“Where Ox and Ass are Feeding…”

The leftover turkey, cranberry salad, and pumpkin pie are gone and after a long and hard year, we are beginning our celebration of Advent.  The lights are beginning to go up on our streets, and the sweet sound of carols can be heard in our homes.  Christmas is coming!

Among the carols we love to sing is a rather old traditional English carol: “What Child Is This?”  The second verse begins with an interesting image.  After the first verse establishes who the child we celebrate is, the second verse asks, “Why lies he in such mean estate, where ox and ass are feeding?”

What do you think of that?  I must confess that for years I never gave these lyrics a second thought.  But then I stumbled across a short monograph entitled No Trace of Christmas? Discovering Advent in the Old Testament.[1]  Written by Christopher Dohmen, professor of Old Testament at the University of Osnabrück, this book, without so much as a mention of our English carol, has illuminated this verse for me.

In describing the early Christian representations of the manger scene, Dohmen makes an interesting observation.  “It is surprising,” he notes, “that long before the shepherds’ sheep can be found in these Christmas scenes, not one of them lacks an ox and a donkey [emphasis his].  We could almost get the impression that some one or other knew something about this ox and donkey that the evangelists no longer remembered, or had overlooked.  A search for this apparent lost tradition about the ox and ass at the manger is pretty exciting.  We find no story or reference to anyone at all who at any time might have retained a memory of an ox and a donkey; nevertheless, what we do find are the oldest pictorial representations of the Christmas message in Christianity – and they do not show what we would expect, Mary and Joseph and the child in the manger, but only the child in the manger, flanked by – an ox and a donkey!”

The early Christian tradition of the infant Christ being placed between an ox and a donkey finds what may be a representative explanation in an eighth or ninth century text anachronistically attributed to Jerome.  Sometimes known as “The Infancy Narrative,” this text reads:

“And on the third day after the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, the most blessed Mary went forth out of the cave, and entering a stable, placed the child in the stall, and the ox and the ass adored him.  Then was fulfilled that which was said by Isaiah the prophet, saying: ‘The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib.’”[2]

The value of this late, apocryphal work lies in its connecting the early Christian association of the ox, the ass, and the manger with a particular scripture.  Isaiah 1:3 tells us that, “The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master’s crib, but Israel does not know, my people do not understand.”

The earliest Christian artistic reflections on the birth of Christ, rather than focusing on a historical representation of what that scene looked like, focused instead on a theological representation of the significance of what that scene offered.  For the early Christian community, the infant Christ was the true owner and sustainer of his people.  The ox and the ass are visible invitations to understand and acknowledge who Christ is and what he offers to all who humbly receive him.

Our old English carolers understood this.  “Why lies he in such mean estate, where ox and ass are feeding?  Good Christian, fear; for sinners here the silent Word is pleading.”

May your December be bright and full of music.  And may you find joy in taking your place alongside the ox and the ass this Advent season.

Your Pastor,

Bob Bjerkaas

[1] Christopher Dohmen, No Trace of Christmas?: Discovering Advent in the Old Testament, trans., Linda Maloney (The Liturgical press: Collegeville, Minnesota, 2000).

[2] The Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, Chapter 14, Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 8, p. 375.

N.B. The image is the earliest known representation of the manger scene.  It is an engraving from a sarcophagus lid of a Roman general, Stilicho, believed to have died in 408 A.D.