Saturday, December 21, 2024
Luke 2:4–5
Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. (NRSVue)
As we are reflecting on the stories around the birth of Jesus, and the many stories that intersect with his life, it’s worth putting the journeys around Advent and Christmas in context . . . Ohio context!
To travel from Nazareth in Galilee to Bethlehem in Judea is about 90 miles. You can travel up the Jezreel Valley to the Mediterranean coast and work along the Plain of Sharon (roses, etc.) to Joppa then inland through Jerusalem, or head around the lower end of the Sea of Galilee and down the Jordan Valley to Jericho and up into the Judean highlands. But either way, it’s about 90 miles. Mostly on foot, tradition holds that Mary being near term would have had a donkey to ride, but if you read the text we don’t know that.
Then just after the birth, angels speak to Joseph in a dream and the Holy Family gets out of town to Egypt. Now, that can be interpreted two ways. If Mary & Joseph were simply looking to cross the border, from Bethlehem to Egypt is 40 miles, two hurried days of travel then across a line of jurisdiction and possible safety.
Much ancient art shows them going to Egypt-Egypt, as in Cairo and pyramids, but that’s more like 260 miles if they fled that far.
In Ohio terms, it’s 250 miles from Cleveland to Cincinnati (you can ask Allen Harris about that). The big diagonal across our region is about the journey from Bethlehem to the Nile River, but again, that’s not on I-71, it would have been on foot, camping along the way (like Steve Bentley). Another angle would be to drop due south from Wauseon to our tradition’s roots in Cane Ridge, Kentucky, also around 250 miles.
But for that key journey, of which we are certain of at least the distances and the challenges Mary and Joseph experienced, 90 miles. In Ohio, that’s the same as walking from Clyde to Bellefontaine, or from Mansfield to Gender Road in Canal Winchester . . . and just like the one thing we’re not sure of for the trip’s route from Nazareth to Bethlehem, it’s still the same distance whether going by way of St. Andrew in Dublin or passing through Newark: 90 miles either way.
From the northeast, a journey starting in Stow to end up in Cambridge is about 90; if you kept heading south for the Ohio River, from Cambridge to Marietta is about that 40 mile trip from Bethlehem to Egypt’s border, as is from Middletown north to Clayton & United Christian on Hoke Rd.
The Bible narratives we know best would fit neatly into the Buckeye state from almost any angle. What we have lost for the most part is the context of travel, and the kind of reflections and meditations you might have on the road, alongside of the risks and hazards along the way. It’s worth our time to try and imaginatively slow down, even as we drive about on our tasks at a mile a minute, and think about the distances covered, and how, in these beloved stories.
Oh, and the magi in Matthew 2? Zoroastrians still reverence the city of Yazd in Iran, a likely origin point for the magi’s story; from Yazd to Bethlehem is 1,500 miles. If you traveled from historic Bethany, West Virginia just east of us, across Ohio to Tulsa or Fort Worth: that’s still only about 1,200 miles. You’d have to keep going to Amarillo or Midland to match those three intrepid travelers… but that’s for Epiphany.
Rev. Jeff Gill,
Instructor, Phillips Theological Seminary
CMLT Program Granville, Ohio