The nitpicker's guide to Journey to Bethlehem – part three

Jan 05, 2024

∙ Paid

Part one | Part two | Part three

Joseph tells Fig, the donkey, “Stop being such an—” And then Fig makes a sound, to signal that Mary is approaching.

Presumably Fig interrupted Joseph’s use of the word “ass”, which was the common word for donkeys a few centuries ago.

Zechariah performs the wedding for Mary and Joseph as Anna watches.

Joseph and Mary literally tie a knot as part of the ceremony.

“Tying the knot” is a common expression for marriage or betrothal, but I don’t believe the practice has ever been part of Jewish wedding rituals.
I can’t find a particular origin for this expression.
There are many websites that claim it comes from an ancient Celtic ritual in which the hands of the bride and groom are tied together with a string or ribbon, but Wikipedia says that’s more of a modern neopagan ritual that has been “erroneously” projected onto pre-Christian history.1
Others point to a saying that appears in John Ray’s Compleat Collection of English Proverbs (1670), which declares that a man, by making his wedding vows, “hath tied a knot with his tongue that he cannot untie with all his teeth.”
Or perhaps, within the universe of this film, the knot-tying at the wedding has something to do with the verse from Ecclesiastes that Mary’s father quoted at the betrothal ceremony in Part One (“Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves, a cord of three strands is not easily broken”).
In any case, many wedding traditions do make use of accessories to express the unity of newly married couples, and of course, in this case, the knotted cloth held by Mary and Joseph gives them something to dance with as they sing.

Joseph leans in to kiss Mary during the ceremony, and she turns her face away.

Mary has learned to accept her marriage to Joseph, up to a point. But she has not yet fully embraced it on a romantic or physically expressive level. That will come later, at the end of the film.

Antipater tells the Magi, “You have been here a very long time…”

Indeed, if “weeks” had already transpired since the Magi’s arrival a couple scenes ago, maybe they’ve been there for “months” by now!
As noted in Part Two, there is no indication that the biblical Magi stayed with Herod for any particular length of time.

Antipater calls the prophesied messiah and his mother “peasants”, twice.

This is interesting, as the film’s depiction of Mary and Joseph’s culture—one in which Mary’s sisters can assume Mary’s husband will shower her with “jewels”—hasn’t seemed very peasant-like. If anything, Mary and her family seem to live more like members of the modern middle class.

Balthazar says, “The meaning of life comes not from what others do for us, but what we do for others.”

There is no exact parallel to this statement in the Bible, but it dovetails with a number of biblical statements, such as the ‘Golden Rule’ (“Do to others what you would have them do to you”; Matthew 7:12, Luke 6:31).

Gaspar says, “King or peasant, we will all one day bend the knee.”

Paul, in one of his epistles, quotes an early Christian hymn that says every knee will bow before Jesus (Philippians 2:9-11).
In another epistle, he quotes Isaiah to the effect that every knee will bow before God (Romans 14:11; cf Isaiah 45:23).

After Antipater leaves the room, Balthazar asks Gaspar, “Are you certain the child will be born in Bethlehem?”

Apparently the Magi have figured out, on their own, where the child will be born.
In Matthew’s gospel, it is Herod who learns (from his scribes) that the messiah has already been born in Bethlehem, and he gives this information to the Magi (Matthew 2:3-8).

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