nine months, after which he just fasts and prays day and night, even as a nine-month-old baby. Yeah. And you do get that in their psalms. He's the one who never slumbers and all of this. You know, you do get that. Uh, and the day and night, you know, he's praying and meditating on scripture day and night. That's all got its psalmic basis. And of course, Moses, when he's on Sinai for 40 days and then for another 40 days, 80 days, nearly three months, he neither drank nor ate. Wow. Yeah, that's that's all in the book of Exodus. Check it out. Moses neither drank anything, nor ate anything for a total of at least 80 days. And and why that's important is it's as if we assume, like, oh, you got to eat and drink, like, because otherwise we would perish. Well, yes, now under our conditions of fallenness and so on, but it's as if Moses is there, like tapping into the divine life in such intensity that Moses doesn't drink any water, no liquid at all, doesn't eat anything at all for 90 days, and yet he's still like completely full of life and power. Such that even remember, in he's well over 80, 80 years of age at this time, and when he's 120, the scripture says it's as if he's still a young man and everything. So the Bible is preparing us for this idea that there is a kind of humanity that doesn't require the sort of sustenance that we assume is essential to humanity. But they, in this document, they're sort of saying, Well, look, here's this baby who's really human, but he doesn't seem to require sustenance or rest as other children do. Well, amazing stuff. Well, let's just bring it to a close because this document, the Armenian Infancy Gospel, then goes back to Herod thinking through, like, ah, the Magi have tricked us. He summons his advisors, and he kind of thinks, let's we gotta go and kill the holy family, basically. And his advisors go, yeah, let's do that. So he commands his armies, 18 legions. This is what the Armenian Infancy Gospel says, eighteen legions of soldiers to march through his domain and kill every male child, saying, Do not have mercy on male children, nor on their crying fathers and mothers, don't accept bribes, slaughter them all. So all the commanders and heads of the armies immediately gathered, thousands upon thousands, with swords and weapons. And then it says they went everywhere and massacred all the children in 84 villages, numbering a total of 1,460 souls. Wow. Incredibly intense. All in the hope of killing Jesus. And it's mentioned after this in the whole document that among the victims is Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist. Wow. Because Jesus mentions, I believe in the Gospel of Luke, that he says all the martyrs, from Abel to Zechariah, who was slain before the altar. Uh so he's at the altar of the temple, or you know, and he he gets killed there, it's mentioned, and that's why John is raised in the desert. Because that is also mentioned in Luke that he's raised in the desert until it's the time for him to preach. So John has to be hidden in the desert because of this massacre time. Wow, and Zechariah to protect him gives up his own life. What a great extra story there. Well, there it is. Thanks for listening to this series where we focused on the Magi and been through and examined lots of the traditions and thought through why, what's going on in these traditions that have been handed down. What what did they mean? Why did people think like that? Why did they maybe happen? Hopefully that's been interesting to you. And maybe next Advent period we may revisit. We've got more documents that are of a similar kind, and PJ might help us to understand them next Christmas.