Biblical Magi

In Christian tradition the Magi, also known as the Three Wise Men or Kings from the east, are magoi who according to Matthew 2:1 came "from the east to Jerusalem", to worship the infant Jesus, him "that is born King of the Jews".

The account in Matthew

The Gospel of Matthew is the only source for the incident. According to his account, the Magi first visited Herod (appointed governor of Judea by the Roman Empire) asking him where the new King could be found. Herod sent them to Bethlehem, and asked that they return when they had found Him (Matt 2:1-8). There, they appear before Jesus as an infant, noting that they observed His star (commonly known as the Star of Bethlehem) rising in the east (other possible translation: His star in the ascendant), and offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh (Matt 2:11). The Magi were warned in a divine dream not to go back to Herod, and so returned to their country via another route. This infuriated Herod and resulted in his massacre of the Holy Innocents (Matt 2:12,16-18).

The Greek Matthew does not mention their exact number, but since three gifts were given, they were thus often described as the Three Wise Men or, later even Three Kings. Alternate traditions have as little as two and as many as twelve visiting Jesus.

Neither their names nor their gender nor their number are given: the Greek text of Matthew refers to them merely as μαγοι απο ανατολων, "Magi from the East". The Greek grammar makes it not inconceivable that one or more of them may have been women, and in 2004 the Anglican Communion declared the magi could possibly have been women, and revised all sacred texts with the gender neutral term magi. Almost all scholars avoid the term "three wise men" both because of its inaccuracy and because of its seeming bias.

The ethnicity and religion of the magoi intended by the author of Matthew is an open question. Raymond E. Brown is convinced that the text demonstrates that they were gentiles as they are portrayed as referring to the Jews as a foreign people and show no knowledge of scripture. Almost all scholars agree with this view. In 1958 C.S. Mann proposed an alternate theory that they were Babylonian Jews, but this view has not won much acceptance.

The word magoi

Some older translations, such as the King James Version, translated Magi as "Wise Men". Today most scholars see this as somewhat inaccurate, and almost all modern translations use the Greek term Magi.

In Herodotus the word magoi referred to either members of the Median tribe, or specifically to Zoroastrian astrologer priests. But in Greek usage, the word could also referto all manner of astrologers, fortune-tellers, dream interpreters, readers of auguries, charlatans or quacks. Since the passage in Matthew implies that they were observers of the stars, most conclude the intended meaning is "Zoroastrian astrologers", the addition "from the East" naturally referring to Persia, and some translations of the Gospel do replace "wise men" with "astrologers".

In the King James Version, the same Greek word magos that is translated as "wise men" in the Gospel of Matthew is translated as "sorcerer" in the account of "Elymas the sorcerer" in Acts 13. [1] (http://www.blueletterbible.org/tmp_dir/words/s/1113230895-2558.html) This Greek word also identifies Simon Magus in Acts 8.

Historicity of the story

While a well known and popular story and a feature of Christmas carols and crèches, the story of the magi is considered one of the more improbable ones in the New Testament.

The magi are mentioned nowhere in the Bible outside of Matthew 2:1–13, being conspicuously absent from the nativity account of the Gospel of Luke. Some scholars, such as Robert H. Gundry, feel that the author of Matthew likely transformed the shepherds that appear in Luke into the magi. Most scholars see the story as either entirely legendary, or at least as greatly embellished. The story has traditionally been downplayed by Protestants and in the twentieth century the veneration of the magi was also questioned by many Catholic theologians.

Catholic Raymond E. Brown in The Birth of the Messiah lists six reasons the story is historically implausible:

• A star behaving as the Star of Bethlehem did would have been the most notable astrological event of the period, but despite fairly good records is mentioned nowhere.
• The author of Matthew entirely ignores the politics of the period. At the time the Jewish leaders and Herod were great rivals, but the narrative casts them as allies against the new messiah.
• Jerusalem is only five miles away from Bethlehem. There was no reason to send only a small party of unreliable foreigners when they could easily have been joined by an armed force.
• The arrival of the magi in a village like Bethlehem would have been a major event, everyone in town would have known who they had visited making it easy for Herod to later find out which family the messiah was born to.
• That Herod and the people of Jerusalem were well aware of Jesus' birth conflicts with the later part of the Gospel where they are oblivious
• None of it is mentioned in Luke or the other Gospels

Protestant churches have generally chosen to focus on the humble shepherds in Luke, who were almost wholly ignored previously. However, Howard Clarke notes that in the United States Christmas cards featuring the magi still greatly outsell those with shepherds.

In Christian mythology

The visit of the Magi to Jesus as a child is commemorated by Roman Catholics and other Christian sects (not Eastern Orthodox) on the Christian observance of Epiphany, January 6. This visit is frequently treated in Christian art and literature as The Journey of the Magi.

Upon this kernel of information Christians embroidered many circumstantial details about the magi. One of the most important changes was their rising from astrologers to kings. The general view is that this is linked to Old Testament prophesies that have the messiah being worshipped by kings in Isaiah 60:3, Psalm 72:10, and Psalm 68:29. Early readers reinterpreted Matthew in light of these prophecies and elevated the magi to kings. Mark Allan Powell rejects this view. He argues that the idea of the magi as kings arose considerably later in the time after Constantine and the change was made to endorse the role of Christian monarchs. By 500 A.D. all commentators assumed the three were kings, and this continued until the Protestant Reformation.

The star that was moving across the heavens, familiar in iconology and legend as the Star of Bethlehem and familiar to contemporaries as the "Star Prophecy" that galvanized Jewish resistance to Gentile invaders, but which Josephus applied to his patron Vespasian, is often depicted as a comet with a tail. In the gospel account, the star was not alone in identifying Bethlehem: an interpretation of the Book of Isaiah presented before Herod also identified Bethlehem as the natal place for a coming king.

A Shrine of the Three Kings at Cologne Cathedral, according to tradition, contains the bones of the Three Wise Men. Reputedly they were first discovered by Saint Helena on her famous pilgrimage to Palestine and the Holy Lands. She took the remains to the church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople; they were later moved to Milan, before being sent to their current resting place by the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I in 1164.

A version of the detailed elaboration familiar to us is laid out by the 14th-century cleric John of Hildesheim's Historia Trium Regum ("History of the Three Kings"). In accounting for the presence in Cologne of their mummified relics, he begins with the journey of Saint Helena, mother of Constantine the Great to Jerusalem, where she recovered the True Cross and other relics:

"Queen Helen...began to think greatly of the bodies of these three kings, and she arrayed herself, and accompanied by many attendants, went into the Land of Ind...after she had found the bodies of Melchior, Balthazar, and Casper, Queen Helen put them into one chest and ornamented it with great riches, and she brought them into Constantinople...and laid them in a church that is called Saint Sophia."

The Three Wise Men most frequently appear in European art in the Adoration of the Magi; less often The Journey of the Magi has been a popular topos. More generally they appear in popular Nativity scenes and other Christmas decorations that have their origins in the Neapolitan variety of the Italian presepio or Nativity crèche; they are featured in Menotti's opera Amahl and the Night Visitors, and in several Christmas carols, of which the best-known English one is "We Three Kings".

Artists have also allegorized the theme to represent the three ages of man. Since the Age of Discoveries, the Kings also represent three parts of the world. Balthasar is thus represented as a young African or Moor and Caspar may be depicted with distinctive Oriental features.

In the film Donovan's Reef, a Christmas play is held in French Polynesia. Instead of the traditional correspondence of continents and Magi, the version for Polynesian Catholics features the "king of Polynesia", the "king of America" and the "king of China".

Further sentimental narrative detail was added in the novel and movie Ben-Hur, where Balthasar appears as an old man, who goes back to Palestine to see the former child Jesus become an adult.

Traditional names for the Three Magi

In the Eastern church various names are given for the three, but in the West they settled as Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar (illustration, upper ight) Other cultures have different names. In Ethiopian Christianity, for instance, they are Hor, Basanater, and Karsudan.

None of these names are obviously Persian or carry any ascertainable meaning. Syrian Christians call them Larvandad, Hormisdas, and Gushnasaph. These names are likely of Persian origin; this does not, of course, guarantee their authenticity. The first name Larvandad is a combination of Lar, which is a region near Tehran, and vand or vandad which is a common suffix in Middle Persian meaning "related to" or "located in". Vand is also present in the names of such Iranian locations as Damavand, Nahavand, Alvand, and such names and titles as Varjavand and Vandidad. Alternatively, it might be a combination of Larvand meaning the region of Lar and Dad meaning "given by". The latter suffix can also be seen in such Iranian nams as "Tirdad", "Mehrdad", "Bamdad" or such previously Iranian locations as "Bagdad" ("God Given") presently called Baghdad in Iraq. Thus, the name simply means born in or given by Lar.

The second name, Hormisdas is a variation of the Persian name Hormoz which was Hormazd and Hormazda in Middle Persian. The name referred to the angel of the first day of each month whose name had been given by the supreme God who, in old Persian, was called "Ahuramazda" or "Ormazd".

The third name Gushnasaph was a common name used in Old and Middle Persian. In Modern Persian, it is Gushnasp or Gushtasp. The name is a combination of Gushn meaning "full of manly qualities" or "full of desire or energy" for something and Asp, Modern Persian Asb, which means horse. As all scholars of Iranian studies know, horses were of great importance for the Iranians and many Iranian names including the presently used Lohrasp, Jamasp, Garshasp, and Gushtasp contain the suffix. As a result, the second name might mean something like "as energetic and verile as a horse" or 'full of desire for having horses. Alternatively, Gushn is also recorded to have meant "many". Thus, the name might simply mean "the Owner of Many Horses".

Epiphany

Christianity celebrates the three kings on the day of Epiphany, January 6, the last of the "twelve days of Christmas".

In Spain and throughout the Spanish-speaking and Catalan-speaking world, the three kings (Sp. "los Reyes Magos", also "Los Tres Reyes Magos", Cat. "els Reis Mags d'Orient") receive wish letters from children and magically bring them gifts on the night before Epiphany. The Wise Men come from the Orient on their camels to visit the houses of all the children; like the Northern European Santa Claus with his reindeer, they visit everyone in one night. In some areas, children prepare a drink for each of the kings. In Catalonia, it is also traditional to prepare food and drink for the camels, because this is the only night of the year when they eat.

Spanish- and Catalan-speaking cities organize cavalcades in the evening, in which the kings and their servants parade and throw caramels to the children (and parents) in attendance.

Currently this tradition, like that of the Christmas crib and the Christmas tree, coexists in many regions with Papa Noel (Father Christmas), in Basque areas with Olentzero, and in Catalonia with the Tió de Nadal.

Catalan traditions

Catalonia holds many other specific traditions about the three kings, some very local, some more widespread. In most of Catalonia, Page Gregory prepares the way for the kings and lets them know who has been good or bad, but in Cornellà de Llobregat, Mag Maginet prepares their way. In Terrassa this is the role of the page Xiu-Xiu, but with Hassim Jezzabel separately serving Caspar. The cavalcade of the three kings in Alcoi (a city located not in Catalonia but in Alicante, in the autonomous community of Valencia) claims to be the oldest in the world; the participants who portray the kings and pages walk through the crowd, giving presents to the children directly.

In Catalonia, Melchior (Cat. "Melcior"), light-skinned as usual, dressed in the style of a king of the late Middle Ages (the Gothic Era), is the youngest king, but has a white beard and hair, because Jesus punished him for unnecessariily showing off his strength and youth. He brings the children baubles. Caspar (Cat. "Gaspar"), also light-skinned and similarly dressed, has brown hair. He brings them toys. Balthasar (Cat. "Baltasar") is dark-skinned and dressed as an Arab or Moor. It is his job to leave a lump of coal for children who have been bad.

See also

Template:Commons

• The Journey of the Magi
• List of names for the Biblical nameless
• Astrology
• History of astrology
• Sinter Klaas

References

• Albright, W.F. and C.S. Mann. "Matthew." The Anchor Bible Series. New York: Doubleday & Company, 1971.
• Brown, Raymond E. The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in Matthew and Luke. London: G. Chapman, 1977.
• Clarke, Howard W. The Gospel of Matthew and its Readers: A Historical Introduction to the First Gospel. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003.
• France, R.T. The Gospel According to Matthew: an Introduction and Commentary. Leicester: Inter-Varsity, 1985.
• Powell, Mark Allan. "The Magi as Wise Men: Re-examining a Basic Supposition." New Testament Studies. Vol. 46, 2000.
• Gundry, Robert H. Matthew a Commentary on his Literary and Theological Art. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1982.
• Hill, David. The Gospel of Matthew. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981
• Schweizer, Eduard. The Good News According to Matthew. Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1975

External links

• Mark Rose, "The Three Kings & the Star" (http://www.archaeology.org/online/reviews/threekings/): the Cologne reliquary and the BBC popular documentary
• John of Hildesheim, "History of the three Kings" (http://www.commonplacebook.com/features/cologne.shtm) modernized in English by H. S. Morrisca:Tres Reis Mags d'Orient

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