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The Wise men - a mere legend?
by Michael Green
I am surprised that the Archbishop of Canterbury should dismiss the visit of the wise men to the infant Jesus as a myth. The Greek word for them,'magoi' (from which we derive our 'magician'), suggests that they were astrologers. Astrology was common in antiquity: people believed human and political destiny was controlled by the stars.
A comet was seen at Julius Caesar's funeral and it led to the belief that he had joined the gods, and that was the start of deifying the Roman emperors when they died! Another comet, in 66 AD, appeared shortly before Nero committed suicide. The most probable explanation of Matthew's text seems to be that what the magoi saw was the conjunction of the planets in the area of Jupiter and Saturn in that area of the sky.
This conjunction would have been brighter than a single star and could have evoked the interest of these Eastern star-watchers. It happened, as Kepler discovered as far back at 1603, no less than three times in the year 6 BC (2 years before the death of King Herod), on May 29, Oct. 3 and Dec. 4. The dates are carefully noted in cuneiform tablets discovered by the German scholar P. Schnabel during excavations at the 'School of Astrology' in Sippar, Babylonia.
The meaning was plain enough if you were into astrology. Jupiter was always seen as the royal star. Saturn was the Jewish planet. Pisces marked the end of the sun's old course and the start of the new. What is more likely than that they sensed a prediction of the end of the old age, the start of the new, and a fresh ruler coming from Israel.
Would they not naturally have then set out on their long journey to find the fulfillment of their reckonings? Since Nebuchadnezzar's time many Jews had stayed in Babylonia. The magoi may well have come from Jewish lineage and been particularly excited by the prospect of the fulfillment of ancient Jewish prophecies. Hence their journey.
All this may not be completely demonstrable, but it is reasonable and fits well with the expectations we find in secular writers. The Roman author Suetonius wrote 'There had spread over all the Orient an old and established belief, that it was fated at that time for men from Judaea to rule the world.' (Vespasian, 4.5). Tacitus, the greatest of the historians of the Empire, makes the same point: 'There was a firm persuasion ..that at this very time the East was to grow powerful and rulers coming from Judaea were to acquire universal empire' (Histories, 5.13). The Jews too believed ' about that time that one from their country should become governor of the habitable earth' (Josephus, Wars 6.5,4). No wonder Herod was worried!
We know that magoi came from the East to Nero in 66AD (Suetonius, Nero 13 and Dio, 63.7). Is it so improbable that earlier magoi followed their discovery of an extremely unusual astral conjunction in 6 BC, and came to pay homage to a greater than Nero?
As for the idea that because the story is found in Matthew alone it can be discounted, would the Archbishop want to discard Jesus' footwashing or the eucharistic discourse because they are only found in John?
To be sure, we do not know that there were three magoi - an inference from their three gifts. There is in Matthew's account no suggestion that they were kings. And we first hear of their supposed names only in the 6th century. But there is no good reason to suppose that the story as found in Matthew is a legend, and it is unfortunate of the Archbishop to have made a mistake of this nature on public television, from which a little research would have saved him.'
---The Rev. Dr. Michael Green is an author, evangelist, teacher, professor and lecturer based in Oxford, England
