“When Jesus had been born in Bethlehem in Judea in the days of King Herod, behold, magoi arrived in Jerusalem from the east….”

The magoi – the ‘kings’, or ‘wise men’ – who are mentioned in the second chapter of St Matthew’s Gospel have been the subject of much speculation over the centuries.

Who were they?

The New Testament is written in Greek, and magoi (singular magos) is a Greek word. It was borrowed, however, from an Old Persian term, magush, and it originally meant a priest of the Zoroastrian religion of Persia. The word had already been borrowed into Greek centuries before the New Testament was written – by the fifth century BCE, in fact. Its meaning expanded fairly quickly, and it came to be used as a general term for practitioners of the occult arts, including fraudsters.

As it happens, magoi rarely appear in the New Testament, although the word is used disapprovingly to describe a (non-Persian) magician at Acts 13.6-8. This character, Elymas, is presented as a charlatan, and St Paul ends up blinding him by the power of God (which of course is definitely not magic).

Is the term used disapprovingly in St Matthew’s Gospel? This has been debated. The great mediaeval theologian St Thomas Aquinas records a disagreement over whether the magoi who visited the child Jesus were (dubious) magicians or (respectable) astrologers. Aquinas also thought that it was significant that the Bible stories record that Jesus’ birth was made known to both shepherds (humble, Jewish) and magoi (high-status, gentile). (St Augustine had previously made the same point.)

Were the magoi Persian? It is said that they came from the east, after all. The Church Fathers – the writers and theologians of the early centuries of Christianity – couldn’t decide whether they came from Persia, Babylonia or Arabia. These are still the most popular suggestions for those who take the story literally. Others have suggested that the magoi were Egyptians, or even Jews.

Three kings?

The magoi are not said to be kings; nor is is said that there were three of them. But they have been identified as kings since Tertullian (160-240 CE). This view gathered strength from the sixth century CE, and it ended up prevailing in the middle ages.

In the West, it was thought that the magoi were three in number because of their three gifts. But in the Eastern churches it was thought that there were 12 or 13 of them.

The best known names for the magoi – Caspar, Balthasar and Melchior – are first found in the mediaeval English writer Bede.

Why gold, frankincense and myrrh?

Several early Christian writers – Justin, Tertullian and Origen – took the view that the gifts of the magoi symbolised that the power of astrologers was broken by the birth of Christ. The magoi laid down frankincense and myrrh because those were used as ingredients in occult rituals, while gold symbolised the profit that they made from such activities.

Another view is that gold, frankincense and myrrh stood for the gifts of the east. Since the time of the Church Fathers, there has also been a theory that the gold was for Jesus as king, the frankincense was for Jesus as God, and the myrrh was for Jesus as the one who was to die. This theory is best known today from the carol We Three Kings.

Is it true?

Secular scholars tend to regard the narrative of the magoi as myth rather than history. There are certainly problems with the story of a star leading the wise men to the specific house where the messiah was born. The anti-immigrant politician Enoch Powell, who was also a scholar of classical Greek, wasn’t convinced at all:

If the sorcerers could see and follow the star, so could Herod’s police, and Tom, Dick, and Harry; or was the star mysteriously invisible to everybody except the sorcerers? Can one be sure over which precise house a star has ‘stopped’, or did it acquire vertical as well as horizontal motion?

Believers in the story have answers to such objections. Perhaps the halting of the star over the right house was a metaphor but the star itself was real. Or perhaps it wasn’t actually a star, which is how it could move in the way described. One tradition identifies it as an angel – there was a Jewish belief that stars were angels.

There is a case to be made that the involvement of magoi in the Christmas story is broadly plausible. As one might expect, astrologers in the ancient world did make predictions about rulers. There is an interesting story that actual Persian magoi reacted badly when Alexander the Great was born because they realised that there was trouble coming for them [Cicero, On Divination, 1.47]. Roman emperors didn’t like the idea of people trying to make predictions about the lengths of their reigns, and there were repeated expulsions of astrologers from Rome.

There have even been attempts to identify exactly what celestial phenomenon the magoi saw. It has been pointed out that Halley’s Comet appeared in 12-11 BCE, although this is a little on the early side for Jesus’s birth. Several years later, in 7 BCE, there were three successive conjunctions between the planets Jupiter (symbolising kingship) and Saturn (symbolising the Jews).

¡Felices Reyes!