On a lighter note for your Epiphany joy, here is an offering from the official WDTPRS Parodohymnodist, the great Tim Ferguson.
He provides an introduction:
I was just poking around my computer looking for a file and happened across a little ditty I wrote a couple years ago for Scripture Scholars attempting to celebrate Epiphany. In light of today’s feast, and yesterday’s comment about you being a symbologist, I thought it appropriate.
We three kings from the Orient,
Searching for the Christ-event,
Well, not really
“Kings” who rule, we
Aren’t what we representOh-ho, mythic figures in the plot
Drawn from pagan sources, not
Real kerygma
Just an enigma
For Jew, Greek and HottentotWere we three, or thirty, or less?
Bultmann, Brown and Crossan can’t guess,
Wise men wonder
Scholars plunder
The Bible’s symbolic excess,Oh-ho mythic figures we might be
To students of “symbology,”
Not geschichte,
Für vehrlichte,
But mere possibility.Devotees of Faharavars?
Students of the distant stars?
Luke’s creation?
Deviation?
Or Tri-racial avatars?Oh-ho mythic figures, from afar
Gaspar, Melch’or, Balthasar
If not kerygma,
Then go fig-ya
Just who you think we are.
Sing along!
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Oh, dear! I’m not smart enough for this!
This little hymn reminds me of an amusing one written by the late Anglican theologian E. L. Mascall. The first verse goes,
“Hark! The Herald angels sing
Bultmann is the latest thing.
Or they would if he had not
Demythologized the lot.”
Excellent parody! But, in fairness to Brown, in his “Birth of the Messiah” he warns against people concluding that “there were no Magi” because it is unprovable that they weren’t any, despite the extual and/or historical problems identified by some critical scholars. He then shares a funny anecdote of a young biblical scholar in a seminary who made definitive claims in class that there were no Magi. Subsequently, on his office door appeared a cartoon drawing – – probably drawn by one or more naughty seminarians – – of three very angry and physically menacing Magi! I’ve wondered if that incident, in fact, happened to a young Raymond Brown…
Tim Ferguson has nailed it again! I was trying to sing it to myself here in the library-very clever!
jarthurcrank-ooo, that IS a funny anecdote about the naughty seminarians and the ‘ticked off Magi’! I would have loved to have seen that!
I love parodies.
Here’s one that the Crescat posted back in August….
“The best of both worlds…..you can have your TLM and Marty Haugen at the same time.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9_RZQ3GLmI&feature=player_embedded
Academics’ desire to establish themselves with novel theories has led them to thin ice. Why else would they wander so far from the texts? Mr. Ferguson’s “Three Kings” grabs the Geist correctly. See also the article on the Magi on 8 Jan.
Salutationes omnibus.