Doc Holliday and the Three Wise Men

I always thought a great name for a festive season rock band would be Doc Holliday and the Three Wise Men. either that or it would make a great name for the ultimate Western/Sword and Sandal mash up movie that I suspect only the Italians could truly make. The final show down with the Clantons, King Herod's special hit squad, in the Nativity Coral would be an amazing spectacle of slings and arrows would conjure up all the grandeur of Quo Vadis with the surreal staring and eye  twitching of The Good the Bad and the Ugly. And as Lee Van Cleef's consumptive Doc Holliday coughs off into the sunset on his camel, the Magi are free to present their gifts in the the now peaceful town of Bethlehem to the new born king. The last thing we see, as the 'FINE' appears before the closing credits, is Livio Lorenzon's King Herod in the capital, cursing the heavens at the news of the Clanton Squads demise. As awesome as it would be, I feel that this movie may never see the light of day. Human myth making is an amazing phenomena but  this scenario may 'jump the shark' just a little too far to ever become a reality.

Never the less, both the Three Wise Men and Doc Holliday have seen their own share of legend and mythology laid over the known or assumed facts of their lives. Often this is the problem, human beings need to know things about their heroes and when the facts are sketchy or unremarkable we make things up. The beauty of this is that our heroes of the past become the icons we need  for the here and now and not merely long dead mere mortals of bygone eras.

My first introduction to Doc Holliday was in the movie 'My Darling Clementine (1946)' starring Victor Mature as Doc Holliday and Henry Fonda as Wyatt Earp. Here Doc Holliday was a surgeon come gunfighter who valiantly fights his consumptive way through the film along side his buddy, Marshall Wyatt Earp. We meet his attractive love from Boston, the genteel Clementine Carter, played by the lovely Cathy Downs. We watch the long and tense gunfight at the OK Corral get slugged out dramatically over a minute of the film. We see the sickly Doc Holliday fall, slain by a Clanton bullet, before the grip of tuberculosis could take him, The last we see of him alive is the good Doctor falling to the ground, his white handkerchief caught against the gate he was sheltering behind, blowing in the wind, a powerful symbol of his surrender to death.

I was later surprised to find out that Doc Holliday wasn't a surgeon but a dentist,  His beautiful girl friend was actually known as 'Big Nose Kate' and the gunfight was only 30 seconds long and took place in a vacant block near by the OK Corral and not with in it. So much for the dramatic ballet of gun play that Hollywood would lead us to believe. As for Doc's blazing demise during the gunfight, it actually took place 6 years later. The movie may not be historically accurate but it paints a more exciting picture of one of the most famous showdowns in the old west.

When it comes to the Three Wise Men, the stories told well and truly out shine the known facts.The only reference in the Bible to these figures is in vs 1-11 in the 2nd chapter of the Gospel of Matthew. from this we learn that they were 'Magi' from the east that had followed a star to visit a new born King. Magi were originally Persian Zoroastrian priests who had a particular interest in the stars with the name coming to refer to astrologers in general. With them they brought three gifts to present to the royal child once they had found him, gold, frankincense and myrrh, After arriving in the capital Jerusalem they seek audience with King Herod and his advisers,  Learning that the Hebrew scriptures mention the birth of the awaited messiah in Bethlehem, the Magi follow the star again until it stops over the place where Jesus and his family were residing. An angel then warns them in a dream not to report back to King Herod and they return home via a different route. The Bible gives us no names, no country of origin, what they were riding or even the number of wise men. In fact most of what we know about them seem to have been added to the stories later in the retelling.

As with most revered figures, the lack of information was soon compensated for, with traditions maybe historical but most likely legendary, coming into the stories of the faithful to spice up the story with details. One of the problems with the wise men was that they were presented at best as educated astrologers and at worst magicians or sorcerers. To the early Christians this may have been a difficult thing to stomach so the sanitising of the Magi had to begin. St Ignatius of Antioch in his letter to the Ephesians, written in the early 2nd century suggests that at the arrival of the Star of Bethlehem all magic in the world ceased.  It can be assumed that many saw this as the catalyst for the interest of the Magi and that they were now seeking the new source of power in the presence of the Christ child. So now longer were the Magi occult users following their forbidden astrological arts to seek out the new born King but dis empowered figures seeking the new truth. This was a more palatable image for the faithful but the transformation was far from complete.

In the early 3rd century, the christian writer Tertullian  stated that the Magi were actually kings, So astrology aside, these men were actually world leaders who were acknowledging Jesus of Nazareth as the true ruling power. Caesar and Herod may have missed the boat but others had not, at the very beginning Christ was acknowledged by the nations as their King of Kings. Christians could stand firm in their faith that he was the true power in the empire. By the number of gifts the number of the kings was deduced to be three although some traditions suggest as many as twelve. By the time the Armenian Infancy Gospel was written around 600 AD, the names of  Gasper, Melchior and Balthazar had been given to the Three Kings and the transformation was complete. The vague shadowy figures of the Magi had become the very regal Three Kings that we know from carols, annual nativity scenes, and cards riding into history on their camels. They would grace the palace of Herod and the lowly cattle shed in Bethlehem to take their place amongst the saints and martyrs of the church.
Christians could look to these Royal figures and see, that just like themselves, even the Kings of the Orient recognised the true King when their own kings possibly did not.  Christ was Lord of beggar and monarch alike, the true King of Kings. I suspect many Christians today see them as wise men of the ancient world who accepted Christ as Lord when many so called wise men of our age argue the against the very existence of God. For the modern church it is their wisdom and insight into divine truth that is their great, enduring virtue,

Whether it be Doc Holliday or the Three Wise Men, we all have a tendency to look back at our important figures of history with the glasses of the present. Mere mortals of the past can become powerful symbols of the present when we project our current concerns and values onto their cultural memory. Morally complex and violent adventurers can become symbols of law and order in a simpler but wilder time, an important thing for a society recovering from war and seeking stability in the face great loss. Controversial masters of the mystic arts can become the champions of traditional faith and wisdom in an increasingly secular society. This approach may display a cavalier attitude towards the factual details of history but it enables our history to resonate with the present in deep and meaningful ways. We look back to answer questions of the present, to be inspired and strengthened by the past, and to look to a brighter future.Who knows you or I might one day become legendary figures, the mundane and the ordinary facts of our lives transformed into a grand epic of operatic proportion to serve the needs of a future age. And if this happens hopefully they'll make me better looking with killer abs. only the future will tell.

As for my movie idea, I don't think it will ever go ahead despite the continuing popularity of the Three Kings and Doc Holliday. This won't stop me from dreaming and hoping though, as I see the four characters becoming drawn together. An example of this is the fact that the current Doctor Who, Peter Capaldi got to play Balthazar in the recent film The Nativity Story (2006) and Doctor Who was mistaken for Doc Holliday in the 1966 story The Gunfighters, not to mention that he even has his own annual Christmas 'holiday' special. This is far from being a coincidence, so for me the circle of geek is now complete.