BIRTH OF A MAN CHILD
In the Gospel story of Jesus' life there is not a single incident that is not in perfect harmony with the prevailing modes of thought and the current speech of the land of its origin. I do not know how many times I heard it stated in my native land and at our own fireside that heavenly messengers in the forms of patron saints or angels came to pious, childless wives, in dreams and visions, and cheered them with the promise of maternity. It was nothing uncommon for such women to spend a whole night in a shrine "wrestling in prayer," either with the blessed Virgin or some other saint, for such a divine assurance; and I remember a few of my own kindred to have done so.
Perhaps the most romantic religious practice in this connection is the zeara. Interpreted literally, the word zeara means simply a visit. In its social use it is the equivalent of a call of long or short duration. But religiously the zeara means a pilgrimage to a shrine. However, strictly speaking, the word "pilgrimage" means to the Syrians a journey of great religious significance whose supreme purpose is the securing of a blessing for the pilgrim, with no reference to a special need. The zeara is a pilgrimage with a specific purpose. The zayir (visitor to a shrine) comes seeking either to be healed of a certain ailment, to atone for a sin, or to be divinely helped in some other way. Unlike a pilgrimage also, a zeara may be made by one person in behalf of another. When, for example, a person is too ill to travel, or is indifferent to a spiritual need which such a visit is supposed to fill, his parents or other close friends may make a zeara in his behalf. But much more often a zeara is undertaken by women for the purpose of securing the blessing of fecundity, or consecrating an approaching issue of wedlock (if it should prove to be a male) to God, and to the patron saint of the visited sanctuary.
Again the word "pilgrimage" is used only to describe a visit by a Christian to Jerusalem, or by a Mohammedan to Mecca, while the zeara describes a visit to any one of the lesser shrines.
The happy journey is often made on foot, the parties most concerned walking all the way "on the flesh of their feet"; that is, with neither shoes nor sandals on. This great sacrifice is made as a mark of sincere humility which is deemed to be pleasing to God and his holy saints. However, the wearing of shoes and even the use of mounts is not considered a sinful practice on such occasions, and is indulged in by many of the well-to-do families. The state of the heart is, of course, the chief thing to be considered.
In the fourth chapter of the Second Book of Kings we are told that "the Shunammite woman" used an ass when she sought Elisha to restore her dead son to her. In the twenty-second verse (the Revised Version), we are told, "And she called unto her husband, and said, Send me, I pray thee, one of the servants, and one of the asses, that I may run to the man of God, and come again.... Then she saddled an ass, and said to her servant, Drive, and go forward; slacken me not the riding, except I bid thee. So she went, and came unto the man of God to mount Carmel."
Fasting and prayer on the way are often pronounced phases of a zeara. However, wine-drinking by the men in the company and noisy gayety are not deemed altogether incompatible with the solemnity of the occasion. The pious visitors carry with them presents to the abbot and to the monks who serve the shrine. A silver or even gold candlestick, or a crown of either metal for the saint, is also carried to the altar. The young mother in whose behalf the zeara is undertaken is tenderly cared for by every member of the party. She is "the chosen vessel of the Lord."
The zûwar (visitors) remain at the holy shrine for one or two nights, or until the "presence" is revealed; that is, until the saint manifests himself. The prayerfully longed-for manifestation comes almost invariably in a dream, either to the mother or some other worthy in the party. How like the story of Joseph all this is! In the first chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel, the twentieth verse, it is said of Joseph, "But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus; for he shall save his people from their sins."
In this manner the promise is made to the waiting mother, who "keeps these things, and ponders them in her heart."
The promise thus secured, the mother and the father vow that the child shall be a nedher; that is, consecrated to the saint who made the promise to the mother. The vow may mean one of several things. Either that a sum of money be "given to the saint" upon the advent of the child, or that the child be carried to the same sanctuary on another zeara with gifts, and so forth, or that his hair will not be cut until he is seven years old, and then cut for the first time before the image of his patron saint at the shrine, or some other act of pious fulfillment.
The last form of a vow, the consecration of the hair of the head for a certain period, is practiced by men of all ages. The vow is made as a petition for healing from a serious illness, rescue from danger, or purely as an act of consecration. In the eighteenth chapter of the Book of Acts, the eighteenth verse, we have the statement: "And Paul after this tarried there yet a good while, and then took his leave of the brethren, and sailed thence into Syria, and with him Priscilla and Aquila; having shorn his head in Cenchrea: for he had a vow." It was also in connection with this practice that Paul was induced by the "brethren" at Jerusalem to make a compromise which cost him dearly. In the twenty-first chapter of Acts, the twenty-third verse, we are told that those brethren said to Paul, "We have four men who have a vow on them; them take, and purify thyself with them, and be at charges for them, that they may shave their heads."
The last service of this kind which I attended in Syria was for a cousin of mine, a boy of twelve, who was a nedher, or as the word is rendered in the English Bible, a Nazarite. We assembled in the church of St. George of Sûk. The occasion was very solemn. A mass was celebrated after the order of the Greek Orthodox Church. Near the close of the service the tender lad was brought by his parents in front of the Royal Door at the altar. While repeating a prayer, the priest cut the hair on the crown of the boy's head with the scissors, in the shape of a cross. The simple act released the child and his parents of their solemn vow.
"Twentieth-century culture" is prone to call all such practices superstitions. So they are to a large extent. But I deem it the higher duty of this culture to interpret sympathetically rather than to condemn superstition in a sweeping fashion. I am a lover of a rational theology and a reasonable faith, but I feel that in our enthusiasm for such a theology and such a faith we often fail to appreciate the deep spiritual longing which is expressed in superstitious forms of worship. What is there in such religious practices as those I have mentioned but the expression of the heart-burning of those parents for the spiritual welfare and security of their children? What do we find here but evidences of a deep and sincere yearning for divine blessings to come upon the family and the home? Thoughts of God at the marriage altar; thoughts of God when the promise of parenthood becomes evident; thoughts of God when a child comes into the world; thoughts of God and of his holy prophets and saints as friends and companions in all the changes and chances of the world. Here the challenge to modern rationalism is not to content itself with rebuking superstitions, but to give the world deeper spiritual visions than those which superstitions reveal, and to compass childhood and youth by the gracious presence of the living God.
In a most literal sense we always understood the saying of the psalmist, "Children are a heritage from the Lord." Above and beyond all natural agencies, it was He who turned barrenness to fecundity and worked the miracle of birth. To us every birth was miraculous, and childlessness an evidence of divine disfavor. From this it may be inferred how tenderly and reverently agreeable to the Syrian ear is the angel's salutation to Mary, "Hail, thou that art highly favored, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women!—Behold thou shalt conceive in thy womb and bring forth a son."[[1]]
A miracle? Yes. But a miracle means one thing to your Western science, which seeks to know what nature is and does by dealing with secondary causes, and quite another thing to an Oriental, to whom God's will is the law and gospel of nature. In times of intellectual trouble this man takes refuge in his all-embracing faith,—the faith that to God all things are possible.
The Oriental does not try to meet an assault upon his belief in miracles by seeking to establish the historicity of concrete reports of miracles. His poetical, mystical temperament seeks its ends in another way. Relying upon his fundamental faith in the omnipotence of God, he throws the burden of proof upon his assailant by challenging him to substantiate his denial of the miracles. So did Paul (in the twenty-sixth chapter of the Book of Acts) put his opponents at a great disadvantage by asking, "Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you, that God should raise the dead?"
But the story of Jesus' birth and kindred Bible records disclose not only the predisposition of the Syrian mind to accept miracles as divine acts, without critical examination, but also its attitude toward conception and birth,—an attitude which differs fundamentally from that of the Anglo-Saxon mind. With the feeling of one who has been reminded of having ignorantly committed an improper act, I remember the time when kind American friends admonished me not to read from the pulpit such scriptural passages as detailed the accounts of conception and birth, but only to allude to them in a general way. I learned in a very short time to obey the kindly advice, but it was a long time before I could swing my psychology around and understand why in America such narratives were so greatly modified in transmission.
The very fact that such stories are found in the Bible shows that in my native land no such sifting of these narratives is ever undertaken when they are read to the people. From childhood I had been accustomed to hear them read at our church, related at the fireside, and discussed reverently by men and women at all times and places. There is nothing in the phraseology of such statements which is not in perfect harmony with the common, everyday speech of my people.
To the Syrians, as I say, "children are a heritage from the Lord." From the days of Israel to the present time, barrenness has been looked upon as a sign of divine disfavor, an intolerable calamity. Rachel's cry, "Give me children, or else I die,"[[2]] does not exaggerate the agony of a childless Syrian wife. When Rebecca was about to depart from her father's house to become Isaac's wife, her mother's ardent and effusively expressed wish for her was, "Be thou the mother of thousands of millions."[[3]] This mother's last message to her daughter was not spoken in a corner. I can see her following the bride to the door, lifting her open palms and turning her face toward heaven, and making her affectionate petition in the hearing of a multitude of guests, who must have echoed her words in chorus.
In the congratulations of guests at a marriage feast the central wish for the bridegroom and bride is invariably thus expressed: "May you be happy, live long, and have many children!" And what contrasts very sharply with the American reticence in such matters is the fact that shortly after the wedding, the friends of the young couple, both men and women, begin to ask them about their "prospects" for an heir. No more does a prospective mother undertake in any way to disguise the signs of the approaching event, than an American lady to conceal her engagement ring. Much mirth is enjoyed in such cases, also, when friends and neighbors, by consulting the stars, or computing the number of letters in the names of the parents and the month in which the miracle of conception is supposed to have occurred, undertake to foretell whether the promised offspring will be a son or a daughter. In that part of the country where I was brought up, such wise prognosticators believed, and made us all believe, that if the calculations resulted in an odd number the birth would be a son, but if in an even number, a daughter, which, as a rule, is not considered so desirable.
Back of all these social traits, and beyond the free realism of the Syrian in speaking of conception and birth, lies a deeper fact. To Eastern peoples, especially the Semites, reproduction in all the world of life is profoundly sacred. It is God's life reproducing itself in the life of man and in the living world below man; therefore the evidences of this reproduction should be looked upon and spoken of with rejoicing.
Notwithstanding the many and fundamental intellectual changes which I have undergone in this country of my adoption, I count as among the most precious memories of my childhood my going with my father to the vineyard, just as the vines began to "come out," and hearing him say as he touched the swelling buds, "Blessed be the Creator. He is the Supreme Giver. May He protect the blessed increase." Of this I almost always think when I read the words of the psalmist, "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof!"
Now I do not feel at all inclined to say whether the undisguised realism of the Orientals in speaking of reproduction is better than the delicate reserve of the Anglo-Saxons. In fact, I have been so reconstructed under Anglo-Saxon auspices as to feel that the excessive reserve of this race with regard to such things is not a serious fault, but rather the defect of a great virtue. My purpose is to show that the unreconstructed Oriental, to whom reproduction is the most sublime manifestation of God's life, cannot see why one should be ashamed to speak anywhere in the world of the fruits of wedlock, of a "woman with child." One might as well be ashamed to speak of the creative power as it reveals itself in the gardens of roses and the fruiting trees.
Here we have the background of the stories of Sarah, when the angel-guest prophesied fecundity for her in her old age; of Rebecca, and the wish of her mother for her, that she might become "the mother of thousands"; of Elizabeth, when the "babe leaped in her womb," as she saw her cousin Mary; and of the declaration of the angel to Joseph's spouse; "Thou shalt conceive in thy womb and bring forth a son."
Here it is explained, also, why upon the birth of a "man-child," well-wishers troop into the house,—even on the very day of birth,—bring their presents, and congratulate the parents on the divine gift to them. It was because of this custom that those strangers, the three "Wise Men" and Magi of the Far East, were permitted to come in and see the little Galilean family, while the mother was yet in childbed. So runs the Gospel narrative: "And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts,—gold, frankincense, and myrrh."[[4]]
So also were the humble shepherds privileged to see the wondrous child shortly after birth. "And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let us now go to Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us. And they came with haste, and found Mary and Joseph and the babe lying in a manger."[[5]]
In the twelfth verse of the second chapter of the Gospel of St. Luke, the English version says, "And this shall be a sign unto you; ye shall find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger." Here the word "clothes" is somewhat misleading. The Arabic version gives a perfect rendering of the fact by saying, "Ye shall find a swaddled babe, laid in a manger."
According to general Syrian custom, in earliest infancy a child is not really clothed, it is only swaddled. Upon birth the infant is washed in tepid water by the midwife, then salted, or rubbed gently with salt pulverized in a stone mortar especially for the occasion. (The salt commonly used in Syrian homes is coarse-chipped.) Next the babe is sprinkled with rehan,—a powder made of dried myrtle leaves,—and then swaddled.
The swaddle is a piece of stout cloth about a yard square, to one corner of which is attached a long narrow band. The infant, with its arms pressed close to its sides, and its feet stretched full length and laid close together, is wrapped in the swaddle, and the narrow band wound around the little body, from the shoulders to the ankles, giving the little one the exact appearance of an Egyptian mummy. Only a few of the good things of this mortal life were more pleasant to me when I was a boy than to carry in my arms a swaddled babe. The "salted" and "peppered" little creature felt so soft and so light, and was so appealingly helpless, that to cuddle it was to me an unspeakable benediction.
Such was the "babe of Bethlehem" that was sought by the Wise Men and the shepherds in the wondrous story of the Nativity.
And in describing such Oriental customs it may be significant to point out that, in certain localities in Syria, to say to a person that he was not "salted" upon birth is to invite trouble. Only a bendûq, or the child of an unrecognized father, is so neglected. And here may be realized the full meaning of that terrible arraignment of Jerusalem in the sixteenth chapter of the Book of Ezekiel. The Holy City had done iniquity, and therefore ceased to be the legitimate daughter of Jehovah. So the prophet cries, "The Lord came unto me, saying, Son of man, cause Jerusalem to know her abominations, and say, Thus saith the Lord God unto Jerusalem; Thy birth and thy nativity are of the land of Canaan; thy father was an Amorite, and thy mother a Hittite. And as for thy nativity, in the day thou wast born—neither wast thou washed in water to supple[[6]] thee; thou wast not salted at all, nor swaddled at all. No eye pitied thee, to do any of these things for thee, to have compassion upon thee; but thou wast cast out in the open field, to the loathing of thy person, in the day thou wast born."
[[1]] Luke i: 28, 31.
[[2]] Gen. xxx; 1.
[[3]] Gen. xxiv: 60.
[[4]] Matt. ii: 11.
[[5]] Luke ii: 15-16.
[[6]] "Cleanse" in the Revised Version.