Jesus himself admits that that is the sort of authority which governs the world. "You know," he once said to his disciples, "that in the world rulers lord it over their subjects, and their great men make them feel the weight of authority." (Mt. 20:25) In fact, one of the first people Jesus helped was just such a person of authority, in middle management. Remember the centurion who told Jesus, "I am myself under orders, with [other] soldiers under me; I say to one, 'Go,' and he goes; to another, 'Come here,' and he comes; and to my servant, 'Do this,' and he does it." Did Jesus demand of this centurion, once he became a believer, that he resign his commission and hang up his sword? No. There is validity to that pecking-order kind of authority, even though it is only second-best and its days are numbered.

What gets people into trouble -- people like the astrologers but not only them -- is that they get to thinking that this top-down kind of authority must be the only kind there is. It gets to be a one-track notion of authority, allowing for no alternative. Call it The Jerusalem Bias. Given that exclusive, authoritarian bias, people imagine finally that that is the authority to which even God is limited in dealings with us. Let me hasten to add, this Jerusalem Bias is not just a guy thing. I know, this disclaimer may not sound convincing coming from a guy. And I do admit, often The Jerusalem Bias does take a macho form. But even those victims who react against authority may still just be zigging where their oppressors zag, both sides starting from the same premise. Cynically, I may resent all authority, but then only because I too assume that authoritarianism is the only kind of authority there is. That way I likewise magnify boss-type authority out of all proportion to its reality. Then I also am a prisoner of The Jerusalem Bias, what Jesus calls an unbeliever.

No, this one-track hangup on a single kind of authority, authority as boss, is not just a guy thing. What we might call it is a goy thing. ("Goy" is Yiddish for Gentile.) That is what the Matthean Jesus might say, Matthew being very hard on us Gentiles (at least at first.) In the Gospel of Matthew, to be preoccupied with a top-down kind of authority is typically what Gentiles do. Faithful Jews, on the other hand, would know better.

But then you can understand why these strangers from the east would not know better, being goys. What is incredible is that even Herod, who bore the title "King of the Jews," should himself not know better. He, professedly a Jew, operated with the same Gentile prejudice about kingship as these foreigners did. Look how goyishly he behaves. When the visitors ask him, "Where is the child who is born to be king of the Jews," Herod has a shreck. He immediately assumes that the question must refer to his Gentile kind of king. What other kind could there be? And so, since that would mean a competitor for his throne, Herod feels threatened. The text says, he was "greatly perturbed." What's more, "so was the whole of Jerusalem." Now Matthew, who thinks of himself as every bit a Jew, regards that kind of mass hysteria on the part of Herod's Jerusalemites to be shamefully un-Jewish, downright Gentile.

I must admit, the characters in this story who leave me most "perturbed" personally are "the chief priests," since that is what I am. I understand their Jerusalem Bias all too well, at firsthand. Their sin is mine. They too are authorities, as am I -- authorities on Scripture, the sacred writings. But look at how they -- correction: how we -- pervert this scriptural authority into a book of legal precedents, Gentiling it into a weapon for worldly clout. Because of our biblical expertise we are in demand from our goyish bosses to supply them with name-droppers to give them strategic advantage, the upper hand. In our hands Scripture gets reduced to a hired gun for the latest culture wars, for whatever is politically or religiously correct.

We "chief priests," we religious legitimizers would be laughable were we not so dangerous. Look at these comical stooges. Herod asks them, "Where is it that the Messiah is to be born?" "At Bethlehem in Judaea," they tell him nicely, never even asking why he wanted to know. But their next line is even more pathetic. They cite the prophecy, "Bethlehem in the land of Judah, you are far from least in the eyes of the rulers of Judah; for out of you shall come a leader to be the shepherd of my people Israel." Apparently these scholars don't realize, anymore than their overlord Herod does, what a very different "leader" they are referring to in this prophecy. Do they even hear the words they are quoting: