The Star and the Wise Men

At this time of year one sees many nativity scenes. Nearly all of them have three figures in Aladdin caps seated on camels representing the wise men. As with much of Christmas, things are not what they seem so we must wonder Who are these wise men and what makes them important?

Magi in History

According to Herodotus, the Magi were a priesthood tribe within the Medes. Whether they originated in Ur of the Chaldees, or first appeared in Babylonian time, we can't determine. But we do know that from the Babylonian to the Roman empires, they maintained a place of tremendous prominence and significance in the Orient.

History that tells us the principle element of their worship seems to have been fire. Their reverence of fire has led some historians to conclude that they saw fire as some kind of incarnation of deity, though they did hold a monotheistic belief in God. They believed that the perpetual flame that burned upon their altar was kindled by God from heaven. On a second altar, they offered blood sacrifices, which were eaten by the worshiper and the Magian priests.

What's fascinating about the ceremonial practice is that much of it was almost a direct parallel to Judaism. Their hereditary priesthood was similar to Israel's Levitical priesthood. Their priests carried about divining rods in their garments, much like the Urim and Thummim by which the will of God was sought. Also like the Israelites, the Magians identified certain kinds of animals, like insects and reptiles, as unclean, and were very ritualistic about the touching and disposing of a dead body.

In the sixth century B.C., there was a great king of the Medo- Persian Empire called Darius the Great. Desiring to establish a national religion, he selected Zoroastrianism with its emphasis upon astrology, which may account for the preoccupation of the Magi with that field of study.

When the Greek and Roman empires were in power, there was still eastern culture and power in effect. In both of those periods, the Magi were the key people in governments centered in the fertile crescent. As a Semitic people who, like Arabs and Jews, traced their lineage from Shem, the Magi rose to a place of tremendous political power by virtue of their priestly function, occultic powers of divination, and knowledge of astrology and astronomy. During the four world empires, they served in a powerfully influential capacity as advisors to the royalty in the East, consequently earning the reputation of being wise men.

Magi in Scripture

Jeremiah 39: 3, Nergal-sharezer is the chief of the Magi in the court of Nebuchadnezzar. In the context of Scripture, oriental kings starting with Nebuchadnezzar had elevated the Magi to the place of being the official advisors to the king. Even when Babylon fell to the Medo-Persian Empire, great rulers like Darius the Great and Cyrus still chose their high-ranking officials of the Medo-Persian government from among this group called the Magi.

Daniel Chapter 2 The context of this chapter is the court of Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon, where Daniel and the other Jews are residing in captivity. Verse 10 says, "The Chaldeans answered before the king, and said, There is not a man upon the earth that can reveal the king's matter; therefore, there is no king, lord, nor ruler that asked such things of any magician, or astrologer, or Chaldean." And it may be that those three classifications are all synonymous with the Hebrew term for Magi. The translation "magician" is really an English corruption of the term Magi, which seems to refer to this priestly tribe. The term appears again in verse 27: "Daniel answered in the presence of the king, and said, The secret which the king hath demanded cannot the wise men, the astrologers, the magicians, the soothsayers, reveal unto the king."

Daniel Chapter 4 The Magi were known as those who could interpret dreams. However, they were unable to interpret Nebuchadnezzar's bizarre dream. The one man who could interpret it was Daniel: "Then came in the magicians, the astrologers, the Chaldeans, and the soothsayers; and I told the dream to them, but they did not make known unto me its interpretation....O Belteshazzar, master of the magicians..." (vv. 7, 9a). We meet the master of the Magi.

Daniel Chapter 5 These Magi couldn't give any answers, Belshazzar was told of Daniel's ability: "There is a man in thy kingdom, in whom is the spirit of the holy gods; and in the days of thy father light and understanding and wisdom, like the wisdom of the gods, was found in him, whom the king, Nebuchadnezzar, thy father, the king, I say, thy father, made master of the [Magi]..." (v. 11). Daniel was so adept at explaining the dreams of the king, that and was made master of the Magi.

Daniel as a Magi

Daniel was a man of God, devoted to worship and expression of his faith so it is likely that Daniel and the godly remnant in the diaspora shared their knowledge of Scripture with Babylon. When the final decree of Cyrus came that they could return to Canaan, the majority of Jews stayed in Babylon, intermingled, intermarried, and throughout the remaining history of Babylon and Medo-Persia, there were people in noble families and high-ranking offices who had Jewish blood.

If Daniel was so influential, why did they plot against him and threw him in the lions' den?" It is revealed in chapter 6, there was a plot against Daniel based on jealousy. This plot was not devised by the Magit, but by the men identified as the satraps, the regional governors, who had nothing to do with the palace. In fact, when Daniel was being thrown in the lions' den the king himself said, "Daniel, I have to do this, but I know that your God will deliver you" (6:16b). The king had been convinced of the power of God through Daniel.

The Influence of the Magi

History tells us that Persian kings were appointed only after mastering the law of the Medes and the Persians (Est. 1:19; Dan. 6:8), the code of scientific and religious discipline of the Magi. Besides controlling the kingly office, historians tell us that they controlled the judicial office as well. Esther l:l3 implies that the royal bench of judges was chosen from the Magi. By this kind of leverage, the Magi of the massive Medo-Persian Empire were able to control essentially the entire known world of the Orient. These powerful men, then, were not only responsible for training every monarch in the fields of astronomy, mathematics, natural history, agriculture, architecture, and so on, in much the same way as "Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians" (Ac. 7:22), but they were also responsible for the actual selection of kings and judges, who served to counterbalance one another. All nobility was raised by these king-makers, and no one ruled at all apart from them.


The Magi in Jesus' Era

By the time of Jesus, the Magi were still powerful in the east. Whereas some of them used their power, position, and skills with a great amount of human wisdom, others prostituted their craft. Both kinds of Magi were very common in the Mediterranean era when Christ was born.

. . . there was a certain man, called Simon, who previously in the same city used sorcery, and bewitched the people of Samaria, giving out that himself was some great one, to whom they all gave heed, from the least to the greatest saying, This man is the great power of God" (Acts 8 v 9-11). Simon Magus (the Magi) had prostituted his position into deceit as an emissary of Satan. He used sorcery (Gk. mageuo), his Magi art, in a prostituted manner. Later he tried to buy the Holy Spirit, Peter condemned his motives: (vv. 20a, 21a, 22a, 23).

Paul and Barnabas met a sorcerer on a Mediterranean island: "And when they had gone through the isle unto Paphos, they found a certain sorcerer, a false prophet, a Jew, whose name was Bar-jesus....But Elymas, the sorcerer [Gk. magus] (for so is his name by interpretation), withstood them..." (vv. 6, 8a) Both Simon and Elymas were renegade Jews who had somewhere been exposed to magian training. These were the kind of people that made intelligent folks in the Roman Empire despise such sorcerers. Philo, the first-century philosopher said that they were "vipers, scorpions, and other venomous creatures."

At the time of Christ in the eastern empire, there was a ruling body called the Megistanes, similar in function to the United States Senate. It was composed of Magi who had the right of absolute choice for the selection of a king. Their present king, had been deposed. Wanting to fight Rome with an able and willing ruler, the Magi were looking for a new king for the eastern empire. For this reason, they headed toward Jerusalem looking for a new king.

Magi in Jerusalem

When the Magi arrived in Jerusalem asking for the whereabouts of the new king that had been born, Herod got panicky, knowing that those Persian king-makers had come to find their king, accompanied by, historians estimate, a thousand mounted Persian calvarymen. Not only was their unexpected presence unnerving, but Herod's, army was out of the country on a mission. That's why the Bible says that Herod was "troubled." The Greek word conveys the idea that he was literally shaking. As the King of the Jews, a title bestowed by Caesar Augustus, the great dream of Herod's life was to get that little buffer state in the middle of two huge contending empires under his control. Suddenly this massive coterie of Persians arrived in the city and he panicked, because the new king they were coming to find would be a threat to the realization of his dream.

Now at this time, because both Herod and Caesar Augustus were close to death, and because the retirement of Tiberius had left the Roman army without a commander-in-chief, the Partheans were aware that this would be the ideal time to wage war against the west.

What were the Magi thinking?" Maybe they had looked at it politically, but certainly they looked at it spiritually, because when they got to that little room in Bethlehem, the Bible says that they worshiped Him. They saw more than just a king. They saw the Messiah heard of from the days of Daniel. I think the Magi who came to Jerusalem were God-fearing Gentiles who probably envisioned this Savior, the Anointed One (Messiah), as the king who would gather all the people of the East together against the oppression of Rome.

Knowing that the people of Israel were on their side rather than Rome's, the Magi began asking the people where this new King was, expecting the people of Israel to be as excited as they were. And so, into Jerusalem rides the group of Magi, king-makers of the east on their fine Persian steeds, and escorted by a thousand mounted calvarymen.

The response of Herod was to kill all the children under age two, in an effort to eliminate this King. The rest of this story is very familier to us. I'll come back with a post looking into what "signs" the astrologers may have observerd.