When I was around five years old, my grandfather passed away, and I remember his funeral chiefly for the overwhelming amount of incense – so oppressive and acrid that it made me cry. (I was sensitive to smells at an early age.)
One of the typical components of incense used by the Catholic church, burned in a vessel called a thurible that’s swung to and fro to waft the aroma throughout, is myrrh, a somewhat bitter ancient resin that was gifted to the infant Jesus by the Three Magi.
The story of the Three Wise Men, or Three Magi, is a Christmas staple, but it’s filled with mystery, from the choice of gifts to the origins of the Magi themselves.
Only one Gospel sets out the tale – Matthew, the first book of the New Testament, which in itself is shrouded in mystery. Although church tradition holds that it was written by the companion of Jesus, there’s no actual proof of that and the Gospel remains more-or-less anonymous.
Magi; By Nina-no – Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2176501
Matthew’s account is extremely brief:
“After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.” “
It doesn’t give any further details, not even how many there were. Everything else about them that has come down through the centuries – names, where they came from, what they looked like – stems from extrapolations by later Christians.
Matching the three gifts, in Western Christianity, they are typically referred to as the Three Magi, but in some Eastern Christian traditions there are twelve.
What prompted these men to follow a star across enormous distances in those times? Matthew didn’t stipulate.
The magi in historical record first appear in the seventh century BCE. Like Abraham, they may have come from ancient Ur in Chaldea, whose people were renowned astronomers, astrologers and mystics with various occult practices. They were especially noted for their ability to interpret dreams.
Because of their extensive knowledge of science, agriculture, mathematics, history, and the occult, they gained considerable religious and political influence and were among the highest-ranking officials in Babylon. It was said that no one could be crowned king without their approval.
Into this mix was thrown Daniel, a young Jewish man who, along with three companions, all of nobility and without physical defect, was sent to Babylon to serve in the palace of the king after Jerusalem fell to the Persians. Because Daniel was able to interpret one of King Nebuchadnezzar’s dreams, he became highly regarded among these magi. At a certain point Daniel had his own dream, of “one like a son of man” who’d be given everlasting kingship over the entire world, and it was this prophecy that’s believed to have persisted with the Magi in the Bible until they learned that the baby king was to be born in Judea and felt compelled to find him.
“On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.” The gifts are clearly set out by Matthew, and on the face of it seem straightforward: common elements of the Biblical world. There was an incense trade route Northern East Africa and Egypt across the Mediterranean, through the Levant to Arabia, India and further east. Goods traded included Arabian frankincense and myrrh, Indian spices, gold, precious gems, silk, animal skins, rare woods, even slaves.
All three gifts would have been proper offerings for a king, as Jesus had been foretold to become. But they had symbolism as well. Gold, of course, represented wealth and power, while frankincense was a costly resin used for perfume, and for incense in rituals.
Myrrh, although also costly, had a strange purpose of its own, both for anointing kings, and also in embalming them. It was a painkiller, and was offered to Jesus mixed with wine before his crucifixion. As a gift from the Magi, it’s been seen as a foreshadowing of his eventual suffering and death. Origen of Alexandria, an early Christian scholar and theologian around two centuries after Jesus, wrote “gold, as to a king; myrrh, as to one who was mortal; and incense, as to a God”.
That the visitors from the East brought such luxurious gifts indicates that they were people of great wealth and power themselves.
When they arrived in Jerusalem, they began asking around for where “He who has been born King of the Jews?” could be found, assuming that everyone in the city would know. But that was news to the general populace.
Not so much for King Herod the Great, though. There had been prophecies of the coming of a great deliverer for some time. Herod was enjoying the power and prestige of his appointment by Rome, and was having none of that. So when the Magi finally got around to asking him, he assembled the chief priests and scribes of the time and asked them where the “Anointed One”, i.e. the Messiah, was to be born. They told him it would be in Bethlehem, citing the words of the prophet Micah.
Herod sent the Magi off to Bethlehem, instructing them that after they’d found the baby to “report to me, so that I too may go and worship him”. Sure.
Matthew went on to relate that, after they’d visited the baby Jesus as planned, they received a dream warning them to not go back to Herod. They “returned to their country by another route”, allowing the anointed baby to remain alive until his parents, Mary and Joseph, who’d received a similar portentous dream, were able to get him to safety in Egypt.
Then, according to Matthew, Herod demonstrated his true intentions by ordering the death of all boys of the age of two and under in Bethlehem and its vicinity, in what became famously known as the Massacre of the Innocents.
The entire chronicle comes entirely from Matthew, who may or may not have written it, and its veracity is disputed among Biblical scholars. But it’s such a great story that it’s come down through all the intervening centuries to mesmerize Christians to this day. My hubby and I even have a Magi ornament on our Christmas tree.
Though the names and origins of the Magi were never given, they were assigned eventually by various traditions and legends, probably to fill a romantic void. The earliest and most common names are: Melchior (also Melichior), Caspar (or Gaspar, Jaspar, Gathaspa, and other variations), and Balthazar (Balthasar/Balthassar/Bithisarea).
In my novels, Balthazar is the reputed builder of the earth Roads in the lore of the Ancient Order of Roadwrights. But he actually has a far more important role, based on an impulsive decision made when presenting the gifts to the baby Jesus – a decision that haunts him for the rest of his very long life. And he’s not exactly ‘from the East’. The real story is revealed in Book 2 of the trilogy, Into the Forbidden Fire. Given the sparsity of actual historical records, my version could be as true as any other 😉 Read it and see what you think.