We Three Kings?

Within the story of the Star of Bethlehem, the identity of the persons who saw the Star that led them to Bethlehem is one of the key questions. We know almost nothing about them, we are sure that they were not kings. We have little idea of where they came from. Just who were the Magi? And what was their interest in the baby Jesus?

Neither Matthew’s Gospel, nor the Protoevangelium of James describes the Magi. We are not told who they were, where they came from (apart from a vague mention that the came from the east). We do not even know how many of them there were.

The fact that they are generally shown, in the western tradition, to have been three, is due to their three gifts for the baby Jesus. In fact, there is no other evidence that there were three of them. In the eastern tradition, there were twelve Magi. In ancient murals and paintings in churches there were sometimes four, or more. Similarly, the names of the Magi (Balthasar, Melchior and Gaspar) date from centuries later. The first use of their names was in the 5^th century, but they did not become common usage until the 10^th. For the early church the Magi represented the three races of man: the black-skinned peoples of Africa (in Spain, at least, the personification of Balthasar, but usually represented as Melchior); the Asiatic peoples (Balthasar); and Europeans (Gaspar).

We actually have no proof that the three Magi all came from the same place, although it makes sense for them to have travelled together as they (apparently) arrived together at Herod’s palace. It is usually tacitly believed that the Magi came from Babylon, although Arabia and Persia have been suggested as alternatives.

Who were the Magi?

Herod does not treat them as kings, neither does Matthew, nor James mention that they were kings. The tradition that the Magi were kings dates from the 6^th century and is another piece of evidence of the early church’s political expediency. They taught that Jesus was the king of kings and it became necessary to show that he had been treated as royalty to reinforce this point. The Magi were thus converted into kings because a royal child should be visited by royalty to demonstrate his importance.

Most experts are convinced that the Magi were priests and/or astrologers. In fact, the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible offers "Wise Men" as the word to describe of the Magi, with the translation "Astrologers" given as an alternative. Certainly, the Magi were watchers of the sky and astrologers (the difference between astrology and astronomy was not to be defined for many centuries) and would have understood the meaning of the Star in terms of their knowledge of astrology.

Where did they come from?

Some early texts state that "wise men came from Arabia to visit him", describing the visit of the Magi. Arabia would have been the region to the south of Palestine, encompassing more or less what is now Saudi Arabia. If this were so, the traditional image of the Magi crossing the desert on camels would be hopelessly wrong, as they would almost certainly have travelled by ship around the Red Sea coast, only riding the last part of the journey along the so-called King’s Highway from the coast to Jerusalem.

Most people however, believe that Babylon was a more probable point of origin. There are two main reasons for this:

• Babylon had a large Jewish community due to the slaves and prisoners taken back to Babylon after the sack of Jerusalem in 586 BC.
• Babylon had a tradition of astronomy and astrology and had the most advanced science in the region.

In other words, the Babylonians had the means to study the Star and a reason for linking it to the Jews. No similar motive can be applied to the Arabians.

However, there are some intriguing pointers that suggest that the Magi came from further afield. Some of the earliest images of the Magi in churches, which date back to the 6^th Century, show them in Persian dress. The belief in the early church in the first few centuries AD was that the Magi were Persian. There is even an Apocryphal Arabic Gospel of the Infancy which appears to state that the Magi were Persian. Similarly, when Marco Polo travelled through Persia, the inhabitants of the village of Saveh told him that the Magi had set out from there (it is also true that other villages in the region have a similar tradition). There was also a Persian sect of priests called the Medes who have been linked with the Magi and, indeed, are often called “Magi”. Similarly, the Zoroastrian religion linked to the Medes (a religion still found in parts of northern Iran) makes messianic predictions that are in many ways similar to the Jewish messianic tradition.

We also know of a link between the Persians and the Jews. In 539 BC the Persians conquered Babylon and would also have taken slaves and prisoners with them. Amongst them would have been Jews who knew of the prophesy of the Messiah and would have noticed its similarities with the Zoroastrian predictions. If Babylon is a plausible candidate as the point of origin for the Magi because of its Jewish community, Persia must be too.

My own belief is that the Magi were probably Persian in origin, having been convinced by the strong circumstantial evidence that points to them. Unfortunately, there is no evidence at all for Persian astronomy, nor really for Persian science – unlike the Babylonians, if the Persians were astronomers, they have left no surviving observations.

The conclusion is then that the visiting Magi were probably either Jewish astrologers who were the descendants of the original slaves captured by the Persians in the sack of Babylon and who were thus interested in the fulfilment of the Messianic prophesies made as early as the 8^th Century BC or Zoroastrian priest/astrologers who were similarly interested in the predictions of a Messianic birth.