Take a close look at the nativity scene in your favorite church. The baby Jesus is always in the center of his manger. Then there is Mary and, a little apart, Joseph, as well as shepherds with a couple of sheep, later the three wise men from the Orient and an angel high above the whole scene and of course the star of Bethlehem. Does anything miss? Yes, exactly: ox and donkey, they are – modestly in the background – but present at every representation.
But where do they come from? In the Gospel of Luke only the manger is mentioned in which Mary lays the divine child. With Matthew even the wise come, Jesus has hardly been born yet. So much for the secured New Testament situation without the ox and also devoid of any idea of a donkey. That was obviously not enough for early Christian popular belief. The earliest still existing artistic representation of an ox and a donkey adoring the wrapped baby Jesus in their midst, extremely stylized, can be seen on the decorative strip on the narrow side of a sarcophagus in Sant’Ambrogio in Milan, made around 385 AD Christianity had only just been declared the state religion by the Eastern Roman Emperor Theodosius I and his Western Roman counterpart, so that jewelry with Christian symbols could finally be officially trusted.
Around 600 AD the apocryphal – not included in the Bible canon – “Pseudo-Matthew Gospel” was created with numerous decorations of the Christmas story. There it says: “She (Mary) laid the boy in a manger, and the ox and donkey worshiped him. What was said by the prophet Isaiah came true: ‘The ox knows his owner and the donkey his manger Gentlemen. ‘”Isaiah 1: 3 in the Bible continues:” But Israel does not recognize it and my people do not hear it. ” This is what the prophet is about: to arouse the people to faith, for which the two animals in the barn serve as witnesses. But why these two of all people, and why have they found their way into every nativity scene since then – and probably even before that?
The patient donkey was the mount of kings and caravan drivers
Of course, the ox is a common sacrificial animal of the time and in this respect already heralds the sacrifice of Christ, whereas the donkey was the mount of kings and the caravan driver. On a donkey’s stuffing, Jesus enters Jerusalem, cheered like a king, on Palm Sunday, which, in addition to the “coronation” of the Savior, also contains a message of peace. Aggressive generals always ride on horseback with clinking arms, while recognized merchants in the Levant prefer the frugal, sure-footed and patient donkey, not a hectic escape animal. In this respect, the ox and donkey indicate the entire story of Jesus through their presence at the manger. They were more important to the early Christians than Mother Mary and the carpenter Joseph, who were only added as indispensable crèche staff in the 6th century.
To further clarify these secrets of the Christmas story, however, one has to delve into the prehistory of animal myths. Aurochs already adorned the Ice Age cave paintings of Lascaux and Chauvet as mythically elevated game. And Julius Caesar in “De Bello Gallico” in Germania described the almost hopeless hunt for aurochs almost the size of an elephant. The ox stands for pure elemental power of nature, tamed only by castration, which the Egyptians revered in the form of the Apis bull as the embodiment of the creator god Ptah. Bull cults in general were very present in the Mediterranean region from the Minotaur on Crete to the Mithras cult, which was widespread in the Roman Empire just around 100 AD with its ritual bull-killing. It is always about power and strength and their transfer to weak people.
With the Egyptians, the god of chaos wears a donkey’s head
Even richer and more complex is the mythical story of the donkey, which was irreplaceable in the biblical region of the donkey nomads as a pack animal and mount, as well as milk and cheese supplier. Only with a donkey at the head of a caravan could one traverse the often stony desert passages with a safe step and make optimal use of its fine weather capacity for water and springs. In his study of the cultural history and domestication of the donkey in “Onos Lyras” (The donkey with the lyre), the musicologist Martin Vogel traces the simultaneous emergence of metal processing, long-distance trade and music embedded in monotheistic cults around the rise of Yahweh “from the donkey god zum Herr der Welt “, as a later portrayal of the culture of the” donkey men “is titled by him. Cain’s descendants Jubal, Tubal and Jabal are each presented in Genesis 4 as the ancestors of music, metalworking and nomadic life, and each time the donkey played an important role. Their importance is also underlined by the fact that, according to the Old Testament, their firstborn could not be sacrificed.
Donkeys have also left traces in Greek mythology, be it as the god of light “Apollon Onos”, the donkey-like, or in the form of the centaurs, who are not always horse people, but sometimes also have donkey bodies. Among the Egyptians, Seth, the god of chaos, wears a donkey’s head. But what remained strongest – not only in the Christmas crib – was the charisma of the donkey with the Christians. In the 4th century a donkey was brought to the altar on Palm Sunday, and special donkey fairs were held to celebrate the flight of the Holy Family to Egypt. So it is not surprising that donkeys and other incarnations of the animal made their way into the modern fairy tale world. By no means lazy and stubborn, the particularly courageous donkey as head of the Bremen Town Musicians says to the rooster when he tries to convince him of their adventure trip: “You can find something better than death everywhere.”