To a reader familiar with the Hebrew text, both the action of the raven and the interpretation are challenging. The Hebrew text reads va’yetze yatzov vashov, which is standardly translated ‘he went to and fro’ until the waters receded. The first bird, that is, can find no place to land but travels around and around. This leads to some delightful and bizarre midrashim. In bSandhedrin 108b, a conversation is imagined between the raven and Noah in which the raven rejects the task offered with a knock-down argument. He must be hated by God and by Noah, the raven argues, to have been selected for the mission, because, since they are unclean animals, there are only two ravens in the ark. If he died from heat or cold, therefore, the species of ravens would be wiped out. He adds that he suspects Noah of wanting to get rid of him so that he can have sex with the raven’s wife! (Noah retorts angrily that since he has observed the prohibition of sex on the ark with his own wife he is scarcely likely to have sex with a raven.) Hence, however, the fearful raven will only fly round and round the ark. Midrash Rabbah Bereshit imagines a different conversation – the idea of a conversation comes from an etymological play on the Hebrew verbs. Noah asserts blithely that the raven can be sent because as an unclean animal he is no good for food or for a sacrifice, only to be reminded by God that ravens would feed Elijah in the desert (Kings 1.17.6) – a paradigmatic demonstration of how the narrative of the Talmud is informed by God’s omniscient (always already) time.

For Gregory of Nazianzus, then, Christmas Day is to be experienced as a celebration of the history of the universe and as a living recognition of the transformative epiphany of Jesus Christ, an epiphany that changes how time is lived and perceived by the Christian faithful. Gregory wants to redefine how time is counted, recounted, experienced. Ambrose of Milan at around the same time, over in the West, is rather more modest in his vision. At least at first sight. His hymns are designedly simple and easily memorable in form, though, like William Blake’s lyrics, they are far from simple in their linguistic depth and significance – and they proved extraordinarily influential in the invention of Christian time as well as of the Christian hymnic tradition. These hymns are to be sung by a congregation, and there are reports not just of people singing lustily and of the hymns spreading across Italy, but also of annoyance by Ambrose’s opponents at their success in inculcating particular doctrinal views in the singers. Hymns, that is, are to work not by a preacher telling his audience what to think but by a congregation’s absorption of ideas through repeated performance, by the pleasure of singing.