What's the deal with the Three Wise Men?

Factual Questions
1

With the feast of Epiphany rapidly approaching, I got to thinking about the Three Wise Men (aka the Magi, the Three Kings, Three Kings of the Orient, Three Kings of the East, the Three Astrologers, Wise Men of the East, etc).

Who in the heck were these guys?

Did they actually exist? Where were they supposedly from? Were they actually supposed to be kings - foreign potentates? Or were they astrologers or hack magicians? What is their signifigance in the Bible?

Nativity scenes normally depict one as an African man, one as an Asian and the third is a sort of European or maybe even Russian-looking fellow. When and how did this depiction start?

I’ve actually even heard them named before: Balthasar, Melchior and Caspar. Where did these names first appear and who named them?

Please help me. I don’t know what I’m capable of while in this state of frenzied ignorance…

2

Actually, the number of wise men is not mentioned in the Bible. It’s surmised that folks began to believe there were three of them because of the three gifts: gold, frankincense and myrrh.

But it’s a good question, what is the antiquity of the notion that there were three of these guys, and their cool names?

3

Well, the Gospel of Matthew just says that some magi from the east show up, and ask Herod where the child king is, because “We saw his star in its rising”. Herod is troubled by this question, because, as far as he knows, he’s the king, but he asks around, and finds a passage suggesting Bethlehem. He tells that to the magi, asking that after they find out where the child is, to come back and tell him. They then follow the star to the house where mother and child are, give him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myhrr <sp> They then go home, deciding not to tell Herod after all.

That’s the story. Now, the embellishments…

In the middle ages, the tradition developed that they were kings, and there were 3 of them. Why 3? Well, there were three gifts, and there are also three continents, Europe, Asia, and Africa. So, the tradition said that each one was a king from a seperate continent. There were also stories of all sorts of adventures they had after they saw Jesus, because, at that point they became Christian, and missionaries, etc.

4

As I was taught in Catholic school, the important lesson to take from the story of the Wise Men was to show that Jesus’ birth was important to Gentiles as well as Jews.

If you read the Gospel of St. Matthew further, you will read that King Herod learns from the wise men that the child is likely to be younger than 3, so he orders the deaths of all males under that age.

The Catholic Church commemorates that event on December 28 as Holy Innocents Day, which is celebrated before the feast of the Epiphany (January 6, although moved to the closest Sunday now.)

It’s more than likely that the Wise Men didn’t do any visiting of a baby in a manger, but would have tracked down the infant Jesus back in Nazareth.

5

<It’s more than likely that the Wise Men didn’t do any visiting of a baby in a manger, but would have tracked down the infant Jesus back in Nazareth.>

That is correct. If I remember correctly, Matthew states that the Magi visited Jesus in a “house” rather than a stable/cave (a stable is never mentioned in Scripture, either; early church tradition was that the birth took place in a cave used for stabling animals). Use of the word “house” would seem to indicate that the family was residing in a house either in Bethlehem or – perhaps more likely – Nazareth.

Jesus could have been a year or two old by that time.
RR

6

The number of Magi was actually set before the Middle Ages in one of the rejected gospels (I have it at home in one of my collections of such apocrypha) as Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar. It is a Catholic tradition for the priest to come and bless homes, marking “K + M + B” follwed by the year above the main door lintel, (“K” for “Kaspar”)

Back in the 1960s paranormalist Hans Holzer wrote a book an several articles claiming to identify the historical kings. It impressed me as a kid, but when I re-read it a few years ago it seemed to be extremely shoddy research. I don’t put much faith in it anymore.

R.H. Allen, in his book “Star Names”, reports a medieval tradition that the three stars in the “belt” of Orion were identified with the kings, a suggestion that Robert Bauval endorsed heartily. I don’t always trust Bauval, but he might be right in this – the rising of Orion heralds the rising of Sirius, brightest and most imressive star in the sky (which might stand for the Star or the Christ Child Himself).

No doubt there are a lot of other traditions about this. I haven’t tried to look them up. You might check the Catholic Encyclopedia.

7

Well, but in Matthew’s story, Jesus and the gang (which would make a cool sitcom title) live in Bethlehem, until the angel warns Joseph that Herod want’s to kill Jesus. They then head to Egypt, where they stay until Herod dies. Joseph, not wanting to live under the rule of Herod Archaelus, moves to Nazareth, where Herod Antipas rules.

8

For example,
The Three Wise Men and the Haunted Amusement Park
The Three Wise Men and the Mystery of the Disappearing Dude Ranch
The Three Wise Men and the Case of the Phantom Surfer

Ah, I crack myself up. Anyhoo, more details of the stories that were built up around the three wise men include:

–They are descended from the Prophet Daniel, who predicted the coming of the Messiah

–They were from Persia, where a priest of Zoroaster (sp?) was known as a “Mage,” hence, they are the three “Magi.”
(this is from “Lives of the Saints”)

–Their names are: Melchoir, Caspar (sometimes spelled Gaspar, I think more commonly in the Greek Orthodox tradition), and Bathazar.

–The Apostle Thomas, while on a missionary journey, came across them later, and informed them of the events of the life of Jesus (supposedly they had been living with suspense all this time). He then baptized them. (I can’t find a particular source on this one, sorry.)
Some things that can be said with relative certainty:

–The first person known to have used their individual names is Origen, an Early Christian scholar, who lived from 182 - 251, although it is unclear whether he invented them, or was consulting another source that is now lost to us.
The names were commonly known by about the 6th century.

–in terms of art history, the idea of showing them as three different races (Black, White, Asian) became popular in the 9th century, although which king was which race varies widely from region to region.

–prior to this, it was more common to depict the three wise men as three different ages, a young guy, a middle aged guy, and an elderly guy.

9

Dopers may also want to look up the word(s) “wise men” in Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance, where they will find (as I did with an interlinear translation, using the 1948 Macmillan edition of the Westcott and Hort Greek text) that the Greek word translated “wise men” is magoi, whence “Magi” (as in O. Henry’s short story). The word was borrowed by Greek, perhaps from Persian; my guess is that these were astrologers (they said, ‘We have seen his star’); they certainly weren’t Jews; what they did was to tip Herod off about Jesus’ birth; it reminds me to a degree of James’ disquisition about the similarity of the tongue to a fire, as felt by the bereaved mothers in Bethlehem… :frowning:

10

The gospel of Matthew indicates that the visitation of the Magi takes place while the family is living in Bethlehem, in a proper house.

What is often missed in the course of the reading of the two nativity/infancy sequences (Matt. and Luke) is that the “manger” scene in Luke’s narration is clearly stated to be just an emergency accommodation for ONE night (indeed an interpretation popular in these days says that this may have been the safer, more humane accommodation under the circumstances, rather than the boisterous, packed-to-the-rafters, zero-privacy inn)(BTW there is nothing in the gospels to indicate the location was an active stable with animals around; it would rather be the equivalent of an unused storage room or garage). I guess it is to be assumed as so logical it need not be mentioned, that in the next day or two, they were able to rent a room in a house (contrary to another popular non-scriptural myth, the JMJ crew are never portrayed as dirt-poor).

The traditional sequence of Christmas-related holidays of the Western Church, being shoehorned into preexisting pagan holidays, does not help the confusion either, but if we stop for one moment and think that not all events had to happen within days of each other, you can have the following sequence:

24 Dec Year 1 – Jesus’ Birth
Some time the following week – they get a house
1 Jan Year 2 – Jesus’ Briss (this is a Holiday of Obligation in the RCC)
6 Jan Year 2(or 3) – Magi show up
28 Dec Year 2(or 3) – Almost a year after Magi skip town, Herod remembers the whole thing and just to be safe decides to execute the children born around the right date
Many thanks to delphica, dougie_monty, CalMeacham and Captain Amazing for their informative posts.

jrd
San Juan, Puerto Rico, where the Tres Reyes Magos are still big players in the whole Holiday scene.

11

Adrian G. Gilbert in his book The Magi: The Quest for a Secret Tradition traces the Magi back to the little-known Kingdom of Commagene in southern Asia Minor (now a small area in Turkey just north of the Syrian border). He delves into the paleoastronomy of the constellations and planetary configurations on certain dates in that era and concludes it was a matter of astrological symbolism used to legitimate royal claims and dynasties in Commagene. He also ties it in with Egyptian astrology that viewed Orion as Osiris.

12

24 Dec?!? Why not the 25th?

13

[hijack]At Christmas mass, the sermon spoke about the symbolism behind the three gifts, but I have forgotten exactly what each symbolized?[/hijack]

14

The gold was a symbol of royalty, so when the Wise Men bring it to the infant Jesus, it shows that the baby was to be king. The frankinsense was burned during religious ceremonies; it stands as a symbol of the baby’s divinity. And the myrrh was a balm used on corpses, foreshadowing death. Ewww.

As the gag goes, it figured these were the Wise Men. If they had been Wise Women, they would have brought cute little swaddling clothes and maybe a casserole.

JRDelirious, you’ve touched on something I’ve wondered about. Where does the idea that Joseph and Mary were dirt-poor come from? The gospel accounts make it clear that the provisory lodging arrangements were because the inn was overcrowded. Nowhere does it say or hint that Joseph couldn’t have paid the rent. He is always portrayed as a carpenter, a tradesmen. While they weren’t royalty, the family would have been better-off than if Joseph had been a tenant farmer or a day laborer - and there were more of them than carpenters.

And CalMeacham, you’re right about the Catholic tradition of writing K+M+B over the door lintel, and that’s believed to be the origin of the popular belief that the Wise Men were named Kaspar, Melchior and Balthazar. But that’s not what it actually means. It’s the initials of a Latin phrase that means something like “Christ bless this dwelling”.

Most of this is remembered from Catholic school. I could be using those neurons for remembering people’s telephone numbers, but noooo, I remember what the stoopid frankincense is supposed to symbolize instead.

15

Sorry – bit o’ culturally-induced typo. The Nativity is, of course, celebrated the 25th. However since all the celebrations and ceremonies have always started on the eve, the number 24 slipped in.

16

Right. And this was a head-of-household who was reportedly able to relocate the family on short notice to Egypt, in order to wait out Herod. You need savings (or relatives in Egypt with a room to spare!) to do that.

I say it’s a version of “Abraham Lincoln was born in a log cabin he built himself :smiley: and walked every morning 12 miles barefoot thru the snow to school” i.e. if your hero came up from the working classes, he’ll be all the more heroic by creating a myth of extreme hardship.

17

Would the value of the have been like a few hundred bucks, or more like winning the lotto? And what did Mary and Joseph do with the gifts? Buy a color TV? Put it away in a savings account for little Jesus’ college education?