An astonishing Epiphany

 

Matthew tells us that magoi came seeking the one born King of the Jews.  King of the Jews is the title about which he will say Pilate asked and then wrote at the time of the crucifixion.

The word magoi occurs elsewhere both in the New Testament and in contemporary non-biblical writing, something which ought to get better attention.  Such magoi seem most likely to have been Zoroastrians whose worship included focussing on fire and astrology, easily mistaken for magicians and sorcerers.

In Acts 13 Sergio Paulo, Roman proconsul on Cyprus, does not have a chaplain or a court fool at hand in his household, but a magos (singular of magoi).  When Barnabas and Saul spoke the word of God to the proconsul, it was this magos who intervened seeking to put the proconsul off.  That particular magos is rendered blind as a result, perhaps both literally and deeply symbolically. 

In Pliny the Elder’s Naturalis Historia (30.16) the Armenian visitors doing obeisance to Nero in 66 AD include magoi.  It is a major event about which others also write.  Pliny notes that the magoi regarded having freckles as a successful way of avoiding the notice of the Gods and that they would not travel by sea for fear of polluting it.

So I imagine a Christian group in Rome in serious danger, keeping their heads down in the face of Nero’s persecution.  They receive a new longer story of Jesus’ life and pass it secretly from hand to hand.  What we will call Chapter 1 sets the scene of the human and divine origins of Jesus’ birth.  They read on eagerly to the next story.

They could not be more astonished to find that it was about star-led magoi coming to worship Jesus.  Those who had opposed Barnabas and Saul’s preaching.  Those who had lauded Nero as God-like. 

There is a later habit of representing three magoi as one coming from Africa, one from Asia and one from Europe – the wisdom of the whole world turning towards this event.  Perhaps Matthew’s purpose, and the first reader’s astonishment, would best be represented by different trio, something like a militant atheist, a scientologist and a member of the Taliban.

The picture is Whitley Bay at the New Year.  The picture in the previous post are two angels high in a window in Grimsby Minster carrying symbols of Jesus’ execution – a seamless garment with the dice for which it was gambled and the hammer and pliers for the nailing and un-nailing of Jesus on the cross.