Traditions, Pagan and Otherwise

I love Christmas and all its associated traditions, customs and festivities. I have a friend who is much like Scrooge, he can take it or leave it and everything becomes just some type of Pagan trapping and he uses the name Jesus like a derogatory term most of the time (saying Jehsus).

Regardless of how one celebrates Christmas, it is difficult to divorce the Pagan from the religious, because both holidays were combined at some point in time to create the holiday as we understand it today.

One discussion that always comes up this time of year is found in the famous carol, "We Three Kings."

One of the many funny set pieces in John Irving’s spectacular novel A Prayer for Owen Meany is a Christmas pageant at a small New England church. After a children’s choir rehearses the carol “We Three Kings," a boy in the choir asks, “Where are ‘Ory’ and ‘R’?” It has been 20 years since I last read Owen Meany, and remembering the scene still makes me giggle.

But are they kings, the Magi of the New Testament? No. Are there three of them? There are three gifts, but the precise number of gift-givers is not stated. “R” they from “Ory,” or put another way, where are they from? “From the East” is the vague geography given by the New Testament writers. Third-century frescoes of the Magi, wearing Phrygian caps, can be found in the Roman Catacomb of Priscilla. A sixth-century mosaic in the Basilica Sant’Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna includes the traditional names of the Magi: Balthasar, Melchior, and Gaspar. The apocryphal Armenian Gospel of the Infancy adds even more details to the canonical story, portraying the Magi as both kings and military commanders. To scholars like me, who have studied apocryphal infancy gospels, the early Christian impulse to “fill in the gaps” of Gospel narratives is well known. There is actually a very slender account of the Magi in the New Testament. Their sole appearance comes in a dozen verses in the Gospel of Matthew. The Magi emerge first as figures “from the East” who, because of a star they see (more about this later), travel to Jerusalem in search of a king. When Herod hears about their quest, he summons the Magi and asks them to report back on what they find. Warned by a dream, the Magi never pass along the intelligence Herod seeks about an apparent rival.

What could this story mean? The answer is based on exploring the range of meanings attached to the Greek word magoi, and the use of the term in ancient narratives. From these sources, we can identify a theme of proximity to power. So too for Matthew’s Magi. Their presence in the home of the infant Jesus and their offering of gifts serve at once as proof of the power of the newborn and of the illegitimacy of Herod’s rule.

There are many allusions to the Magi in contemporary storytelling - examples include O. Henry’s sentimental “Gift of the Magi” and Christopher Moore’s edgy The Lamb.

We may never solve all the mysteries of the Magi.

Who were the magi, those gift-bearing wise men from the east who are so central to the traditional telling of the Christmas story?

The Bible tells us very little about the magi. Their story appears but once, in the Gospel of Matthew, where they are described as mysterious visitors “from the east” who come to Jerusalem looking for the child whose star they observed “at its rising.” After meeting with King Herod, who feigns an intention to worship the child but actually plans to destroy him, the magi follow the same star to Bethlehem. There, upon seeing the baby Jesus and his mother Mary, the magi kneel down and worship him, presenting him with their three famous gifts - gold, frankincense and myrrh. Then, without reporting to Herod, they depart for their homeland, never to be heard from again.

For early Christians, the seemingly pivotal yet unexplained background of the mysterious magi provided abundant room to shape new narratives around the question “Who were the magi?” One of the most compelling, recently translated into English by Bible scholar Brent Landau, is the so-called Revelation of the Magi, an apocryphal account of the traditional Christmas story that purports to have been written by the magi themselves.

The account is preserved in an eighth-century Syriac manuscript held in the Vatican Library, although Brent Landau believes the earliest versions of the text may have been written as early as the mid-second century, less than 100 years after Matthew’s gospel was composed. Written in the first person, the Revelation of the Magi narrates the mystical origins of the magi, their miraculous encounter with the luminous star and their equally miraculous journey to Bethlehem to worship the child. The magi then return home and preach the Christian faith to their brethren, ultimately being baptized by the apostle Thomas.

This dramatic account not only answers the question “Who were the magi?” but also provides details about how many they were, where they came from and their mysterious encounter with the star that led them to Bethlehem. In the Revelation of the Magi, there are not just three magi, as often depicted in early Christian art (actually, Matthew does not tell us how many there were), nor are they Babylonian astrologers or Persian Zoroastrians, as other early traditions held. Rather it is clear the magi (defined in this text as those who “pray in silence”) are a group - numbering as few as 12 and as many as several score - of monk-like mystics from a far-off, mythical land called Shir, possibly China. They are descendants of Seth, the righteous third son of Adam, and the guardians of an age-old prophecy that a star of indescribable brightness would someday appear “heralding the birth of God in human form.”

When the long-prophesied star finally appears, the star is not simply sighted at its rising, as described in Matthew, but rather descends to earth, ultimately transforming into a luminous “star-child” that instructs the magi to travel to Bethlehem to witness its birth in human form. The star then guides the magi along their journey, miraculously clearing their path of all obstacles and providing them with unlimited stamina and provisions. Finally, inside a cave on the outskirts of Bethlehem, the star reappears to the magi as a luminous human child - the Christ child - and commissions them to become witnesses to Christ in the lands of the east.

It is a fascinating story, but does it actually bring us any closer to understanding who the actual magi of the Christmas story might have been? Unfortunately, the answer is no, although it may provide insight into the beliefs of an otherwise unknown Christian sect of the second century that identified with the mysterious magi.

Now, for the other component of the story: For the past 2,000 years, people have wondered about the identity and nature of the Star of Bethlehem. And for hundreds of years, some of the world’s smartest people - including famed astronomer Johannes Kepler - have tried to use science to find the answer. Dozens, if not hundreds, of natural solutions have been put forward to account for the Nativity story in Matthew. However, no matter which astronomical phenomenon is suggested, there is one massive problem: Nearly all modern science-based solutions ignore how ancient people thought about and examined the sky.

As scientific advancements have drastically changed what we know about the sky, they have also drastically altered how we think about it. There is no guarantee that a particular celestial event identified by a modern astronomer would be seen as auspicious by ancient people - much less as predicting a future king - no matter how interesting or remarkable we might find that event today. But, if modern astronomy cannot identify the Star of Bethlehem, can ancient astronomy?

Ancient cultures throughout the Near East and Mediterranean had thriving and complex astronomical systems through which they examined and interpreted the sky. Although today these systems would more aptly be termed astral divination, in antiquity the difference between astronomy and astrology was negligible. After all, this is the reason the Magi would travel “from the East” (Matthew 2:1) upon seeing a star. These “wise men” did not operate according to any sort of modern principles; rather, they would have interpreted the sky in culturally specific ways, reading the sky as we would read a weather forecast today.

Although each system of ancient astronomy was unique, by the first century many of them had come to prioritize highly regular and mathematically predictable events, such as lunar phases, eclipses, and the procession of the zodiac. Within Babylonian astronomy, already an ancient and revered system by the Roman period, nearly every repetitive event had its own significance, including every day, month, area of the sky, and celestial body. Yet these events were never taken on their own, and a wide range of factors could drastically impact their interpretation by astronomers - factors, such as weather patterns, that would have little or no bearing on the astronomy of today and are now irrecoverable in any case. An eclipse on a specific day, for example, may have indicated the death of a king, but the presence of clouds covering a particular side of the moon could have changed the king to which the signs referred, and thus whether it was a bad or good sign. More signs could then be layered on top of these, creating ever more complex results.

In antiquity, diagnostic manuals and charts existed for reading the heavens, such as the 70-tablet-long Babylonian text Enuma Anu Enlil, from which astronomers could base their interpretations. In practice, however, these interpretations were never as consistent and straightforward as one might expect. A similarly convoluted system existed in Roman astronomy. Ptolemy’s second century Apotelesmatika for example, listed seven separate regions that could be represented by an astronomical phenomenon in Aries: Britain, Gaul, Germany, Bastarnia, Syria, Idumea, and Judea. Yet many of these regions were not agreed upon by scholars of Ptolemy’s own age, which highlights the remarkably disparate range of possible interpretations.

Thus, we arrive at a twofold problem. First, ancient astronomers placed critical value on many astral phenomena that fall outside the purview of modern astronomy, including things as mundane as the weather. Second, interpretations of these events could vary greatly, even between individual astronomers who could choose which phenomena they focused on and which they did not.

Unfortunately, the Gospel of Matthew is of little help in pinning down what the Star of Bethlehem may have been. Despite the interpretive efforts of numerous scholars, Matthew’s description remains too vague, allowing for an incredible array of possible explanations before one even considers the many other phenomena that the ancients would have factored into their understanding of the sky.

And, indeed, as discussed above, we cannot even be certain who the Magi were. While Matthew refers to them as magoi, a type of Zoroastrian priest from Persia, there is little evidence that such priests were common practitioners of astral divination. This word is used occasionally as a generic term for non-Greek scholars, including a group frequently called Chaldeans, who were identified in Hellenistic times as practitioners of Babylonian astronomy. Yet even if we could connect the Magi to Babylonian astronomy with any confidence, the earlier twofold problem remains: ancient astronomers would have considered phenomena that we are unable to reconstruct in modern times; and even if we could, we would have no way of knowing exactly how the Magi themselves would have interpreted them.

While natural and scientific solutions have become increasingly popular, they fail to account for the insurmountable fact that in order to know what the Magi saw that night more than 2,000 years ago, we ourselves would need to be able to experience and know the world as they did. Perhaps those are things best left to the imagination rather than to modern science.