7. See Rom 11:17.
SERMON 203 97
NOTES
1. The date is suggested by Kunzelmann and Fischer, possibly because what he says in the last sections about the Gentiles "deserving" grace by their humility would not have been likely on his lips after the Pelagian controversy had gone into full swing. It is pleasant to note that Augustine gets through the sermon with only the mildest of digs at the Jews. This suggests to me that it was later than Sermon 201. But of course one has to admit that the presupposition of all such reasoning about dates, namely that the development of both his ideas and his attitudes was in a consistent direction throughout his ministry, lacks cast-iron certainty, and is perhaps psychologically unrealistic.
2. According to the Roman way of counting both ends.
3. Apparently in the ancient Egyptian calendar (which was wildly inaccurate from the astro¬ nomical point of view, being governed by the position of the Dog star, Sirius, in the signs of the Zodiac), 6 January was treated as the winter solstice, and celebrated accordingly as a pagan festival. So about the same time as 25 December was introduced in Rome and the West as the feast of Christ's birth, 6 January was instituted to celebrate the same event in the Church of Alexandria. Then it soon came to be associated with the baptism of Christ and the miracle at Cana (there was a folk belief in Alexandria that the waters of the Nile turned into wine on that night), and also with the visit of the Magi. With 25 December firmly established in the West as Christmas day, 6 January came to be allotted to the visit of the Magi, and it was assumed that their journey from the East took twelve days. This was made possible, according to Thomas Aquinas quoting various patristic sources, both by special divine assistance and dromedariorum velocitate, by the velocity of the dromedaries (Summa Theologiae, Ilia, 36, 6 ad 3).
4. See Eph2:ll-22. 5. And which, I think one may say with justice, has been rather conspicuously absent from the Christian as well as the post-Christian culture of Europe as it has expanded round the globe.
6. As he says in another sermon on the episode (Sermon 77, sections 10 and 11), she is, thanks to her reply, transformed in the Lord's estimation and by his words from being a dog into being a woman.
7. See Rom 11:17.
8. See Acts 10:11.16.