The Wise Men and the Star

Copyright © 2019 Dean G. Miller.

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Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®, Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

ISBN: 978-1-9736-5706-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-5707-1 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-5705-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019903046

WestBow Press rev. date: 04/04/2019

Contents

Preface

1 Matthew's Account

2 Who Were the Magi?

3 Into the Fertile Crescent

4 Locating the East: The Chaldeans

5 Looking for Astronomers and Finding Priests

6 Answers from the Book of Daniel

7 How Educated Were the Jews?

8 The Jews in Sumer

9 The Decline and Fall of Babylon

10 The Argument for Jewish Magi

11 Astrology and the Christian Church

12 Returning to Matthew's East

13 A Uniquely Jewish Story

14 The Star of Bethlehem

15 Abraham and the Ram

16 The Shepherd Story

17 The Lamb of God

18 Dating the Magi's Arrival

19 The Sign of Jesus

Conclusion

Notes

Preface

When I was growing up, Europe was rapidly deteriorating. Hitler had come to power, the world was engulfed in war, and there was death and destruction around the globe. When the dust had settled, a cynicism gripped Europe, affecting all aspects of life, but none so keenly as religion. The old, stultified Christianity of prewar Europe was just about dead. Even the ancient religions of Japan and China were being replaced with the secularism infecting the rest of the world.

From the 1960s through the 1980s, this secularism swept through America so completely that, while in earlier times it might have been honorable to be an agnostic, open to faith if the facts and one’s experience warranted it, today to be anything but an atheist brands one as a superstitious troglodyte, and many view searching for the truth about God and his activity in the world to be as ludicrous as trying to prove that the earth is flat.

The Bible has gone through a similar transition. In the late eighteen hundreds, scholars thought the Gospels were flawed but believed one could tease out of the writings some evidence of the authentic Jesus. Today secularists so disparage the Bible that they doubt even the existence of a man called Jesus! The rest of the Bible is equally ridiculed, written off as nothing more than an ancient book of superstitions.

When I entered the Christian ministry, having been steeped in secular culture, I had a problem, one that lingered for years. The problem concerned reconciling two disparate points of view. My background was in science, and I could not, in truth, reject many of the secularists’ arguments as atheistic nonsense, because some of their arguments made logical sense. On the other hand, because I accepted the idea that these writings were inspired by God, I could not, and would not, simply dismiss them.

Nowhere was my dilemma more evident than in the very origin of Christianity: in the nativity recounted in the gospels of Matthew and Luke. I was not completely ready to reject the two birth stories found in these books as fantasies or myths, as secularists have done. But I had to agree with certain theologians who had pointed out for centuries that the birth of Jesus was never mentioned anywhere else in the New Testament and that a decent Christology could be developed without it.

Fortunately, not everyone rejected these stories. As the Christmas season approached each year, there was always a flurry of interest in the tale of the wise men. Who were they? Where did they come from? Where was the east mentioned in Matthew’s gospel? And, as usual, some astronomer would try to determine the identity of the star by reference to a celestial phenomenon, such as a supernova, a comet, or a coincidence of two or more planets. All of this gave these birth narratives an undeniable importance to the church of which I was an integral part.

How could I brush off these tales, so beloved by Christians for centuries, as nothing more than legend: charming, imaginative, conveying the idea that Jesus was special but having no more value than that, as so many scholars have done?¹

The problem I faced was having to admit that there is some justification for skepticism since apparent discrepancies between Matthew’s version of events and those depicted in Luke must be addressed in order to accept the nativity stories as factual. Furthermore, oddities within each of the narratives call their veracity into question. And then there is that mysterious star! How can one fathom this seemingly miraculous apparition? I could not dismiss both accounts outright, nor could I furnish reasonable answers to the inevitable questions that arise from any meticulous reading.

For some years, I put the dilemma in the back of my mind, reviving it only at the Christmas season, when it annually gave rise to troubling thoughts. This in itself was troubling because of all the times of the year when one should delight in the Word of God, it is Christmastide. The cloud that hung over these stories prevented me from entering into the festive atmosphere of joy and good will shared even by secularists, who are able to get into the Christmas spirit, with its gaily wrapped gifts, tinkling bells, and bright shiny lights.

My frame of mind changed recently when I discussed this issue with my daughter, who has a quick and precise legal mind. As a result of her probing questions, which I had difficulty answering, I realized that now was the time to pursue this matter in earnest.

The fundamental question concerning the natal stories was this: After two thousand years of study, argument, and analysis of the nativity descriptions found in Matthew and Luke, could anything more be added, or had everything been said that could be said? For example, was it possible that something had been lost in translation? A modest and humorous illustration of what I mean is the 1611 translation of the Bible (the King James Version) in which the word ταμιειον was rendered as closet. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet (Matthew 6:6). By the eighteen hundreds, the meaning of the word closet (closed room) had changed from small private room, store room, or spare room, as it was understood in the sixteen hundreds, to clothes closet, and many a biography relates that a Christian father of the late eighteen hundreds, trying to be faithful to the Word of God, had the habit of going into the clothes closet to pray!

It was also conceivable, however, that the problem was not one of mere mistranslation but something of far greater magnitude. I had to confront the possibility that a piece to the puzzle had been misplaced. I began to wonder if we had lost essential facts in the nativity stories that were well known to the original hearers of these written records. How could the three most important terms in Matthew’s story, wise men, east, and star, have become so obscure? Why wasn’t even one of these terms specific enough to lead us to the identities of the others? How had a narrative that should have informed become a tale so obtuse that it was valueless in contributing to our understanding of the Messiah?

This is the primary reason many scholars have dismissed these stories as nothing more than the usual miracle tales that accompanied the births of ancient heroes. I was certain these stories could not have started out this ambiguous. Something must be missing.

The more I entertained this notion, the more convinced I became that something was indeed lost that, if recovered, would reveal the Matthew and Luke accounts to be pieces of authentic history and a window into the time into which Jesus was born. If this were the case, I was determined to prove it.

1

Matthew's Account

The Traditional Magi Story

Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we saw His star in the east and have come to worship Him. When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. Gathering together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. They said to him, In Bethlehem of Judea; for this is what has been written by the prophet: ‘And you, Bethlehem, land of Judah, are by no means least among the leaders of Judah; for out of you shall come forth a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.’

Then Herod secretly called the magi and determined from them the exact time the star appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem and said, "Go and search carefully for the Child; and when you have found Him, report to me, so that I too may come and worship Him."

After hearing the king, they went their way; and the star, which they had seen in the east, went on before them until it came and stood over the place where the Child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. After coming into the house they saw the Child with Mary His mother; and they fell to the ground and worshipped Him. Then, opening their treasures, they presented to Him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And having been warned by God in a dream not to return to Herod, the magi left for their own country by another way.

The story of the wise men (rendered magi in the Greek translation), found in Matthew 2:1–12, is one of only two accounts in the Bible concerning the birth of Jesus; the other, found in Luke’s gospel (2:1–20), involves the adoration by the shepherds. In the centuries since the story first appeared in Matthew’s gospel, it has been retold, reinterpreted, augmented, and distorted to such an extent that today it seems hardly recognizable, and this is true not only among the secular population but often among religious congregations.

Here is the customary tale, which I learned in my childhood. Three wise men (they have since morphed into kings) see a bright star in the east and follow it to Jerusalem. Having been told that the Messiah will be born in Bethlehem, they go there. The star they had followed from the east, which had evidently disappeared in Jerusalem, reappears on the way to Bethlehem and hovers over a manger belonging to an inn. There the wise men find the baby with Mary and Joseph. Shepherds, cattle, donkeys, and sheep are crowded into the stall with them, all worshipping the baby Jesus. Each of the three foreigners—these wise men/kings—presents his gift: one, gold, the second, frankincense, and the third, myrrh. Each of these presents has some theological meaning, gold signifying the kingship of Jesus, frankincense, his deity, and myrrh, his death. After paying homage to the baby Jesus, the wise men return home by a different route, having been warned in a dream to do so.

Accretions to the Story

That was the basic story that I and millions of children throughout the Western world had learned. And I and millions of children throughout the Western world had participated in Christmas plays, dressing in bathrobes as shepherds and wise men or in white sheets as angels.

What I had not known until I launched upon my study of Christmas was that a large number of traditions had grown up around these personages in both the Eastern (Orthodox) and the Western (Roman) churches. To begin with, because there were three gifts, the assumption has been that there were just three wise men. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, they were considered kings as early as the third century.² By the seventh century, they were given names, as recorded in the Excerpta Latina Barbari, which have come down to us today as Melchior, Gaspar (or Casper or Jasper), and Balthazar.³

By the twelfth century, in the heyday of their popularity, the legend surrounding them had come to bloom, and its growth and accretion continued well into the Renaissance. The three kings had attained international celebrity, with pageants and dramas enacted in their honor across Europe, running contemporaneously with firsthand accounts of the Holy Land disseminated by returning Crusaders and with the rapid circulation of religious relics brought home with them.⁴ Ages were posited for the three kings (fifteen, thirty, and forty), though which age corresponded to which king, no one knew. One medieval scholar even proposed places of origin for each: King Melchior was from Nubia or Arabia, King Balthazar was from Godolye or Saba, and King Iaspar (Caspar) was from Thaars, a location that included the island of Egriswill/Egriswyll.⁵

Today, tradition still ascribes the origins of the magi to three regions in the East: Balthazar from Arabia, Melchior from Persia, and Gaspar from India. But how could the wise men have come from three separate, far-flung regions? After all, they arrived in Jerusalem at the same time and traveled together to Bethlehem.

Why can’t we imagine that they came from the same place? Was tradition really saying, We don’t know where they came from, so we’ll pick three different places to the east, each of them reasonable guesses, in the hope that one will be right? And this, of course, complicates the question of the star: Are we talking about one star or three stars, one for each of the wise men in each of the three regions of the East?

What this suggests is that no one knows the origins of the wise men, other than the fact that they were from somewhere east of Palestine. This, then, became one of the questions I needed to resolve.

A Problem with Timing

Another disputed element in the story of the wise men involves what time they reached Bethlehem. Modern Christmas cards and church plays have them arriving on the night of Jesus’s birth, although, understandably, this is due to the need to condense the story for the sake of convenience in these media. It must have been a grand and noisy party with shepherds, kings, and animals all crammed into the stall.

The Western church celebrates the coming of the wise men on January 6, the twelfth day of Christmas, also called Epiphany, signaling that there was a separation in time between the birth of Christ, assumed to be on December 25, and the coming of the magi. This gap between the two dates is appropriate, since Herod’s massacre of the Bethlehem children under two years of age, following the magi’s appearance, indicates the wise men could have come as late as two years after Jesus’s birth. Here, then, was a second issue I needed to address: Could I find out when the wise men arrived? Could any concrete evidence be extracted from the data we have to yield this information?

Everything in Doubt

As it turns out, so little is known with any certainty about the wise men that tradition cannot even agree on their final resting place. According to Marco Polo, they were buried in Saba, in modern-day Iran, where he claimed to have seen their well-preserved bodies.⁶ But they were also said to have been discovered by Helena, mother of Emperor Constantine, in Ethiopia (Melchior and Balthazar) and on the island of Egriswyll (Caspar), which appears to have been Cyprus. From these places the remains were brought to Constantinople, after which the Roman emperor Mauricius carted them to Milan. From there, they were transported to Cologne through the efforts of that city’s archbishop.⁷ In every case they were moved because an uprising in each of the cities where they lay threatened the safety of the remains. All this is found in a curious but delightful little tract called The Three Kings of Cologne, authored by John Hildesheim in the fourteenth century. Dare we suggest that neither tomb contained the bones of the wise men?

Regardless of where the wise men are laid to rest, it became clear from even a cursory investigation that if I were ever to discover the facts behind this story, I would need to strip away the accretions of tradition, however it might hurt my nostalgic sensibilities. Furthermore, I had to make a decision right at the beginning of my investigation: the story was either a fable or it was an actual occurrence. If it was a fable, I should not disturb it and should simply enjoy it for its entertainment, and possible spiritual, value, not worrying about the occasional addition to the tale that makes it all the more enchanting.⁸ However, if the visitation by the magi was an event in the life of our Savior, I needed to look more closely at it and to glean the kinds of facts from it that would lead to a clearer understanding of what happened, regardless of what effect that might have on tradition.

Scholars today are divided on the historicity of these stories. Those who have grown up with the familiar Wellhausen school of higher criticism, and others of the late nineteenth century such as David Strauss, assume the stories are fictional, and they arrive at this conclusion from many perspectives. Their primary focus is on the composition of the writings, used to determine their source. So much has been written in this vein that it would take volumes to catalog or even to summarize their argument that these stories are not accurate history. This is far beyond the scope of this book.

I have my suspicions, however, about this line of inquiry. Specifically, too much attention has been placed on the documents—ascertaining their textual style and word origins, their possible sources and dates of composition, and the similarity between these and other stories of that era—and too little on the Jewish culture that produced them with its penchant for accuracy and attention to detail. The many factors that resulted in these two pieces of literature may be much more complex than the followers of Strauss believe. And I am not willing to adopt their conclusions a priori.

The problem with many of the more recent interpretations of these passages is that instead of closely examining the wording, they accept the accretions that have crept in and have influenced the authors’ understanding of the events. For example, Bill O’Reilly, in his book Killing Jesus, accepts the bright star image in the wise men story.⁹ Borg and Crossan, in discussing the factual fundamentalism that influences the interpretation of the nativity stories, also appear to accept what I call the common understanding of these narratives.¹⁰ In neither case are the words of the stories examined closely and accurately in order to gain a precise understanding of what they are saying. All too often, the authors of treatises on the nativity stories do not rid themselves of the mental pictures embedded in their minds from hearing and reading the accounts since early childhood. These discussions begin with too many unexamined assumptions.

The Dilemma

Since I decided I would view the stories as factually accurate and would see where that led, the possibility of a shift in view confronted me right from the start in the form of a theological dilemma. What I mean is that in most commentaries on the wise men passage, the theological value of the account concerns the idea that Gentiles came to worship Jesus at the outset of his life, portending the fact that the gospel was destined to be offered to all peoples everywhere.¹¹

On the other hand, if this story turned out to be factual, it was entirely possible that it would have a vastly different meaning than that commonly ascribed to it, and I had to be prepared to accept that.

The one thing I was determined not to do was to combine the fanciful with the factual and to settle for a tale that could not be taken seriously. This is exactly how this story apparently is viewed by the majority of Christians, a point of view that discourages a close examination of the account. Why expend energy trying to determine who