December 24, 2010
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Three Magi
The
Three
Wise
Men
The myth du jour, the latest things to shake out ofSanta Claus’s pockets, are Gaspar, Melchior, and Balthasar.
A few years ago, in mid-December Greyfox phoned me to read me some funny stuff from Dave Barry’s syndicated column. The first words he read were something about the Bible telling us that the Three Wise Men… and there I interrupted him to say that the Bible doesn’t say anything about any three wise men.Greyfox was undaunted. He’s used to my interruptions and even if he weren’t, it can be devilishly hard to deter a man with NPD (narcissistic personality disorder) when he’s intent on anything. He dismissed my cavil and insisted that the facts didn’t matter, then he went on and read me some funny stuff about men being lousy gift givers. I think there could have been a touch of defensiveness there. Gift giving has been a touchy subject between us for as long as we have been together, the Old Fart having gifted me with numerous wildly inappropriate and unwelcome items, including crayfish pickled in formaldehyde.
But I digress. Here’s the straight skinny on Gaspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, straight from snopes.com:As Santa Claus and his reindeer are to the secular celebration of Christmas, so the three wise men and the creche are to the religious celebration. Even most of the non-religious (or non-Christian) among us recognize the symbolism of the nativity scene: it depicts the biblical account of three wise men from the east who rode atop camels and followed a star to Bethlehem, bearing gifts for the newborn Christ child who lay in a manger.
The truth is, the Bible contains virtually none of these details. They have all been added over the years from sources outside the Bible.
Mathew 2:1 tells us:
Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem . . .
That’s it. Matthew doesn’t say how many wise men came from the east, doesn’t mention their names, and doesn’t provide any details about how they made their journey.It has generally been assumed that the wise men (or magi) were three in number because Matthew 2:11 makes mention of three gifts: ” . . . they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense and myrrh.” The number of wise men is not specified in the Bible, however, and some Eastern religions have claimed up to twelve of them made the journey to Bethlehem. The names of the wise men, Gaspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, do not come from the Bible and did not appear in Christian literature until over five hundred years after the birth of Jesus. Nothing in the Bible says the wise men rode camels (or any other animal); they may have made their journey from the east on foot for all we know. And despite the familiar lyrics of the Christmas carol “We Three Kings,” no biblical source depicts the three wise men as kings. (They were most likely learned men, perhaps astrologers.)
However many wise men there were, and however they got to Bethlehem, the Bible tells us they arrived just after the birth and found the baby Jesus in a manger, right?Not quite. Matthew 2:11 states:
And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him . . .
The wise men came “into the house,” not the stable, and they saw a “young child,” not a newborn. This passage indicates that the wise men didn’t arrive until quite some time after Jesus’ birth. (According to Luke 2, it was shepherds, not wise men, who visited the infant Jesus in the manger.)To sum up: we are told by the Bible that wise men came from the east, that they followed a star to Bethlehem to find the Christ child, and that they brought him gold, and frankincense, and myrrh. We must look to sources outside the Bible to find the origins of any of the other familiar details, however.
[Originally posted 17 December, 2004, for the first Countdown to Christmas]
Have a joyous Christmas, everyone.
Comments (4)
Thanks. I was thinking about you today, Ms. Kathy, because I know that you must live closer to Santa Claus’s house than I do. Merry Xmas and shalom from New York City. Randy
P.S. I’m a well chetted blip at the moment. R.I.P. Captain Beefheart.
Interesting. I have just put my name down on the hold list at my local library for the new book Revelation of the Magi, translated by Brent Landau; it’s apparently a little-known early Christian apocryphal text that deals with the story in more detail. I’ll be interested to see if any of those details match up with the more commonly known folklore of the Magi.
After I read the Bible, and started reading more people who have studied the Bible (I don’t have the patience), the more I question what I was raised to believe. You’ve added one more thing to it. I think I’ll find the book Scriveling mentions.
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