Fans of Norah Lofts discussion
How Far to Bethlehem?
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How Far to Bethlehem - the journey
Well, I just googled Jexal and didn't come up with anything much, except there is a British porn star whose last name is Jexal. And there was a reference to How Far to Bethlehem?Somehow, I always had the idea that at least one of the Wise Men was from the Orient. But not sure why I thought that.
My version of HFTB, a Corgi pb, has distances from Bethlehem at the heading of each chapter. Jexal is described as being 700 miles away , Pyongyang in Korea where Melchior travels from is a huge 6,000 miles . Baltahazar comes from Edessa, 400 miles away. I think Jexal is the only fictional place in the whole, tho Im not sure about Bethphage
Gaspar is an invader of Jexal, he is a Mongolian ? or Bactrian ? from much further North. Jexal is described as having previously been invaded by Alexander on his way to India. NL also says it is "immensely old and has been described as the most beautiful city in the world" From the ways she describes the people , cultured, rich , soft living, peaceful etc , I think she is basing Jexal on somewhere like Persepolis or Babylon.
Traditionally the Magi were supposed to have come from Persia weren't they?
Here is a link to Alexander's journeys using an acient map -
http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pr...
You could see how Melchior might have met up with Gaspar and then later Balthazar coming down from Edessa etc.
I think this is a great idea Peggy
Sherry, how interesting that a search of Jexal does bring up a reference to "How Far to Bethelehem." Too bad it didn't bring up that it was the name of an ancient city in ___ country instead of a porn star! Barbara, good info on the map; I will try to to print it out. I will have to look up Bactrian, that is a term I am not familiar with. Didn't Gaspar's army of 500 all have red hair and blue eyes, along with bowed legs from learning to ride horses at an early age?
Oh Peggy, well spotted !! I missed that about the red hair and blue eyes , but that is exactly what NL says .." that race of which the 500 were at once the remnant and the flower had eyes as blue as the summer sky and believed boy babies were born with bowed legs, ready shaped to a horse's barrel'
and later she mentions the red hair too. They are sun worshippers it seems, unlike the Jexalians .
Now that makes me re-think my ideas of Mongolia or Bactria (now part of Afghanistan I think and probably still the scene of fighting !!)
Surely people from that region would be dark haired and dark eyed...so, hmmmm must look further ...maybe some Caucasion race of old?
Also, I see I repeated some stuff you had already found out and posted , so sorry , I jumped in too quickly !
Barbara, you are still on base with your ideas; I checked out "Bactria" last night and found some pretty interesting facts (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bactria), also found some references to red haired blue eyed people, as far away as China.Since this is NL's version of the Magi, I think now Jexal was not a real city, where the facts could be confirmed about who conquered it and so on, but it is still interesting (to me, lol) to know what geographic area we are talking about, and what "tribe" could be a link to Gaspar.
Also, Barbara, my copy says Pyongyang is 1600 miles from Bethlehem, which would seem to be a typo!
I appreciate all the insights while I run with this!
"Gaspar is an invader of Jexal, he is a Mongolian? or Bactrian?" Since NL clearly gave us one Asian Wise Man and one African, surely Gaspar must be intended to be European, or of European descent. The alternate tradition about the Magi, the one that doesn't make them all three Persian, has them representing the three major races of mankind.
Then, although "Jexal" is described as a city Alexander passed through en route to India, we're also told that Gaspar is the leader of a very recent band of conquerors--remember that the boy who would otherwise have been king of that city has asked Gaspar to consider marrying his sister to unite the old and new royal lines. And the new conquerors are red-haired and blue-eyed? Might they be CELTS? Nice to think!
I have been doing some research on the net and indeed there seems to have been a group of red haired, probably blue eyed, probably European in origin, types anciently around in those areas , certainly in China . Here's one of the links ( not the best one sorry)http://hubpages.com/hub/The-White-Tri....
Major finds seem to have been in the 1980's and I haven't been able to find any earlier - which leaves us with a little mystery since NL first published HFTB in the 1960's.
It must have been , if not a theory , at least a rumour well before the actual findings. Or NL is even more brilliant than we thought !
I saw a thing on PBS, I think about excavation of a grave of what was evidently a powerful woman in Mongolia or China, I can't remember. She had red hair, was caucasian. That gave rise to some interesting discussions.
Re message 3 above, I think that Jexal was based on Babylon. http://www.livius.org/aj-al/alexander...
The dates fit,and though they fit for Persepolis too, it was in ruins by the time of Christ.
Still don't know how NL knew about the ancient redhaired people tho.....
Barbara, some very fascinating links, I have looked at all of them. The mummies were amazing--the recognizable features and the vivid clothing colors after all those years. These links indicate that there were redheads or blondes with blue and green eyes throughout the middle east and asian countries so we are on the right track. Barbara, thanks for reminding us that Gaspar's people were sun worshippers.
Mary, good point about NL having the Magi represent the three major races of mankind.
Rita, you may be thinking of the "Beauty of Loulan."
I am fascinated by all this and will search diligently ( how topical is that! ) until I find ............Thank you Peggy for your wonderful idea.
I remember thinking 'Babylon' as I read the book. I looked at the links, and my impression is that the mummies of the white race were not discovered until the 1970s...? I wonder if the ancient Chinese would have looked at the white race as we so often look at other races - where we see them all as looking alike with black hair and yellow skin, or black skin, depending on the race. Perhaps they looked at the white tribe as all having red hair and blue eyes, without differentiating the nuances of color.
That's a thought Sherry - you mean NL might have been aware of some of the things commonly believed ( by the Chinese etc ). I can't find anything earlier then 1978 -and most of them were in the mid-1980's - in terms of actual archaeological findings. My copy of HFTB gives the publication date as 1965 so it msut have been known about or ,as you imply, a legend must have been in existence before any actual proof came to light.
I would be willing to bet there were legends about the white tribe long before the archeological discovery. Our Native American tribes have legends of at least one white, bearded, red-haired man in North America long before Columbus arrived.
Following Alice's idea ( and Mary's too I think) of re-reading HFTB over every Christmas, I am slowly doing it again, chapter by chapter and it has given me, all over again, admiration for NL as a writer. Every chapter ends on a profound note, happy, sad, sublime , whatever. She does it every time. For example, at the end of chapter where Mary visits Elisabeth
"And she turned upon them the smile that was to embrace the world"
And for Balthazaar, when he accosts Gaspar and Melchior and his dream seems to be coming true at last
" They looked at him with blank uncomprending faces and of all the bad moments in his life, that was quite the worst "
And humour too, as when Gaspar refuses to wear the triple crown of Jexal, being advised to on the grounds that it would impress people
' ..he retorted he could impress people in his own hat , or know why not."
Now I am up to the entry into Jerusalem, as is fitting for December the 28th!
BTW, harking back to some earlier posts, I have just read ( sorry I forget which chapter) of Gaspar's Mongolian homeland .
Also my copy , a Corgi pb, has a cover which seems to be very faithful to NL's descriptions of Gaspar Melchior and Balthazar as they enter Jerusalem, right down to B's turban of red silk woven through with blue, Gaspar's baggy riding pants, and Melchior's frail frame and conical hat.
Not a very elegantly thought-through post, sorry !
Barbara wrote: "Following Alice's idea ( and Mary's too I think) of re-reading HFTB over every Christmas, I am slowly doing it again, chapter by chapter and it has given me, all over again, admiration for NL as ..."I recommended this book to my pastor last week, as Bible Study was discussing books about the Nativity.
What a good idea, Sherry! The only other novel--historical, anyway--that I would think of recommending for that purpose is Lloyd Douglas's The Robe. I read it over and over the summer I was thirteen (the same summer I dicovered NL via Eleanor), and it made me the left-leaning Christian that I still am.
I think it is a good book, and offers another take on the Wise Men. I think it has enlarged the scope of how I look at the Nativity story.
Barbara, great minds must think alike; I have been doing a re-read too! Might have started a little sooner than you did as I managed to finish on Christmas eve. Thank you for sharing beautiful insights on a beautiful book. This book has such depth of characters that you can take something new from it each time you read it. Hadn't thought of it before but Gaspar did have a kind of crusty, brusque sense of humor.
The chapters devoted to Herod and his wife and sons were pretty fascinating too. The bit about how he kept his wife's rooms exactly as they were after she died and continued to think he was in communication with her--good stuff.
I ran across the part about Gaspar's homeland too and meant to jot down the page number and forgot. Let me know if you find it again.
Peggy
Yes Peggy , you are so right re depth of character. I get totally into each one as I read, first Mary then Gaspar then Balthazar and so on . I do like Gaspar , so, well, so sexy in the ancient tribal kind of way, but I do want to say to him, put aside the rigidity of those tribal ways re women and understand that Ilya, when you come home to Jexal, will be the making of you all as a blended nation and for you as a wife ( a bit like Madselin and Rolf)
The part where NL refers to Gaspar's Mongolian homeland is in chapter 4, Jexal, nearish the end, p 121 in my Corgi pb. She says
" His tribe had brought with them from their remote Mongolian homeland all the rules governing the treatment of horses..."
and in other places she refers to the tents and the treading of wool into felt.
Barbara, I remember the comments about trading wool into felt. Thanks for providing the reference on his homeland. Gaspar had as much to learn and challenge him as anybody else did on that journey. He certainly wasn't lacking in self confidence but he needed to have his views broadened a bit, as you say, especially about women! Nothing like travel to give you new insights, even in those days!
And this was probably the most mind broadening journey ever, for anyone,anywhere, eh?
I would suggest that Norah Lofts may have based Gaspar's barbarians on the ancestors of the semi-nomadic Turkic tribesmen who became known as the Khazars. During the early medieval period they formed a powerful Eurasian kingdom known as Khazaria. They were said to have been characterised by predominantly red hair and blue eyes. Remarkably, though having absolutely no Jewish ancestry, the Khazars underwent a state-wide conversion to Judaism during the 9th century.
" that race of which the 500 were at once the remnant and the flower had eyes as blue as the summer sky ..." That's very interesting Selene, the Khazars seem to be pretty well post-Christ , but as you are suggesting , there must have been ancestral peoples.
We have enjoyed ourselves wondering where Gaspar came form - and how NL came to know all this too, as all the published research on it seems to be well after the publishing date of HFTB.
Welcome to the forum, Selene. Interesting theory--now I want to find out more about the Khazars. As Barbara said, we had some fun speculating on this topic; always glad to get some new insights.
Re the Khazars, there's a book about them called The Thirteenth Tribe, by Arthur Koestler.
Thanks for the welcome - I've just read "How Far to Bethlehem" for the first time (lovely story) and like others here was intrigued about Gaspar and the city of Jexel. HFTB was written in the days when authors didn't feel the need to add an author's note indicating where they mixed actual historical detail with fictional. Very frustrating for modern readers who are used to supplementing their reading with frequent visits to Wikipedia :)I couldn't find any mention of an ancient coin known as a rose jekkel either, so guess that was also a figment of Norah Lofts imagination - does anyone know anything about that?
Selene, I couldn't find anything about rose jekkels either; I sent an email to one of our members who is a librarian and quite often can help with these kind of questions. Maybe we'll hear something soon.
Thanks, Peggy-it will be interesting to see if she comes up with anything.
Back again with a further thought. My copy of How Far to Bethlehem is the first edition which has a painted image of the rose jekkel on the back. It has a script around the edge which looks rather like Ancient Greek. I'm thinking on reflection that Norah Lofts' rose jekkel did not exist as such, but may have be inspired by the gold staters which were minted around the time of Alexander the Great. Many of these would have found their way around Persia during that time- in fact the one depicted here was actually minted in Babylon.http://www.vcoins.com/ancient/vilmar/...
I'm the librarian Peggy messaged about this (I'm way behind in my group updates, sorry!). After doing some searching both online (I used both the spellings "jekkel" and "jekkal," since I didn't have the book in front of me) and in any reference books the college library here has that I thought might be relevant, I found absolutely no mention of such a coin. While I'm not an expert on the period, I've done a fair amount of general reading on biblical and ancient history and antiquities over the years, and never ran across it (outside of NL's book) either. Since Jexal and Gaspar's people are both fictional (though obviously based on composite real-life models), I'm certain that NL made up this specific coin as well. If it ever actually existed, there'd have to be some mention of it somewhere!
Thanks, Werner. I sure you're right. Norah Lofts added many secondary biblical figures and allusions throughout "How Far to Bethlehem", and I feel it's quite possible that she named her fictional coin a rose jekkel in honour of Mary's later title, "Rosa Mundi" (Rose of the World).
I DO like your 'rosa mundi' suggestion Selene.
It sticks in my mind that there was a coin called a rose OBOL, but I couldn't find it online just now. However, the obol was a Greek coin, and that would explain the mysterious writing around the edge. Werner may be able to unearth more information.
I may be wrong, but I think the obol was silver and a smaller coin. At one point in the 15th century there was an English gold coin known as a "rose noble" or "ryal". It's a rarity because it was only issued for a short period, between 1464 and 1470.There'a picture of one here (right hand side)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rya...
Isn't it beautiful, the rose noble! I can imagine women wearing those on their foreheads .Not Englishwomen I hasten to add, far too exotic . We'd have been more likely to have worn them in a hessian bag around the waist where no one could see them... .
You're right, Selene, that the obol was a small coin, although I don't know what it was made of. As I learend last night, it was worth one sixth of a drachma. As for "jekkel," it made me think of shekel, but that was an Israelite coin--no mysterious inscription! Yes, the rose noble is beautiful! Curiously, the one pictured seems not to have been circulated very much, since it still has its circular shape.
Barbara, would you go so far as to wear a pair of miniature ones as earrings? :)
The obol or obolus was definitely an ancient Greek coin, and there's more background information on it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obolus . But as far as I can tell, there's no attestation anywhere of a "rose obol" as such.
Mary , oh yes, I would, and not even miniature . I wear earrings and lots of rings all the time. And bracelets and things . All silver. Maybe my long residence in Australia has erased the hessian bag in me ...
Did you think to look up the name Gaspar? Possibly Persian - relating to Caspar - Keeper of the treasure. Surely a brilliant choice of names.
Welcome, Kathi. "Keeper of the Treasure" definitely fit Gaspar's role.
Yes Welcome Kathi - hope to see/hear more of you . I never thought about the name origins, how interesting...
I first read this in high school - am now in my "high" fifties. Loved it all these years. Thanks for the welcome.
As a side note - all of NL's references to the tin trade were right on the mark. I'm an American Anglophile and have studied it a bit. It was a tremendous secret and the best paying job of any sailor of the time. I love the way each of the supporting characters are woven into the tale.
This book is one of her masterpieces! I always appreciate getting confirmation that crucial parts, like references to the tin trade, are historically correct. So it really was as dangerous as the book leads us to believe?
It was dangerous, costly, and the info regarding the location of the tin was guarded at all cost. Tin was new to the times and highly paid for.But I also like the intro of other characters that will come into play in later years - Barabbas? The story of the good Samaritan?
I do agree Kathi and Peggy. Also the side-stories, such as Senya's rather tragic love for Melchior ( and I can never forget their poor desperately hungry doomed little pig either) .
Another question that may be covered if we do a group discussion for December: is Gaspar supposed to be from Mongolia originally? I've read some books on Gengis Khan and there seems to be a similarity.