The Ancients - The Wise Men

Episode Date: December 12, 2024

The Three Wise Men were kings, magicians, more than three, on camels, walking across deserts and the men who tricked Herod. How can they be all these things?Tristan Hughes is joined by Reverend Professor Lloyd Llewellyn Jones discuss the fascinating history and evolving narratives surrounding these characters from the Nativity story. Together they examine biblical accounts, historical context and artistic depictions of these iconic figures; from their origins in the Gospel of Matthew to their representation in medieval and Renaissance art. Discover how the story of The Wise Men has been interpreted and expanded upon over the centuries and become one of the most enduring Christmas tales.Presented by Tristan Hughes. The audio editor and producer is Joseph Knight, the senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.Theme music from Motion Array, all other music from Epidemic SoundsThe Ancients is a History Hit podcast.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. We Three Kings of Orient Are They're one of the most recognisable parts of the Nativity story. The three kings, or wise men, who followed the star of Bethlehem to the stable where Jesus of Nazareth was born. But who were these wise men, these magi from the

east? How were they referred to in the gospel? Where did they come from? What was so significant about the three gifts they brought with them? And how has their story evolved over the centuries? and how has their story evolved over the centuries? It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and today, this December, we're exploring the history, the context, behind the story of the three wise men. It's a fascinating part of the Nativity story and we're going to explore it in depth with Reverend Professor Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, a stalwart and fan favourite of the Ancients podcast. We're going to dissect the story of the wise men as told in the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament, looking into the historical context, before then exploring their portrayal in other sources,

both in ancient Roman art and in other texts that retell the story of the wise men with some interesting differences, including where the number of the wise men with some interesting differences, including where the number of these wise men, well, it isn't always three. As always with Lloyd, this was a brilliant chat. He's such a great communicator, and I hope you enjoy. Lloyd, hello, my friend. Welcome back to the podcast. Always such a pleasure. Tristan, hello. And hello all to your listeners as well. Great to be back with you all. I mean, it's always a pleasure having you on the podcast. We've had you on recently for Darius the Great and for the Tower of Babel. And we have talked in the past about these figures

that are mentioned from the Bible and then kind of dissecting the stories behind them and the history of these figures and how they're mentioned. And the wise men, as it's nearing Christmas, I mean, it seemed like another great topic to talk about because we've all heard of the wise men. They are such a key part of the nativity story. Yes, yes, they are. And of course, they come to us in kind of different guises in a way, don't they? Because they are the three wise men, they're the three kings. So we approach them differently, but they are part of our Christmas consciousness, really, through a myriad of Christmas carols or Christmas cards. It's a popular image to see. As I always say, I think the Bible is an ancient source which is ripe for plowing. So I refuse to treat it any

differently than I would a work by Plato or a cuneiform tablet. These are all valid ancient sources. Of course, what the Bible has beyond that is another level which people engage in, of course, and that is a text of faith as well. So whenever we enter into any kind of historical debate about the Bible, obviously we always have to take into account that there are people who read this on multiple levels. And I think that's what's really interesting about the process of biblical scholarship, is the dealing with the idea of history and faith together. I mean, it's also interesting because in the past we've covered topics like the Babylonian

captivity and the Tower of Babel, so stories from the Old Testament, but of course, the birth of Jesus, the Nativity, the Three Wise Men. We're going into the New Testament now. For you, when you're approaching a topic like this, do you have to have a different perspective, a different mindset when looking at New Testament compared to Old? Good question. Yes and no. The yes part is that we're entering into a Greco-Roman world in which Judaism sits. But the no part is we have to take all of that Hebrew Bible scholarship with us into this world as well, because there is no disconnect suddenly between an Old and a New Testament in the Jewish mind of the first century. And of course, the gospel writers, Paul and his epistles, are all

rooted not only in the world of Greece and Rome, but also in the world of the ancient Near Eastern and the Hebrew Bible as well. So you've got to carry all of those things with you simultaneously. So I suppose you do need sort of different training or coming from it from a different angle, but you also have to maintain all of that Old Testament background too. Well, let's now delve into the story of the three wise men, and let's start with the traditional story. Now, which particular source do we have, Lloyd, for the story of the three wise men? Well, they only occur in the Gospel of Matthew. And this is maybe a surprise to some people, because when we receive those Christmas cards and we put up our Christmas creche, then of course what we do, we amalgamate the story of the

shepherds with the wise men very often. Now, the shepherds are only mentioned in St. Luke's Gospel. They are particular to that. And the wise mentioned in St. Luke's Gospel. They are particular to that. And the wise men only enter into Matthew's Gospel. So never together. Wow. Never the twain will meet. Absolutely not. The idea of bringing these together in what we call a gospel harmony has been something

which has been around since the medieval period. Really, it was St. Francis who created the first kind of Christmas creche where all of those figures get together. But really, by the 19th century, popular family Bibles and children's Bibles were beginning to amalgamate, to harmonize these two gospel accounts. But the truth is that Matthew's gospel, in almost every way, contradicts Luke's gospel account of the nativity. They were written with very different agendas for a very different audience. So St. Luke's gospel is very much written for the Gentiles.

Sorry, Lloyd, who are the Gentiles? The Gentiles are the non-Jews. So these are the Greeks and the Romans in the wider world out there. And he's trying to proclaim the gospel to non-Jews. Whereas Matthew's gospel is absolutely focused on Jewish identity, the Jewish past, Jewish traditions. And so the agendas for these two things are very different. St. Luke is all about making the unvoiced voiced. So shepherds, the very poor people, Mary herself, of course, singing the Magnificat, my soul magnifies the Lord. God has cast down the mighty and are raising up the poor. This is Luke's agenda. Matthew's agenda is

completely different. And the other thing to note is that of the Gospels, it is only Matthew and Luke who have a birth story for Jesus. Mark, our earliest Gospel, doesn't have one at all. It was of no interest to Mark, and he's our first Gospel, probably about 60 AD, so 30 years after the crucifixion. years after the crucifixion. And John completely goes his own way. And of course, the opening of John's gospel is, in the beginning was the Word. So it's a far more kind of philosophic idea of the birth of Christ. So it's only that the nativity that our whole Christmas is built around is only based on two of the gospels. They say completely different things. Well, let's delve into the Matthew version with the wise men. And I think, first of all, let's go through the accounts of the wise men, and then we can dissect it, as I know you've done previously, Lloyd, with your lectures and so on. So let's talk through it. Okay, so what we have in Matthew chapter 2, and it's just verses 1 to 12, so it's only 12 verses of the Bible that these guys appear

in, is that we are told that Jesus is born in Bethlehem in the days of Herod. This has to be, we presume, Herod the Great. And then Matthew says that, behold, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, where is he who is born the king of the Judeans? For we've seen his star in the east and we've come to honor him, literally to prostrate themselves in front of him. Herod, one of the great paranoids of history, suddenly starts pressing them for information about, you know, who is this kid who's supposed to be born, who's going to be a king? And they say, well, we don't know yet. We're on our way to find him and harry presses them and says well once you found him please come back and let me know all about him so you know i can offer him my uh homage

too so the major i kind of pay lip service to that and off they go guided by this star until it leads them to the little town of Bethlehem. And there they see Mary and the infant in her arms. And they go into what is actually called a cave in this point. And they pay homage to the child. And they offer gifts of gold, of incense, not frankincense, incense is what it says, so it could be any kind of resin, and also of myrrh. And then they have a collective dream, and dreams play a very significant role in Matthew's gospel, in which they're told, don't go back to Herod's court, say nothing about this, and we're told that they return home to the east, another route. And that's it. That's all we get. But it's a very important moment because in the Christian tradition, this takes place on the 6th of January on a feast,

which the Christian church from at least the fourth century has named Epiphany. So Epiphany, of course, is a Greek word and it means a revelation or a manifestation. So if you think about it, you know, in Matthew, there is no other kind of presentation of this Christ child to anybody else. So this is the first time that the world sees the newborn Messiah, essentially. And it's an important one in Matthew because the child is seen by non-Jews. The news of this child now can spread to the Roman world, essentially, and beyond the confines of the Roman world. So that's the importance of it, together with the three gifts that are presented, because of course they are highly symbolic gifts in themselves. So we have gold, which obviously is the great signifier of kingship itself. So this

heralds the kingship of the infant Jesus. Then we have incense, and incense emphasizes Matthew's use of Christ, obviously, as the Son of God. So as a kind of living God, he receives incense, which any God in the Greco-Roman pantheon would get, you know, clouds of incense. And then myrrh, of course, is highly significant because myrrh was an embalming resin. So it was used in particular for the preparation of bodies after death. And of course, this heralds the idea that the child is born for one purpose, and that is to die to save the sins of mankind. So in a way, Christ's Christology is emphasized through those three gifts themselves. And that's why, actually, the gifts are more important than the givers, in a way. That's what Matthew seems to

be saying in that. Well, shall we save the gifts till last then, though, and start on the givers themselves? And it was interesting, as you were talking through that passage right near the start, I noted that you mentioned the word, you didn't say wise men, you said the word magi. Well, it is the specific word that Matthew uses. And he's taking here a word which has been around in the Greek world for at least 400 years. And it refers to a priestly caste from Iran, so ancient Persia. The Magi were already around in the Achaemenid period. These were, according to Herodotus, the kind of living repositories of ancient Persian religious traditions. So they knew the hymns to the Persian gods, they knew the

rituals, they kept the scriptures of what we might call the Zoroastrian faith. Now by Matthew's time, we're into a period called the Parthian era in Persian history. And the Parthians were certainly what we might call proto-Zoroastrians. And so they continued using these magi in their religious rituals. They were a kind of caste of their own. So you couldn't apparently train to be a magi. You were born into families of magi who kind of then ran the show. They used the ritual paraphernalia. One of the things that they were instructed with doing was looking after the sacred fire, the non-dying flame. So they are there to keep the flame burning. And of course, Zoroastrianism also believes in the purification of water, of earth, of air, and therefore the

rituals all operate around this. And also with the formula which the Zoroastrians have, which is about always speaking the truth, always aiming to do good deeds, and always aiming to say good thoughts as well, to have good thoughts and to speak good thoughts. And so they're part of this very, very long tradition of Iranian priestly caste. Now, Matthew doesn't say essentially where they're from. He just says Magi from the East. But I think we can read into that, basically, it is Magi from Parthia. That's really what he's thinking. So when Matthew thinks about the East, his readers, his listeners would automatically think of Parthia. Because Parthia, don't forget, was the great superpower of the East in this period.

It was the continual thorn in the side of the burgeoning Roman Empire. And Judea as well. I mean, Herod had had to fight. When he gained control of Judea, he had to wrestle control from a Parthian-supported figure. Precisely. The Parthians at one point had penetrated into Judea, and Herod and his family had to run for safety from them. So they were a huge military machine. But also, their culture was spreading and taking hold in this period, including ideas from Zoroastrianism.

For instance, the creator god, the invisible god, all of this was really influencing what we might call Second Temple Judaism and had been doing so really since the return from the exile. So I think Matthew is drawing very clearly on this idea of the Parthian magi. Now, of course, magi is related to our word magic. And I think there was a sense of these magi being magicians in the Greco-Roman world too. They didn't know everything about these men. So they thought, oh, there must be kind of magical practices that they do out there in the East as well. That's always been a kind of Orientalist trope that Western writers and Westerners generally have had. And so I think they aligned the practice of religion with concepts of magic. And in fact, that's not uncomfortable in a historical sense.

You would be hard-pressed to put a hair between what is defined as religion, what is defined as magical practice. And so there's this element that they are not just priests, but also magicians. And then beyond that, of course, they're also drawing on another ancient Near Eastern tradition of wisdom, these magi being the repositories of wisdom as well, of long traditions of things. And I think what happens in Matthew's Gospel is that it also collapses into that, The idea of things like astronomy and astrology, of course, which, you know, the ancient Chaldeans, Babylonians. The Babylonians, the Zodiac and all of that. Yes. Precisely. And don't forget Babylon now is part of the Parthian empire at this stage as well.

And with the link, of course, to the star in the story, then you can see how this whole thing about priests, wise men, magicians, all of it becomes mashed together, really. And it's very, very hard to disassociate any of that. And then the final element we've got in all of that, of course, which Matthew doesn't say himself, as we've said in the beginning, we call them we three kings, right? Yes. That seems quite a jump to go from magicians and wise men to kings. But in fact, the use of the kingly title for them does not come in until the 12th century. It's a Middle Ages thing. And we can virtually put it down to the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa,

the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, who allegedly found the bones of the wise men and installed them in Cologne Cathedral, where you can still see them and honor them today in a beautiful gilded shrine in the middle of Cologne Cathedral. And he began to call them the three kings. And I think that's really interesting because it's part of that whole medieval ideology, isn't it, of kingship, where Christ bestows kingship on those who are worthy. So I think Frederick Barbarossa is using that kind of theology to engrandize himself as well. So that's where we get that the Magi is kings for the first time. Shall we also talk about the star in the yeast? I mean, Lloyd, what can we explore here for that part of

the story? Maybe, I guess, the importance of stars at that time as signs of key events, maybe? Yeah, absolutely. Well, I mean, astronomy and astrology had always played an enormously important part in Near Eastern traditions, and indeed in Greco-Roman traditions as well. And people looked to the heavens for omens, for confirmation of things. And there was a very, very long tradition of this, especially in Babylonia, where we have preserved, even today, hundreds and hundreds of astronomical diaries. So these are observations of the stars and the movements of the planets, which are recorded by professional astrologers who then write down their findings and are used to predict events. It was a very serious business in antiquity.

Now, when it comes to the star of Bethlehem, tomes and tomes have been written about trying to identify what this star might have been. It might have been an early showing of Halley's Comet? And of course, we can pin down times and places. And we do know around about 4 BCE, there was a comet which made an enormous impact. It wasn't the only one in the period, but certainly there's nothing unusual in Matthew's gospel about star searching. It goes on a lot. But I think it's there in Matthew for two purposes. First of all, Matthew is drawing on Old Testament Hebrew Bible precedents. And in the book of Numbers, there is a prophecy which predicts this gleaming star will herald the coming of the Messiah. So he's keen to draw his readers or his listeners into this Old Testament prophecy.

But I also think, you see, we should read the New Testament, including the four gospels, on different levels. And one, of course, can be a faith journey, but the other one can be, I think, a subtle attack on the world in which Christianity was born, and that is the Roman world. Now, Matthew, I think, in his gospel, throughout the gospel, very subtly has a go at the Romans. Now, he can't do this conspicuously, but with any text, you can do alternative readings. And if you go into a gospel, including Matthew, with an alternative view, then you can begin to see, actually, there is a critique of the secular world. The world cannot accept or will not accept Christ as its king. And we really see that, I

think, in the nativity story. First of all, of course, we've got the rejection of Herod. Herod comes over as this terrible king, but also, of course, a collaborator with Rome. That's what he was famous for by the Jews. But the use of the star is something I think that Matthew uses to downplay or even contradict the use of a star that had appeared in Rome. So we know that the Emperor Augustus, when he first comes to power after the death of his uncle Julius Caesar, he witnesses a comet in the skies over Rome. And he says, this comet is Julius Caesar being deified. So for Roman astrologers, they saw this blazing star and they said, oh, this is clear evidence that Caesar has become a god. And Augustus, who is pretty adept at propaganda, I think we can all agree, cashes in on this and says, yes, indeed, that is what it is.

And he begins to issue coins with his head on one side and on the other side this blazing star and of course that coin gets circulated around the whole empire of course and a couple of them must have fallen into judea as well so this is an image that people would have been familiar with he also issues a coin showing the deified julius caesar with a star and a tail, a comet's tail, above his head as well. And even poets like Ovid in his Metamorphoses talk about this star heralding the coming of this new son of God. And that's the title that Augustus now begins to use for himself. He is the divus filius, so he is the son of God. And that, of course, is the principal title that Matthew uses throughout his gospel for Jesus as well. So can you see how basically he is taking

the political situation of Rome and saying, do not apply these things to the Roman emperor because that is a dead end. There is no kingdom here. The real empire is the empire of Christ who was heralded with a star. That's the star that we need to look at. And the only true son of God is Jesus Christ himself. And it's also quite interesting because I remember in a previous chat, we flirted with the book of Revelation and you were saying how things like the horror of Babylon, it was a subtle dig actually towards the Roman Empire. And you can actually see another subtle dig potentially with the nativity scene as well. So it's interesting how it is. So I think you can read the whole of the New Testament with a kind of anti-Roman lens,

but they have to do it carefully because this is a world of real Christian persecution, don't forget. But they do it. And if you know the code, then you can crack it. We've talked about the givers, but before we go on to depictions of the wise men, the Magi, and then the Magi at St. Matthew, let's talk a bit more then about the gifts. Because as you highlighted earlier, this feels like the central part. This is the most important part of the story, you'd argue. Yes, absolutely. Because these gifts, which in a way look kind of innocuous, these are the theological linchpins of the story of Jesus according to Matthew. His glorification as a king, his glorification as a god, and his ultimate suffering and death so basically these three gifts span the whole biography of jesus according to the matthew gospel that is to say so they are

of intense importance really to matthew's method of kind of predicting what christ's story is going to be for his early listeners and readers. Well, let's move on to the depictions because I find this so interesting, Lloyd. So you have the story written in the Gospel of Matthew. How long is it before this story does spread out of Judea and into the Roman world, or maybe beyond the borders of the Roman world, and you then start seeing actual depictions of the wise men. Well, remarkably, it doesn't take too long at all. This is a story that really holds, it really grips people. So the first ever image I've discovered, and I don't think there are earlier ones, is in the catacombs of Rome, and that is the

catacomb of Priscilla. And that dates to the early second century CE, we think. Do you think she's a noblewoman who's practicing Christianity at the time? Highly likely. Probably one of these kind of noblewomen that use their homes for church meetings and this kind of thing, you know? So she's obviously a woman of influence to have her own catacomb to begin with. But there's a very now very fading fresco painted on the wall there, which shows the Virgin Mary seated with the Christ child on her lap. So there's that first image, powerful image resonate. And then we have these three wise men coming before her, one depicted in a kind of green, one red, and another sort of in a brown, which is very faded indeed. We can't quite see details of their faces, but we can see that they are all in Parthian dress. They are all depicted as Easterners, as Parthians. And I think that tradition of depicting them as Parthians obviously is drawing from Matthew's gospel, but also is another one of those nudges against Rome as well. Because during the Julio-Claudian period and into the second century, it became a standard

practice to use the image of the Parthian, Parthian captives, war captives, subdued Parthians, to show the grandeur of Rome. So what we often have is Togartate Romans being shown homage by kneeling Parthians in their long-sleeved tunics and their baggy trousers, this ultimate mark of the Orient dress. And I think that what Matthew does obviously plays up on this idea of these Parthians are coming to pay homage to the infant Jesus, but it enters into the visual repertoire very early on in early Christianity in that case, and they are distinctly Parthian. I mean, we have another adoration scene for another female tomb, actually, of a woman called Severa at the beginning of probably the third century, and there is no doubt here that the three wise men are in their Parthian outfits. They're wearing

those Phrygian caps. They have little cloaks on, and they're all proffering their gifts before a seated Virgin Mary. And from there on in, on a series of early Christian sarcophagi, on carved ivories of various standards of craftsmanship, standards of craftsmanship. We have this repeated motif of a seated virgin and child and these three oriental magi bringing their gifts, always wearing Parthian clothing. And sometimes even they have their camels to accompany them as well. Yes, this is what I wanted to get to next, Lloyd. I was like, this is almost one of the most important bits for me. When do we see that great addition to the Wise Men story, the addition of camels? The camels are there by the early fourth century, certainly. And they're kind of interestingly distributed amongst the wise men. They very often look over the wise men's

shoulders. And that's when you then get also the buildup of a menagerie in these scenes. So you get the ox and the ass and all of that kind of stuff building up at this time too. But we also have, oh, I mean, exquisite mosaics from the late 4th into the 5th century. And a wander around Rome is really worth it for this, spot your wise men. In Santa Maria Maggiore, for instance, there are some very early 5th century stunning, colorful mosaics of the three wise men in their

very, very distinctive Parthian outfits. But I suppose the finest example of them all is if you go to Ravenna in East Italy, of course, there they are represented in the Basilica of Santa Polinaro Novo, and it's probably the most beautiful representation we have of them. I mean, look, before we delve into the details of that, is it the case that before Christianity becomes the main official religion of the Roman Empire, you get these couple of almost kind of secretive cases of the wise men, and afterwards you see more elaborate, you should say mosaics, beautiful depictions. Absolutely. After Constantine and the conversion of the empire, I mean, they become conspicuous. And I think why the wise men become so much more important than, say, the shepherds of Luke's

gospel is because of the idea of paying homage to Christ, as you would pay homage to the emperor, and also the universality of the experience as well. These wise men come from afar, and I think that really appeals to the sensitivity of Christian Roman emperors as well, of course. So you see them in abundance, and the Ravenna mosaics are absolutely stunning. The three of them are shown very distinctly as well. One of them with a grey beard, and for the first time, they are named as well. So we get in this particular lineup, we get Balthazar, we get Melchior, and we get Gaspar in this particular lot. But in fact, over the centuries, the names change quite a lot. So there's variations on the theme. So we have Kasper, Jasper, Jaspas,

Gatshpa, Balsha, Berturza, variations on these three names, essentially. In another one of the Ravenna reliefs, actually, this is the very famous depiction of the Empress Theodora. Oh, yes, with Justinian and Belisarius. Yes, beautiful. She is wearing a magnificent purple robe and embroidered into the hem of that robe are the scene of the Three Wise Men again. look we focus on on the roman world and i mean just before we go on to names and numbers and outside the gospel of matthew do you ever see any is there any surviving art from well the place where the wise men supposedly came from, from Parthia, from Iran and Iraq? Do we have depictions outside of the Roman Empire? Yes and no. So I mean, we can go to Dura Europa, which is in modern day Syria, and there in some

early churches, but also depicted in a synagogue, are scenes of Parthian-dressed biblical characters. So Xerxes in the book of Esther, for instance. But we can't be specific. Obviously, in a synagogue, you're not going to get representations of gospel characters. So we don't get a holistic representation of the three wise men as far as we can see. But what we can tell from the Dura Europus images is that the Western images of these Parthians really are very true to the source materials, I suppose. They are definitely meant to be Parthians. Now, does Matthew actually say three? Never, never, never, never. He never says three wise men. He never says three magi.

He simply says magi from the east came to Jerusalem bearing gifts. They're three gifts. That is kind of defined, as we can see from the early church, the number of magi that are supposed to be around. But in fact, there's nothing to stop us believing that there weren't two magi and they brought an extra gift, or there were 20 magi and they just shared the cost between them. So Matthew is not specific about that whatsoever. And so that leaves big gaps in the imagination for other people to get involved with. Because we have to remember that in early Christianity,

there were other traditions, including nativity stories, which didn't make the final cut of the New Testament. But these are the apocryphal gospels and stuff. Yeah, apocryphal gospels, exactly. So one of the best known is the Pseudo-Matthew. So as the title suggests, based on the original gospel of Matthew, in which there are, again, not a number specified, but they take their three gifts and they give them to Mary. And in this gospel, we're given something of their feelings. They are filled with joy at seeing the Christ child. So that's something that's extra to Matthew. But then we have an amazing sixth century text, which was found in Egypt. And we call this the Arabic infancy narrative, which is really quite remarkable because there, after the wise men, numberless again, give their gifts, Mary unwraps the swaddling bands of the infant Jesus,

and she gives them to the wise men as a gift to take back home with them. And when they get home, they take these swaddling bands and they burn them in the sacred fire. So there's a step back to Zoroastrianism again. But when the fire dies, the swaddling bands are untouched. And so the wise men recognize that these are relics of a holy child. And so they begin to convert the East to Christianity. And they are joined a couple of decades later by St. Thomas, one of the disciples who begins to also work with them as well. So that's an elaboration on the original story from Matthew. This is a story of what happened next almost. Yeah, yeah. What happens when they got home. But we also have, I think, the most magnificent retelling of all comes from a very strong Syriac tradition. And don't forget, the Syrian church in antiquity was the main contender,

it was huge. And if history had just gone a little bit differently, we could all today be Syriac Christians. That was such a powerful tradition there. We have a text which dates to the 5th century, but clearly was several hundred years old before. So we can date it, I think, to the 2nd century, in which we have, brace yourself, not three wise men, but 12 wise men. That's a lot of camels there as well. That's a lot of camels. They are the heirs of families of wise men. Their names are all given to us. They're all Persianate names.

And the names of their fathers are all given to us. So we've got 24 wise men all together in this particular story. And they, the 12 of them, travel to Jerusalem. They find the baby in Bethlehem. They pay homage to him with their three gifts. But the difference is that each one of the wise men, each of the 12, gives Mary a coin of gold as well. So she's got 12 coins plus the incense plus the myrrh in that tradition as well.

And it's a great shame, really, that that story isn't so well known. But because it was a real contender for many, many centuries, it's now preserved in a text which scholars call the Revelation of the Magi. So it's that moment when they see the Christ child, and they too are tasked with converting the East to Christianity. I mean, this leads me to another question, which can concern these accounts and other accounts, because it seems a similar thread throughout, that you have these important figures in another religion being involved in this key story of the birth of Jesus

and, of course, with the story of Christianity. Do you think that's an interesting thing to explore, how you have figures, you you have important, wise figures from another religion that isn't one of the Abrahamic religions very key and central to the Nativity story? I think it's very important, and I think it's the synergy between what we can call Zoroastrianism and Judaism and Christianity had been simmering away for centuries. and Judaism and Christianity had been simmering away for centuries. And I think we can see Zoroastrian influences in Judaism by the Second Temple period, and certainly in early Christianity.

So I think Matthew is picking up on something which is genuine. And I think it also allows his audience into a more universal picture of what Christ is all about. Because if you think of how Matthew presents the infant Jesus, what he's essentially doing is he's retelling the story of Moses for a Christian Jewish audience. Because of course, what happens after the wise men go home, according to Matthew, is that we have this terrible slaughter of the innocents in Bethlehem, which of course would immediately have reminded listeners of the slaughter of the boys in Egypt under the Pharaoh as well. So Jesus is presented as a second Moses in Matthew's Gospel. And so the inclusion of the wise men into that story says to the Jewish

listeners, readers of that story, look, there's also a bigger framework in which this new Messiah can be placed as well. Yes, he's here for the Jews as the new Moses, but also there is the epiphany that he has come for the Gentiles as well. Well, this is absolutely fascinating. You mentioned earlier figures like Calvin, and I'm presuming for you, it must also be interesting knowing all of this about the wise men, the original story, but also these other stories outside of Matthew, then seeing how over the centuries, medieval, Renaissance, even into more recent history, I guess seeing figures that have been exploring this story, the, renaissance, even into more recent history. I guess seeing figures that have been exploring this story, the great debates they have in regards to the whole nature of the

wise men. I mean, the legacy of the wise men is another podcast in its own right. I think that's what's really fascinating about biblical materials. Because they've had such an important afterlife, really, the biblical characters themselves, because they've had such an important afterlife. Really, you know, the biblical characters themselves, as they appear in scriptures, are simply the tip of the iceberg, aren't they? Because it's what we've done with them over the centuries, which really gives them their cogency and makes them such persuasive characters, really. It's the reception history, which I find really fascinating. Lloyd, this has been absolutely fantastic. I mean, is there any reading or anything you'd recommend around this if people want to learn more? I would recommend for a real alternative Christmas, if you wanted to do that,

read The Revelation of the Magi, which is now available in a really good English translation by Brent Blandow. And it's available in hardback and paperback. Google that and you'll find copies of it. It's a really fascinating read. Brilliant. Well, Lloyd, it just goes to me to say thank you so much, as always, for taking the time to come back on The Ancients. You're very, very welcome. Well, there you go. There was Reverend Professor Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones talking all things The Wise Men.

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