We Three Kings

Merry Christmas!

It's been a few days since I have posted so to kick things off again I thought I would touch on the original Christmas story -- baby Jesus, the manger and of course the three kings.

A few days before my trip home I finished a fantastic book, titled In Xanadu, by the British author William Dalrymple. Dalrymple has written a number of incredible books on India but In Xanadu was his first literary effort. It's a travel story about his attempt to retrace Marco Polo's journey from Jerusalem all the way to Xanadu, Kubla Khan's palace in Mongolia. He successfully made the trip during the summer before his final year at Cambridge and published the book at 22. It's fantastic and I highly recommend it but enough background.

In one stretch of his journey through modern day Iran, Dalrymple finds his way to a city that according to Marco Polo once hosted the bodies of the three kings or wise men who came to Jesus in Bethlehem. These wise men, or Magi, made the famous offering of gold, frankincense and myrrh and in the course of their pilgrimage founded the fire-worshiping religion of Zoroastrianism in Persia.

This is where I found myself intrigued. The following are a few passages from Dalrymple. Despite references to several almost forgotten historians hopefully you will be able to follow. Apparently, Marco Polo may have actually been onto something.

"At first sight the legend looks interesting, but wholly mythical...But one or two of the details in the story made me think twice about dismissing it in its entirety. According to Yule, the word 'Magi' used by St. Matthew in his gospel does not actually mean wise men, as I had always assumed. The word is Persian, and so stands out in the Greek of the Gospel as a solitary foreign word. Its meaning is specific. It is the name of the ancient Zoroastrian priestly class. In all the elaboration that has grown up around the story in the Gospel, St Matthew's original meaning has been obscured. In the text the men who follow the star from the east are not the kings. Nor are they numbered or given names: this is all mediaeval legend. The Gospel text simply reads 'Some Magi came to Bethlehem from the East.' St Matthew's original audience would have understood that this meant a visit to Bethlehem of fire-worshiping priests from Persia."

He continues, "As I read Yule's footnotes I remembered depictions of the Magi that I had seen on sarcophagi in the Vatican Museum and in the mosaics of St Apollinare in Nuovo in Ravenna. The Magi are shown wearing trousers, tunics and pointed felt caps--the distinctive dress of the ancient Persians. This in turn reminded me of a story I had read the previous year in Runciman's The First Crusade. In the seventh century, the Persians had defeated the Byzantines and had swept through Palestine burning and pillaging every important building they had come across. Only one structure was spared: the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. According to Runciman, they made this single exception because over the doorway of the church was placed a huge mosaic showing the three Magi worshiping the Christ child. If the specifically Persian origin of the Magi is perhaps obscured today it was clearly understood into the early Middle Ages."

I suppose make of this forgotten piece of history what you will but I found it particularly interesting. Dalrymple is not finished here but I thought I would save the second part of this story for another day.