SCRIPTURE
NO MERE ROMANCE The Gospel relates the story of the boy Jesus, at once prosaic and unfathomable n BY ANTHONY ESOLEN The Finding of Jesus by William Holman Hunt, Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery
P
eople who say the Gospels are mere romances, C.S. Lewis once said, evidently do not know what romances are about. Not to mean any disrespect, Lewis said, but the Gospels simply are not good enough for that. Think of the romance of Arthur, the boy hidden away to await the time when the mysterious Lady of the Lake will give him the sword Excalibur, and he will become king of England. What turns of fate there are in that story, what marvels of magic and love, what crises of loyalty and treachery, wisdom and folly! Think of the romance of Odysseus, harried by the gods from isle to isle on his way home from Troy, only to reach Ithaca at last, and, with the help of his son and a couple of faithful old farmhands, to slay the hundred and eight arrogant men who have been eating up his estate, slaying his cattle and paying unwelcome suit to his wife Penelope. No such things do we find in the story of Jesus. The accounts of His birth are miraculous, to be sure, and that should not embarrass us, because we are dealing with things divine. Yet they are also spare: some shepherds, two old people who spend their last days in the Temple, 44
INSIDE THE VATICAN JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2021
and three mystics watching the skies from Persia hear about Him; nobody else. There is no hoard of gold kept by the pixies. There is no Juno with a burning grudge. There is no foundling with a birthmark to identify him many years later. There is no love-potion the nephew drinks while bringing home the woman who is to marry his uncle. There is no man-eating monster prowling about the hall. The settings too are all wrong. Matthew begins with a dry genealogy. Luke gives us the prosaic details of worldly matters, as if someone were to say, “It happened just after Eisenhower signed the law instituting the Interstate Highway system.” John is fond of incidentals of geography and topology that jog his mind. “This took place,” he says, “in Bethany beyond the Jordan” (1:28), that is, in that Bethany over there, rather than in this Bethany here; as if to say, “I mean the Portland in Maine, not the one in Oregon.” Many a romancer weaves tales about the marvelous youth of his hero, because it is sport to see the man made manifest in the boy. Think of the fanciful Infancy Gospel of Thomas: Jesus breathes life into clay birds; he kills a
