Gifts of the animals for the baby Jesus
[not really a Cartoon Critic post]
“Naked Pastor” is the handle of cartoonist and former pastor David Hayward, whose says his work aims at starting “honest conversations about life, healing, and spirituality.” This cartoon, a borderless one-panel vignette, depicts the baby Jesus in a manger1 surrounded by a wider-than-usual array of animals. Like the Little Drummer Boy, but with prophetic foresight, each animal pledges to do what is in its power for the newborn king.
As an aside, this is more a Bible post, or a Bible-and-tradition post, than a Cartoon Critic post, since I have no craft-specific thoughts about the cartooning. Hey, maybe I should rebrand my “Cartoon Critic” posts “Thought Bubbles,” and then I can include tangentially cartoon-related posts like this! What do you think? (Heck, if I were writing more about cartooning and less about theology and other things, I’d be tempted to redub the whole Substack “Thought Bubbles.” I’m not tempted—I don’t think—but Thought Bubbles is certainly a better name than All Things SDG.)
Notes about the animals in this cartoon in relation to the Bible record:
Like the donkey ridden by Mary to Bethlehem and the horse from which St. Paul fell on the road to Damascus, the animals surrounding Jesus in the stable at his birth and the camels ridden by the Magi are not, in fact, mentioned in the New Testament. They are products of Christian extrapolation and imagination, cross-fertilized by links to Old Testament passages.
Both the stable and the usual animals—cows, oxen, sheep—at Jesus’ birth are an extrapolation from a single word in Luke’s infancy narrative: the manger in which the swaddled Jesus was laid, there being no normal lodging available to them. This is traditionally translated as “no room at the inn,” although recent scholarship has argued that it was a guest room that was occupied, and that the manger may have been, not, as traditionally proposed, in a stand-alone stable or a cave, but in a room in the house where animals were kept.2 The picture of animals beside Jesus’ manger is bolstered by a connection to Job 39:9: “Is the wild ox willing to serve you? Will it spend the night at your crib?”—or, in some translations, “by your manger?”3
Likewise, while Matthew’s infancy narrative makes no mention of the mode of transportation used by the Magi, the camels are certain supplied from Isaiah 60, a passage which Matthew doubtless had in mind in his account of the Magi and their gifts: “A multitude of camels shall cover you, the young camels of Midian and Ephah; all those from Sheba shall come. They shall bring gold and frankincense.”4
Whether or not Mary rode a donkey from Nazareth to Bethlehem in Luke—or from Bethlehem to Egypt and back to Nazareth in Matthew—Jesus did, of course, ride a donkey himself, some 30-odd years later in the Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem, as attested in all four Gospels.
The cow pledging to quench his thirst may be a bit off the mark: While milk was a staple in the “land of milk and honey,” goat’s milk was the norm; sheep’s milk was also used, but cow’s milk, so far as I know, was seldom if ever used. (Cows were mainly used for meat.)
The fish pledging to pay his taxes is the deepest cut: In Matthew’s Gospel Jesus first tells Peter that they are exempt from the obligation to pay the temple tax—then tells Peter to cast a hook into the sea (n.b. fishing wasn’t always done by nets!), promising him that in the mouth of the first fish he draws up he will find a shekel worth the temple tax for the two of them.5
In all four Gospels, what comes down on Jesus at his baptism in the Jordan (or, in the Gospel of John, in connection with his association with John the Baptist at the Jordan) is not an actual dove, but the Holy Spirit descending “like a dove.” Still, it still seems reasonable to give the dove some kind of bragging rights.
It is not clear to me what manner of poultry, on the sheep’s back, pledges to feed him, or whether eggs or flesh are in view.
The punchline, of course, is the pig, who is nonplused to find itself predicting its own dark role in the strange story in the Synoptic Gospels of the exorcism of the Gerasene (or Gadarene) demoniac. While expelling a demonic horde going by the collective handle “Legion,” Jesus accedes to the demons’ plea, after departing from their human host, to enter into a nearby herd of swine. This quickly leads to the swine rushing down a slope into a nearby lake and drowning.
Attentive readers of All Things SDG will not be surprised that I would like to think the camel is also contemplating how it will repeatedly furnish Jesus with absurdist imagery for his provocative sayings and punchlines.
Not quite swaddled, arms freely waving!
I have no axe to grind in this question myself, but I mention it because I find it helpful to bear in mind that the traditional pictures may not be right.
Update: In addition to the ox “manger/crib” connection in Job, my friend Peter T. Chattaway writes in the comments, “By the 2nd century, some Christians had begun to link this story to an Old Testament prophecy about an ox that knows its master and an ass (or donkey) that knows its owner’s ‘manger’ (Isaiah 1:3). These two animals—the ox and the ass—have been mainstays in depictions of the Nativity ever since.”
The repeated mentions in this chaper of “kings” coming in procession and ministering to Zion are probably partly responsible for the identification of the Magi as “kings” (and, of course, the traditional number of the kings reflects the number of the gifts). Also relevant in this regard is Psalm 72:
May the kings of Tarshish and of the isles
render him tribute,
may the kings of Sheba and Seba
bring gifts.
May all kings fall down before him,
all nations give him service.
Fish also, of course, figure prominently in the single best-attested miracle of Jesus’ public career, the feeding of the multitudes with a few loaves of bread and a few fish, which appears in all four Gospels (and twice in Mark and Matthew).
Regarding the animals extrapolated from Luke's reference to the manger: in my "nitpicker's guide to Journey to Bethlehem" last year, I wrote:
"By the 2nd century, some Christians had begun to link this story to an Old Testament prophecy about an ox that knows its master and an ass (or donkey) that knows its owner’s 'manger' (Isaiah 1:3). These two animals—the ox and the ass—have been mainstays in depictions of the Nativity ever since."
An article I linked to in that post also ties the traditional depiction of the ox and the ass to "an old Latin translation of Habakkuk 3:2" that says "in the midst of two animals thou shalt be known."
For whatever that's worth!