Empire: World History - 213. How Three Wise Men Became Three Kings

Episode Date: December 19, 2024

The story of the Three Wise Men has been reinterpreted since it was first written down. The gift-bearing visitors to the newborn Jesus were initially described as “Magi”, meaning Persians of a priestly caste, but by the 4th century they were given the individual names of Gaspar, Melchior and Balthazar. And in Medieval Europe they were described not as Three Wise Men, but as Three Kings. Yet there’s more to the evolution of the Magi than Western ideas, in Syriac Christian traditions there are up to 24 Magi, and in the Ethiopian church they are named Hor, Karsudan, and Basanater. So how have these ideas developed over time? Listen as William and Anita are again joined by Professor Lloyd Lewellyn-Jones to discuss the evolution of the story of the Magi, and the influence of British imperialism on their symbolism… Twitter: @Empirepoduk Email: [e-mail] Goalhangerpodcasts.com Assistant Producers: Anouska Lewis  Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcasts, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mparpoduk.com. Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnan. And me, William Dribble. And we're doing some Christmasy specials because we love you and we love this subject. I mean, it's amazing. We're talking about the Magi, the three wise men, three kings.

If you haven't heard the first episode, go back and listen to it because it's really outstanding. With our outstanding guest, a professor of ancient history. And now a proper man of the cloth, Lloyd Llewellyn Jones, is with us again. Hello. Hello, hello. You took us on such a fabulous romp in the last episode. And, you know, the reason, again, if you're just joining us, is why are these guys doing this story? I thought I'm listening to Empire. Well, if you listen to the first one, and hopefully in this too,

we always have this idea that the nativity story with the three wise men turning up with their gold, frankincense and myr is a direct trajectory from the gospel of Matthew coming straight down to us and nothing has been changed and it is, you know, it's as pure as that. But what we're doing is we're talking about the influence of different empires at the time on this story. So we talked a lot about the Persians, We talked about the Romans, which was a fabulous introduction to the kind of geopolitics that was going on at the time. Why is he called the Son of God so many times by Matthew? It's because Augustus was talking about himself as the Son of God. So all of these things are a fantastic window into the times when these huge empires were clashing against each other.

Lloyd, the last we talked about the names, because Matthew doesn't say the names. He doesn't even say how many there were. It doesn't say also when. It doesn't say that it's kind of, you know, the week after the activity. It could be years after. It's still a baby. Yeah. So let's first of all just remind people the names that we have come to associate with

the three wise men. Melchior, the wise man who supposedly brought gold. Casper, the man who supposedly brought frankincense. And Balthasar, the poor man who brought the myrr that we often mock because, you know, me. It's a wild animal, isn't it? It's a dangerous beast. I wish liked it. It's a dangerous beast that can bite the baby. So, where are you going to start? Where do you want to take us, William?

We should say that those names, which we are so familiar with and which we've all grown up with, are not the names that other churches give to the wise men. There are variations on the theme, essentially. And you know what, the process of transliteration is pretty much an open one anyway. So for some, it's Kaspar, for others it's Gasper, for others it's Kashtar, and so on and so forth. And just before we go any further with that one, it's linked, isn't it? I've always read to the name that we've talked about before on this pod for the acts of Thomas the King Gandafaris, who's meant to have invited St. Thomas to India in that story. Exactly. So the tradition is that Kaspar is an indigenous Iran.

So he's from the Iranian plateau, and he is some kind of member of a royal family, maybe a king himself, but he is the person who introduces the disciple Thomas to a later Parthian king. So that's the link in there. And to this day, I've literally just come back from Kerala in southwest India, there's a whole community of Christians there who believe that their church was started by St. Thomas, and they tell you this with great earnestness. It is incredible. There's also this tradition. Oertz-Honzfeld, the great archaeologist of the 1930s, believed that Kaspar gives his name to Kandahar. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah, which may be stretching it a bit. But Ernst was, you know, Ernst Herzfeld was very serious in making that connection. And maybe there's something in it. Who knows?

But basically what we're dealing with is a string of legends, mythologies, which rise up about these names. And I think importantly, and this is something, we touched on when we did the last program. Matthew was very keen to show that Old Testament prophecies are being fulfilled in the Jesus' narrative of his birth. So in the book of Psalms, the great hymn book of the Hebrew faith, we have, for instance, one Psalm which talks about, they will come to him from afar, from Arabia, from the east, and I think it even says, you know, from Tyre and Sidon, they will come. and they will lay homages before him, him being Messiah, the anointed one of God. And so, of course, what later Christians after Matthew wants to do is to kind of pinpoint those points on the map to say, well, they came from all over the ancient world to the empire

of King David itself. So here's another empire being created with subjects showing homage to this newborn king. And just to say clearly in one sentence, what is Matthew doing? with these guys? Why does he have them turn up? Well, the most important thing is they are witnesses to the birth of a Messiah. It's a revolution in the world where God, for the first time, enters the world fully formed, fully human and fully divine at one and the same time. Not an avatar of God, not, you know, coming down in a human body, but actually being fully human. So the magi are the witnesses. And of course, the great celebration in the Christian faith we have is on the 6th of January, the Feast of Epiphany, of course, being a Greek

word meaning to appear before. So this is when Jesus appears before witnesses for the first time. So that's their importance, theoretically. You know, it just struck me that there may be some people who are devout Christians who may find this all a bit too much, saying, hang on a minute, this is just the story, this is what happened, this actually did happen. And I don't know why you're talking about influences or Matthew trying to use analogies. from different empires to prove a point or delving into apocrypha or even, you know, sort of old stories to say these old predictions are coming true. I feel sort of secure asking you, because you've devoted your life now to Christ, right? You're a priest now. So how do you address this?

To anybody who is gnashing their teeth going, why are you doing this? It's a great question. And it's something I've had to deal with since I was essentially 16, 17, you know, doing A-level biblical studies and all of this, starting to take the Bible apart and then retaining my faith. And the way it's worked out for me is the more I can tear into the Bible and understand its creation and the history that underpins the whole thing, in fact, the stronger my faith gets because somehow I see a truth that is greater than the fallible way in which humans have to try to get their scriptures out. The scriptures are changing. but God speaks through them somehow to me. There is a bigger picture of a narrative of salvation, which is a greater truth than anything we can find in the written word itself. So it's something I've

really, really had to work on. And some people struggle with, and I no longer struggle with it, I'm glad to say. I've found my peace with being both a historian and a man of faith. But do you have lots of opposition, I mean, among clergy, because now you are a member of the clergy, Do some come and say to you, look, actually this is not helpful, this is confusing, and, you know, this is the story. This is just what happened. Stop muddling us all up with all of your Persian stuff. Very rarely, not amongst the clergy, sometimes amongst congregations, you can see the eyebrows raising in a sermon because they're unfamiliar. You know, we cannot get away from the fact that there are two nativity stories. There's Matthews, which is wise men. There's Luke's, which is shepherds and angels. and never the two will meet. Now, how do we deal with that?

Well, we have to take them one at a time. We have to look for the message, the meaning that sits behind these stories, and then we can deal with them in our heads in how we want. But Lloyd, on this episode, we would like now to move on in a sense from the Gospels, which we discussed in the last episode, and these two very different versions of Nativity,

and look what Christian tradition adds to it, which is to completely scramble it, in all sorts of ways and take it in a whole variety of different directions, depending on whether you're in the Armenian Church, the Ethiopian Church, the Church of North Africa, which doesn't exist anymore, it's Italian. Where would you like to start? I'd like to start a little bit closer to the period of the Gospels themselves. Sure.

Because what we have to realize is there were lots of competing voices in the early and Christian church. Everybody wanted to get their truth out there. And I suppose at some point, you know, texts were either accepted into the canon of what we call the New Testament, or they were shoved into apocryphal books, which still had a kind of circulation but weren't so well known. Or there were real kind of miscreants who sat outside of the tradition, waiting for many thousands of years to be discovered again. And I think, Anita, you were absolutely right in saying, you know, we've got this idea that the tradition is passed down to us directly from Matthew, and we have it in our. Bibles now, and that's all there is to it. But actually, there's a far more complex story that goes on here. And we could do this for any section of the gospel stories of Jesus's life. But let's see what they do then with Matthew's story of the wise men. Well, in the second century, so just 200 years after Jesus' death, we have a whole set of birth stories and stories of the youth of Jesus,

which simply don't get into the New Testament at all. One of them is this incredible Gospel of Thomas, which is the sayings of Jesus. Another one we call the proto-evangelium of James. So the proto-gospel or birth story of James, in which we go through the Nativity story. But interestingly, we also have the early years of Jesus growing up in Nazareth, where he's a bit of a mischievous boy, a bit of a rebel toddler. So for instance, because he's got all these superpowers, which he doesn't know how to control. Is that where the sparrows, he takes the, that comes from So he takes some mud, you know, and he says to his little friends, look, what I can do? Take some mud and he spits on it and says a prayer and they suddenly turn into sparrows.

And another point, you know, he quarrels with a boy in his school and he strikes him dead. And the little boy's father runs to Joseph and says, look what your son has done. Joseph almost takes Jesus by the year and drags him back to the school yard and says, make this boy live again. And so he does, the first resurrection that we have. You know, I mean, they do not make the final cut. So there are all these alternative stories coming out about the infant Jesus. And some of those end up in the Quran, don't they?

That's right. That's the incredible thing. So which ones end up in the Quran? Like which ones? Which ones are in the Quran? Some of these stories of the childhood of Jesus, the naughty childhood. Naughty Jesus, who has to bring his friend back to life. Absolutely.

And of course, Mary's story in the Quran is so much bigger than anything you get in the New Testament. A whole Sura to herself, you know, the Suna of Mariam is enormous. Absolutely. But around the time that these stories are being told, there's also another tradition which we call pseudo-Matthew. So we don't know who wrote it, but clearly he's rifting on Matthew. Okay, he's taking the Matthews text and he goes with her a little bit. And in this particular gospel, the three wise men, they approach and they give homage to the infant Jesus and they give their gifts. And then Mary gives them a gift to go home. And she gives them the swaddling bands that Jesus had worn. Wow. And they take these back, and where do they go? They go back to Persia. And this is specifically said in this text. And in Persia, they go to their temple, a Zoroastrian temple, and they burn the rags, the swaddling rags themselves. And this creates the sacred flame of Zoroastrianism. Blimey.

So that living flame begins with the cloth that has touched the body of Jesus. So there we have, a complete riff. Hang on a minute. Swaddling bans. Are we talking about sort of the, the, the, wrap around a baby, or nappy? Are we talking nappy stuff? Not quite the nappy. In antiquity, people believe that there were lots of sort of things that could demons and ghouls and things that could corrupt the body. So to keep it safe, you would wrap it very, very tightly. I mean, that was something that was done in Wales until the 1960s. I was swaddled. No, no, no, it's made a comeback. Well, it certainly did when my kids were babies because, yeah, so you sort of give them little tight things to wear so that they feel secure like they're back in the

womb. Yeah, absolutely. So it has a mental thing, but also has this. theological thing. So it's those cloths that have intimately touched the body of the of the son of God that then gives life to the everlasting flame, which is incredible, isn't it? You know, which allegedly has never gone out. You know, if you go to Yazd in Iran today, that flame allegedly is still burning. Yes, yes, yes. Then we have another version, another spin on that story, which was found in Egypt. It dates to the sixth century, the text that we have, but it's quite clear that it was a much, much earlier story. And in this one, the wise men go to Jerusalem, as Zarathustra has predicted, Zarathustra the great prophet of Zoroastrianism, so he has already said that this child will be

born. So there's a prophecy in Iran that these guys listen to. And so they go with their gifts and they adore him. And there it's Prosconeion out in. So they lay themselves on their stomachs before him in a good old Persian fashion. They do a complete salam. As if he's the king of kings. Our king of kings, exactly. And then Mary gives them their cloth. And again, they take that back with them. And they bring with that cloth a light into their country. So the light that will lighten up the Gentiles. The cloth kind of has this aura, this far, as we would say in Persian, this kind of luminescence around it, the godliness that we have there. And they, again, put fire to this and the fire burns. And thereon after, the wise men disseminate

from Persia into India, Afghanistan, Pakistan into Gandhara and so forth, spreading the words of Christ. And this is where they are joined by St. Thomas and therefore the Indian tradition. Which text is there? So this is called the Arabic infancy gospel. It was originally written in Aramaic. We now have it in Arabic dating from the 6th century, so a very early Arabic text. That must be one of the very first texts in Arabic. Yeah.

And this is the incredible thing. These stories have taken hold very, very early on indeed. But then we have the Syria version. This is an incredibly rich variety of stories. It's a kind of selection box of all sorts of stories. strange riffs. Let's not forget, you know, the Syriac Church, in many respects, was more powerful than the church in Jerusalem for many centuries. When we say Syriac, we're talking about early Christians in Syria. Early Christians in Syria. Right, okay. Syria had been a hub of Christianity from the offset.

Antioch in particular had been, you know, a real site for Christian worship. The first place Gentiles get openly welcomed in. Precisely. And so, you know, it's just a matter of accident of history, really, that Christians among us are not working. in the Syriac tradition, because it could have gone that way very easily rather than the Western Roman tradition. I mean, that's the whole that the Syriac Church had. And so you can imagine, therefore, that the amount of materials we have available to us, pretty much unknown in the Western tradition, unfortunately, is so rich. And a scholar from America called Richard Landau has done a fantastic job on unearthing some of these early texts. And he came across this text

called the Revelation of the Magi. It dates to the 5th century, and again, no doubt with earlier sections to it. And in this one, we have, again, a group of Zoroastrian wise men, seers, who again are commanded through a prophecy of Zarathustra that they must go and follow a star to Jerusalem, and that's where they end up. And they each give their gifts. But these wise men, and their numbered here as 12, all have fathers who are wise men as well. So there's 24. Because as we know in Zoroastrianism, these are a priestly caste. They are in the family.

So we have actually a kind of a story of wise men waiting for centuries, generation after generation, for the prophecy of Zarathustra to come true. So it's been reclaimed in the Persian tradition, really. So they all bundle off and they give their gifts, all of them, and then afterwards they return. And once again, the Thomas tradition is inserted into that then as well. Just remind us, do they talk about gold, frankincense or mer, or they just say gifts. Do they say gifts in the Syrac? So it could be anything at all.

So just, I mean, just to bring this a little bit into our reality right now, if the Syriac tradition was so very strong with what's going on in Syria at the moment, how much could we lose if there is a lot of instability and violence in Syria? I mean, we're hoping not. And at the time of recording, Assad has been ousted, and we're not quite sure what is going to happen next. At the time of recording, Damascus seems to be in one piece. But just, I mean, with your archaeological hat on,

what in the ancient Christian Syriac religion? What are the artifacts that still exist in Syria today? Oh, so much. Honestly, there is some. so much there. I mean, so much that is known and has been studied in the archives and in the libraries. But the most remarkable thing is the amount of stuff that we haven't revealed yet. You know, there are libraries and archives in Syria that go back to the founding of the Christian church. And we don't know the half of what's there yet. And tragically, and even ironically,

one of the greatest libraries and one of the most important monasteries is in Sade Naya, immediately beside where this hideous prison full of political prisoners is, and on the rock immediately above it, is this beautiful monastery. Describe it. It's a shrine to the Virgin Mary, who, as Lloyd said, is also very important in the Islamic tradition. And when you go to Sainaya, you see on one side of the church the Christians, and often mixed in, but sometimes behind them or in the aisles, you see Muslims. And everyone comes there and prays side by side.

was there, there were these guys who came in and they were offering sheep to the monks. I said, you know, does everyone bring this? They said, well, it depends what they're doing. But we had two Syrian astronauts here, they said, who were going to the space station mere. And they came and gave their helmets when they came back. So there's all sorts of... Ah, amazing. But, I mean, the tragedy for Syria is that that is immediately next door to this horrible. Oh, you say terrible. But it's that kind of place, you know, these very old churches and monasteries that have libraries within libraries. And because they're so carefully guarded by the monks and sometimes nuns as well who look

after them, we don't really have open access to these things. So we don't know what we're going to find in these kind of places. Lloyd, when I was reading up for this, I read a fantastic article called the Magi in Syriac tradition. And the liveliest story I found in that essay was a text called the Cave of Treasurer. and this one talks about the gifts of the magi having originally been given to Adam and he takes them out of the garden and even and he hides them in a cave and the magi bring them from the cave to Jesus.

Isn't that a gorgeous story? Oh, isn't that fantastic? I mean, that makes so much sense, doesn't it? Because in that Christian tradition, of course, Jesus is the second Adam and Mary is the second Eve, of course, as well, you know. And there's also this tradition, isn't there, in early Christianity of magical caves as well? Do you know the story that is told around Ephesus in Turkey of the seven sleepers? Yeah.

So these early Christians who are being persecuted by the Romans and they go and sleep in this cave. And magically they're transported 400 years into the future when they wake up when the persecutions are all over. So caves are always these places in all kinds of ledgers and myths, aren't they? And in the Arabian nights. Exactly. I've got a little bit of a text from the Revelation of the Magi. I think I'd like to read to you. Do you want to hear?

Absolutely. This is essentially the kind of the ending point of the whole thing. And it's Jesus who speaks to the Magi now that they've become evangelists in themselves. So Jesus says, I am everywhere because I am the ray of light. And where the light has shone, there I am. I shine this light in the world for the majesty of my father, who sent me to fulfill everything that was spoken about me in the entire world. And in every land, by unspeakable mysteries. That's fantastic. This whole idea of the light of the world just emanating from him. We're going to go into a break very, very shortly, but just before we go to the break,

Melchior, Gaspar and Balthazar, at what point are they lobbed onto the story then? And were they real people? Do we know that they were real people? Because they even have sort of backstories, giving them where they've come from, what they did, how old they were, they had red beards, they had long hair.

You know, there's an awful lot of detail that comes to us. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. No, there is no historical validity for any of this whatsoever. But what we can say is, the tradition of the three names is certainly alive and well by the fourth century, because we see them in the churches of Ravenna in northern Italy, being named Balthazar, Caspar, Melchior. I've always understood that the guy who comes up with them being kings, not magi, in other words, rulers, not priests, is Tertalian, who is intriguingly. far away in Carthage in what's now Tunisia.

And that makes perfect sense that if you're sitting in Tunisia, you wouldn't know what a Magi was. But it was precisely, so you make them a king. Well, I'll tell you what, that's what we're going to do in the next half. We're going to talk about how that transformation of Magi, wise men, to kings. We three kings of Oriental has a lot to answer for. How are going to find out why and how that could have happened.

Join us after the break. Welcome back now. We are going to start this half with a little reading for my dear friend, William, who was your first book, earliest? My first book. You were just a baby. You were a little embryo when you were embryonic William wrote this book about. And the spitting image of your son, which is so, I mean, mini me, except he's huge.

Adam looks just like you did it at age. Anyway, travelling through Iran to the town of Savoy and you're following Marco Polo's trail. Take it away. So Marco Polo has one of these stories about the Magi, and it's a gripping and strange story. and it's clearly related to the same sort of set of traditions that Lloyd is talking about in the first half. Stories about the beginning of Zoroastring and trying in the sense to link it to these magi who appear in the gospel. So Marco Polo is heading to Mongolia to the court of the Great Khan, and he's halfway through Iran when he comes to the town of Savae. And he tells a story.

In Persia is the city of Savae from which the three magi set out, when they went to worship Jesus Christ, and in this city they are buried in three very large and beautiful monuments side by side. In one of them, there is a square building carefully kept. The bodies are still in tower, with their hair and beards remaining. One of these was called Jasper,

the second Melchior, and the third Balthagher. Mr. Marco Polo asked a great many questions of the people of that city as to these three Magi, but never one could he find that you ought to the matter, except that these were three kings who were buried in days of old. However, at a place three days distant, he heard of what I'm going to tell you. He found a village there by the name Kala Atoparistan, which is to say the castle of the fire worshippers. And the name is rightly applied, for the people there do worship fire, and I will tell you why. They relate that in old times,

three kings of that country went away to worship a prophet that was born, and they carried with them three manner of offerings, gold, frankincense, and myr, in order to ascertain whether the prophet were a god or an earthly king or a physician. For they said if he takes gold, then he is an earthly king. If he takes incense, then he is a god. But if he takes muir, he is a physician. Polo went on to say how the three magi arrived there, they went in separately, and to their amazement, each saw the child of their own age. One found him young, the next in his prime, the third, old and hoary. Then they all entered together. This time the child appeared his actual age, namely 13 days old. No little impressed by this, the Magi gave their child all three gifts, and in return were presented with a small closed box.

There follows the strangest part of the whole story, and the legend of the three Magi is linked to the beginning of Zoroastrianism. and when they had ridden many days, they said that they would see what the child had given them. So they opened the little box, and inside they found a stone. On seeing this, they began to wonder what this might be that the child had given them and what was the import thereof.

Anyway, they throw the stone away into a well, and the flame wells up, and this is the beginning of Zoroastrianism. Oh, isn't it fantastic? That's wonderful. And you can really see different strands of the earlier stories going into that, can't you? You really can. And he's told that live

in Persia in 1271. Oh, that's just, that's wonderful. I love it. I really do. You know, there are early Chinese stories of the Magi as well. Really? Really? Not as early as this, but certainly 16th, 17th century ones too. And, you know, today

the Christian church in China claim one of the wise men is Chinese. Really? Yes. I did not know that. And Marco Polo also. famously wrote about seeing the tomb of the magi, which was in Constantinople. So it was Helena, wasn't it, who was the mother of Constantine, who said, I have got the relics of the three wise men, the magi, I've got them, and keeps them there. And then they make their way, I mean, right now in Cologne, there is the shrine of their three kings in Cologne.

That's where you can go and see them now, absolutely. And the shrine there was set up by the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. Right. He brought them back from Crusade. Crusades, yes, yes, yes. And I think this is where we get the new kind of use of the term kings for them. In the Middle Ages, it was very important for kings to be seen as representatives of Christ on earth. So I think what they did was in the kind of theology of Christology, they heightened Christ to this king of kings. And then essentially they call themselves kings, you know, kings underneath his kingship as well. So this is where the wise men become very important. They get crowns.

I mean, it's in 1199 that King Otto decides to give them three golden crowns as well. That's right. The start of the transmutation into kings is earlier than that even, isn't it? I mean, you're talking about, yes, Tatalian. So tell us about why that happens. Well, Tatalian, Tatelian is a very important Western Christian bishop and theologian. And he's basically on the coast of North Africa. What date are we talking about?

Fourth century, late third, early fourth century C.E. He is probably as far away from Persia as you could be at that date. And so therefore, Majai would, I think, mean very little to him. And possibly, you know, studying the Gospel of Matthew as he did, that word in Greek had no resonance for him. Majai would have meant nothing at all. We've given him two later date. It turns out he's actually born in 160 AD.

Oh, is he so early. So it is earlier. I thought it was really very, very early. because, you know, the shrine itself and the otto-giving crowns is really late. And I sort of, you know, he's holding on to something, and that is this idea of they are king. So do you think it is just a lost in translation thing that no one will understand major? So I'll put it in words that people will understand. I think initially that's what it is in the Western church.

But then, as I say, by the Middle Ages, there's a theology of kingship that goes along with it, you know, because like the wise men, like the kings from afar, all Christian European kings are paying homage to the king of kings. So I think that's what becomes of that in the end. And then at the Reformation, there's a swing back against kingship. And Calvin doesn't like this. Calvin's expression, I've got it written here because I have to say, I love this. I love Calvin. He talks about the magi as kings.

the most ridiculous contrivance of the pagan, that is to say, the Catholic on this subject, is that these men were kings. Beyond all doubt, they have been stupefied by a righteous judgment of God that all might laugh at their gross ignorance. When we're talking about Calvin, we're talking about slightly sneery John Calvin, who's writing in the 1500s. 1500s in the height of the European Reformation and basically, you know, negating. anything of the theology of the Roman Catholic Church. So saying they're swipingly, kings, how could they be kings? Bar humbug. So this is a question. Is it Bar Humburg? Because, you know, we have to set ourselves in opposition to the Catholics and so every symbol requires

challenge. Or he's read something somewhere that makes him think, you know what? These Catholics are crazy. They've just completely got it wrong. How does that happen? Oh, now Anita, now you're get into the heart of the Reformation. So the Reformed Church is all about the word. It's going back to the word. And of course, it's having access to the word in your own language. So the Latin Vulgate Bible had dominated the church for 600 years at this time. Nobody really able to access either the Hebrew or the Greek. And what the great reformists scholars were doing, like Martin Luther, Calvin, Zwingli and others, were going back to the original texts. So Calvin knew his Greek testament inside out, and he knew the word was magi.

He also knows, of course, his classics. He knows Herodotus and knows that magi means priest. So, you know, this is what he's saying there. So he's not just saying Bahambag, he's saying actually they're Persian priests, and he's right. And that's really what the Reformation is all about interrogating the text. And Lloyd, then we have this, this is now the age of. of discovery, as well as the Reformation, this is the period that Europeans are going out into the world. And we see in some of the Renaissance painting ideas that these magi don't just come

from far away, and suddenly don't come specifically from Persia. In the Renaissance tradition, you suddenly find them coming from different continents. So Melchior is European, Gaspar becomes Asian, and Balthajar is at this period, shamed. known black from Africa. Yes, an African, absolutely. And that's a, that's a tradition which hangs on in the European artistic tradition for the next 200 years. It's really fascinating. So you can virtually date all of these depictions of the Magi by the appearance of a single black Magi. From between about 1480 to about 1780, this is what happens. Now, after 1780, though. The world expands even more, of course, during the Enlightenment. And now we have the

appearance of American Magi as well. So we have, you know, wearing Inca-like headdresses and this kind of stuff, too. So basically, empire is being used here to inform, of course, the centrality of the Christian church at the beginning of the British Empire and the French Empire and the German Empire and so forth, too. So that Matthew and text is now being utilised to see the centrality of the Western religious tradition. So one of the things that really tickles me is in the 15th century artists had not seen many black people. They didn't know what to do with them. So you've got the adoration of the Magi by Hieronymus Bosch. And he has to paint Balthazar at an angle so he doesn't have to do all the features.

Because lighting this man is very, very difficult for a man. He doesn't know how to do it. He doesn't know how to paint it. That's exactly right. Absolutely. And more outlandish costumes as well for Balthus are more than anyone else. He's definitely got the bling out of the three. And if you also notice in all of these earlier paintings, the Renaissance paintings in particular, camels, oh my goodness me, camels come in all shapes and form. You know, most of these Western artists have never seen a camel. But they're told about some kind of humped beasts from the east.

Oh, incredible things. I think there is something wonderful to be done about the history of the leopard in art, because they are some funny-looking things in some of the paintings I've. You've actually got a very good camel on one of those Welsh fonts, haven't you, in the border countries, in that Hereford School of Art. Oh, have we really? I didn't know that, really. There's a font near Hay-on-Wye. Yeah.

That's 12th century, I think. And there's a lovely attempt to the camel on that, which looks like, is not quite, we're not quite clear what kind of animal it is. Absolutely. So, Lloyd, today Christians still celebrate the epiphany, but they do so in very different ways in the very different churches. Do you want to take us on some of the different, in different timings? isn't there? There's great confusion in Jerusalem because there's three or four different epiphanies.

That's right. So depending on when you place Christmas Day, of course, that has a huge knock-on effect for when you place Epiphany, which is supposed to be 12 days after. Remembering actually the text that you mentioned with Marker Pola, they said that on the 13th day, the Epiphany took place, wasn't it? So it can oscillate quite remarkably. So in the Western tradition, it has settled down on the 6th of January, whereas in the early Christian church, actually it used to take place on the 25th of December. So our Christmas Day was actually the Epiphany at one point, which was also the day when Christians celebrated the baptism of Jesus as well. So over time, these great religious feasts were separated and given their own standing points, probably really to relieve

the tediousness of winter more than anything else, to give an excuse for a celebration. In the Armenian church, in the Syriac church, as well as in actually many European, central European churches, the Magi are given far greater prominence than in northern European and North American churches. They have far more spectacular feasts, but also, of course, gift-giving for many Christians still occurs on January the 6th. on the day of Epiphany, as, of course, a commemoration of the gifting of the gold, frankincense, and meur by the major themselves.

And the one I particularly love is in France, of course, where you also get this cake called the Galette de Rois, this lovely, wonderful puff pastry with kind of almond inside it. And the lucky person gets a coin and a crown. The little coin in the middle. Yes, I know. I know. And, I mean, if you haven't had one of these things,

there are bakeries that do it for that, just period of time, that very short window, where you can have these. amazing, layered gorgeousness of marsypan and pastry. Delicious. I remember when I had one Christmas and Epiphany in Egypt, and I remember being very sad for the cops, because they have to wait until the 7th of January,

they celebrate Christmas. Yes, I think it's that late, isn't it? And they don't get an epiphany until January the 19th, and that's when they get their presents. So if you're a Coptic child, it's a whole month after everyone else's open there. It's very unfair. Lloyd, it's been absolutely gorgeous as always to have you on.

Thank you so very much. And sort of in this run up to Christmas where everything really is about falling over yourselves and wrapping paper and getting hysterical in a shop, it is really lovely to be able to have this kind of view on a story that we think we know. And as always on Empower, we find out we really don't know it very well at all. Thank you very much. It's been a pleasure. Thank you.

You're gorgeous and brilliant and wonderful. And you're going to be a very busy man, being a man of the cloth. Yes, yes. It all kicks off now. So as I put down my academic cloth next week and put down my pen, having finished my marking, then I put on the dog collar and it's all go basically until 6th January. You've got to write a book about this sometime, though. I know one day, absolutely, I will.

You're knocking them out about one a year at the moment. I think you can polish it off in no time. Lloyd, do you have your fancy robes sorted out? Do you have a special design for fancy robes yet? Well, we have, of course, in the Anglican Church, we have a change of robes according to the season. So at the moment we're plunged into purple, of course, because it's Advent. Come Christmas Day, I'll all be in silver and white. And that's where I'll be wearing right the way through to Epiphany then.

Very, very nice. Look, one of the things that Lloyd mentioned, and we mentioned on this programme, is about the Naveteens. And you might be wondering, hang on, you've done your wise men, straight kings, but you haven't really insufficient detail done your gold, frankincense, and me. That's what we're going to be doing in the next episode. and we're going to be joined by that gift of a woman. Our favourite, favourite woman, exactly.

Bettany Hughes is going to be, who's currently filming something about the Nabatian. So join us for that. We're actually getting her fresh from a Nabatian Christmas. Exactly. She's going to be sitting in Oman doing that. So, I mean, don't say we don't spoil you because we do, but it's Christmas, so that's what we want to do.

Anyway, till the next time we meet. It's goodbye from me, Anita Arnan. And goodbye from me, William, to Rumble.