The [Three] [Wise Men]

All we have left is Orient. We know that they were from the East. Right. You’re not taking that away from us, are you?

That’s not a great word to use there.

So I didn’t write the song, Dan.

Hey, Everybody, I’m Dan McClellan.

And I’m Dan Beecher.

And you are listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion and combat the spread of misinformation. About the same. How goes the combat, Dan?

Man, we’re out there. It’s, it’s, it’s. It’s the most wonderful time of the year. Or maybe when this airs, it’s a little bit after the most wonderful time of the year we’re heading.

Well, it depends on your proclivities. If you’re a Western Christian or an Eastern Christian, sometimes, you know.

Oh, that’s true.

Like to hold things off for a little bit, but that’s true.

There’s a. There, there are dating questions at play, but that’s not what this, what today’s episode is about. We’ll probably have to get to that at some point.

Yeah, at some point. They’re busting down the door about that.

But today we got a. We, we’ve got a fun guest. Dan, do you want to, do you want to tell us who we, who we have, who our mystery person is on today’s show?

Absolutely. Today we’re going to be talking with friend of mine, Eric Vanden Eykel. He is associate professor of religion and also the Forrest S. Williams Teaching Chair in the Humanities at Ferrum College, just south of Roanoke, Virginia. So welcome to the show. Eric, how are you doing today?

I am doing great. Thanks for having me on.

Well, thank you for your time. Thank you for being here. We appreciate it. And what, what are we talking about today, Eric? Is it this book right here? The Magi?

Is that beautiful blue book on the Magi? Yeah. This is a book.

Yeah, go ahead.

But it’s a book that I published last year on, on the the Mysterious Visitors in the Gospel of Matthew .

I don’t know what’s so mysterious. I mean, I think we all know the story, obviously. Three dudes show up, they follow a star. They go, they visit, they’re wearing crazy clothing, and they each have a single gift to give. And. And then they go home. What’s. What’s hard about.

You have a savior. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, they’re right. They’re right there on the cover. Right. They’ve even forgot the bit about their crowns though, I think.

Yeah, because they’re kings. We know that they are kings.

Embossed. Yeah.

Oh yeah. No, it’s a beautiful cover.

Yeah, I, I, so I think that, you know, for a, I mean this isn’t a large part of the Bible. It’s in one gospel. It’s what, how, how many? It’s, I mean we’re not even talking about like four chapters or whatever. What are we talking about here?

No, we’re talking about like 12 verses and yeah, only in Matthew and only very briefly. And they, the story is so short and, and so lacking in detail. Right. And so the sort of, you know, the, all of the hymns and the iconography and everything that kind of develops around these characters. When people go back and reread the story, they’re often surprised at how little there actually is there because there’s just, there’s just nothing, there’s no, there’s hardly any detail at all.

And we’re going to talk a little bit more about this later. But there’s an awful lot that has accreted to the tradition over the centuries and a lot of what we, when we picture it in our heads, kind of like the way we picture Moses, sometimes it’s Whitney Houston and it’s The Prince of Egypt that is actually front and center in our imagination. And the way we recreate these stories with the magi or magi if you’re nasty. There are other traditions that are influencing how we think about that. I’m looking forward to talking about some of these things and particularly some of the apocryphal tales that, that influence our understanding of the story.

Yeah, you, you mentioned the different pronunciations. When I was looking, I, I sort of looked into this in a very non-academic way a few years ago and I saw this, the word magus used as, as sort of like a transliteration or something of, of the Greek or whatever. And so now from, for me, in the, for the rest of my life, in my mind, I’m going to think of the Three Magoos. I, I don’t think that’s correct, but that’s, that’s how I prefer to think of them.

Well, the Three Wise Guys is another way that some people refer to them.

But maybe we should start with that word because there’s a Greek word here and there. It doesn’t seem to be easy to know what that Greek word means. What are we talking about, Eric?

Yeah, so the, the Greek word that Matthew uses is magoi and this is the plural form of magos, which is what you encountered as the sort of anglicized magus. So magos, though, when we’re looking at this word in Greek, I mean, the easiest way to kind of translate it woodenly would be just to say something like magic or magician or something like that. But, you know, you know, just like, just like other titles today have these kind of connotations. Like, you know, magician today has. Has, you know, depending on who you are and how you feel about magic, magician could be somebody who is, you know, a showman and. Or somebody who’s kind of, you know, talented at sleight of hand, these sorts of things. Or a magician could be someone completely, you know, negative. And so, you know, when we’re, when we, when we’re talking about kind of understanding what this word means, you know, trying to avoid those sorts of loaded, loaded words I think are helpful.

But also in the ancient world, right, it’s sort of a. The same kind of thing goes in the ancient world. There’s some people who view magoi very positively, and then there are some people who view them as, as charlatans. And you see this, you see this, you know, in, in. In the New Testament, right? You see in Matthew, there’s these magoi who tend to, you know, they, they don’t seem evil or nefarious or anything like that. But then you go a couple books later in, in the Book of Acts , and they’re, you know, they’re, they’re, they’re kind of negative characters. So. But anyway, getting back to this question, how do we translate this? There’s been a number of different attempts, right? So there’s some translations that use. They follow the King James and say, wise men, right? And so emphasizing the wisdom of these characters rather than their, if we could say their, their magicalness, perhaps. But then there’s also, I believe it’s the NIV, if I’m remembering correctly, that’s. That calls them astrologers, which is probably a bit of a stretch, calls them that because of their interest in the star.

I mean, we know that they’re interested in at least one star, right?

That’s the, that’s the thing. But the really funny thing is that in the, in, in other ancient literature that you survey and you look at magoi in this ancient literature, one of the things that they just aren’t often associated with is astronomy. Like, they’re not really all that interested. I mean, they, they are, but that’s not primarily what magoi and ancient literature do. You know, they are, I mean, they do a lot of different things. They’re sort of religious figures, they’re advisory figures. So there’s the wisdom. There’s also the kind of, like, priestly function. So. Yeah. How do you translate it? I took the easy route in this book and I just said, let’s not. Let’s just. Let’s just keep them as magoi and let’s just say that word’s complicated and we’re gonna. And we’re gonna embrace.

We’re gonna punt. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Exactly.

That’s the. That’s a little translator tip. Like, this word is untranslatable. Yeah, that’s the. It kind of is. You know.

Yeah. And that’s. That’s something you find a lot in the Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. It’s like, why are they transliterating stuff all over the place? They’re punting an awful lot. So.

Well, and, and, and to some extent, because it’s such a short part of the. Of this book, there’s no hints to really help you. To get you any further than. Than where you just said you are. You know what I mean? There’s not. There’s nothing about these guys. We don’t know anything about these guys.

No, I mean, all we know is. I mean, what Matthew tells us is that there’s more than one. Right. He uses the plural, so we know there’s more than one. He never says three, just says three gifts. Does he imagine three? Yes, probably. It doesn’t matter, though. But, you know, where do they come from? They come from this kind of like, big area, the East. Right. Which is not terribly helpful. And. And then they tell. They tell the people in Jerusalem. They say, we’re. We’re looking for the one born king of the Judeans. And we’re. We. We want to. We want to come and bow before him. We. That’s it, though. We don’t really. Yeah. We don’t have any clues from Matthew of. Of who he’s imagining these specific visitors to be. Yeah.

Now, in. In the Hebrew Bible, we’ve got a lot of references to things that are going on in the east, and they’re generally pretty negative things. It’s kind of a generic reference to those weirdos over there. Probably has to do with Persian things that are going on in the. The late first century CE, when, when Matthew is being composed is. How much is the. The scriptural heritage playing a role in what we think Matthew is getting at? Are we trying to evoke that imagery? Those Those concepts of these mysterious people in the east who, who, you know, read the stars and, and cut open sheep and feel their livers or, or is there. Or is it an independent kind of set of. Of motifs that Matthew is appealing to here? Do you have a thought on that?

Oh, I have lots of thoughts on that.

Excellent.

You know, why don’t you talk for.

The rest of the show, then?

No, I think. I mean, obviously, I think Matthew is. Is probably aware of this heritage and this kind of baggage that that location has, but I don’t. I mean, I think there’s sort of a maybe yes, maybe no. So if there’s. There certainly has been in the past interpretations of Matthew and these are very early interpretations that, that. That say that when Matthew has these magoi visiting Jerusalem and Bethlehem, that they are the sort of. Like they might be leaving that wicked and strange and mysterious, mysterious place to sort of come to Jesus. So, you know, the kind of early impulse to kind of emphasize the conversion of the magoi. Right. Like they are enslaved to these demonic forces in the east and they’re coming to, you know, to be. To. To be liberated by Jesus or. Or whatever. So that’s one interpretation. And so if that is the interpretation you have, which is actually not the interpretation I have, but if it is the interpretation that you have, then I suppose, yes, Matthew is sort of participating in that.

You know, the east is the. Is the sort of negative, you know, location. My, My read of Matthew, though, is that he is more kind of using the east as. I mean, still a strange and mysterious place, but almost like in an alluring and sort of titillating way. Like it’s the kind of exotic fascination. Yeah, like the fascination with the. With the east and the kind of place where all of these, you know, ancient. Ancient religious practices are. And, you know, they. They are so I think more kind of tapping into the east as a source of kind of. Yeah, mystery, intrigue, power even. And these are the people who are sort of coming from the east to. Yeah. To. To pay homage to the new king. So I think. I think Matthew is tapping into it, yes, as a mysterious place, but as a mysterious place ultimately in a good way.

Do you think, for those of us who don’t. Who don’t have a lot of background in this. Contemporaneously, to the author of Matthew, how would people have registered. This is our. When we say the east, are we going to Iran? That area, to that Persia? I mean, is this Zoroastrianism or like, who are these people to the contemporaries of the time. Do we have a sense of that?

Yeah, I think, I mean, I imagine this, probably the majority of, of readers in this time period imagining this probably as sort of Persia, that, that kind of area. But then also there’s plenty of interpreters who take the east to mean even a land beyond Persia, the sort of, you know, mythical ends of the world or, or things like this. But yeah, I think, I think just in terms of geographically, you know, East, East indicating, indicating Persia. Yeah.

We’re not talking about India or China or.

No, I don’t think so. Yeah. And, and I think, I think part of the, the key to this is that in a lot of Greco-Roman literature, Magoi are a caste of priests in, in Persia.

Okay.

And this, and this caste of priests we know from a lot of literature and a lot of curricula and things that we’ve found that they went through extensive training to be.

Yes.

Filled in on the ways that the physical world manifests, the, the will and, and things of, of the gods. I remember as an undergraduate reading all these things, if you see this unfavorable, this, that and the other favorable, this unfavorable, it’s just lists of things followed by favorable or unfavorable. But I’ve always, I’ve always thought of this, this juxtaposition of the, the Magoi and Herod who’s like, huh, what, what’s going on? As kind of saying this is so written into the very fabric of our existence that foreigners can read it, it’s legible to them. And they come and say, we’ve seen the star, the king of the Jews is here. And Herod’s like, oh, I missed this. And I see it as kind of contrasting how the foreigners are better informed about this kind of thing than our own king. And is there any sense that what’s going on here is we’re trying to portray Jesus’s birth as just something that anybody paying attention could not fail to miss, that this is something written in the very fabric of the universe.

Well, yeah, I mean the whole, the Magoi are clued in and Herod isn’t that. That becomes a very problematic dynamic in later interpretations of the story. But you know, I don’t know if it’s the case that I, I don’t, I don’t know if what Matthew is saying is that this is so sort of self-evident that anyone who’s paying attention will actually see it because he has, he doesn’t have people coming from the East. He has Magoi coming from the East. And as you said, these are highly trained religious professionals probably, or at least that’s the connotation that they, that they have in the ancient world. And so, so really the whole point is it, it isn’t the case that anyone can tell what’s going on here. It’s the case that these people, for whatever reason, can. And they’re the ones who are paying attention to such things. Now why they’re paying attention to those things. Who, who knows? You know what, what in the world does this.

The whole star, is it? Is, you know, what is the star, right? Is it. Is it some kind of unusually bright thing that really, really stands out? Well, I mean, the point of the story seems to be that it isn’t. Right. It’s something that they can see the significance in, but not everyone can.

Yeah, it does seem like they are, A, privy to information that other people don’t seem to have, and B, they find. It seems to be more. I don’t know, in my reading, it seems to be more a point of interest for them than it is any, because as soon as they come and, and drop off their gifts, they’re. They’re out. They, they leave. They don’t join up. They don’t, you know what I mean? They’re not, they don’t stick around. They, they overtly go away.

Mm. Yeah. And they, they leave as quickly as they get there. Right. They go to the wrong place first. Right. Because they, they see the star, says the star tells them, or they interpret it as the, the, the, the king of the Judeans has just been born, and so they go to Jerusalem because that’s the obvious place where you would find the king of the Judeans. It’s like saying, well, it’s not the same. I was going to say something about the President or whatever, but, but if you, if, if some, if some, you know, if, if you walked outside and saw some star and the star told you, like, go and go and find the President of the United States, the most obvious place to go would be Washington, D.C. right. If I, you know, went to Richmond, like that. That doesn’t make any sense. And so they, so, yeah, they sort of are. Yeah, they kind of go to that wrong place, but then the star sort of appears and then leads them to the right place and to Bethlehem. But, yeah, they get there, they give their gifts, and then they, I mean, the only other detail in terms of how long they were there is that apparently they were there long enough to go to sleep because they had a dream.

Yeah, right.

And then they were like, well, we need to go back by another way. But they, yeah, they don’t, like, they don’t camp out and get an apartment. Like, they just, they do what they came to do, which they, they came to give their gifts and pay tribute to the king and then they leave. They go home.

So two questions about them showing up. One, a lot of folks tend to think that it got kind of crowded around the, the manger on the night when Jesus was born, but this is something that’s happening a little bit later. And to what degree do you think they’re kind of functioning as a bit of a MacGuffin to kind of inform Herod that his challenger has been born so that he can go and do what, what Herod’s got to do to kind of fulfill his, his role in this, in this whole narrative? Are those fair questions?

Yeah, so that’s, so that’s a question. So let me, let me make sure I’m understanding your question. So the question being sort of, are these guys, are these guys sort of there to facilitate Herod’s tyrannical, like, you know, because Matthew’s obviously trying to tell the story of Jesus’s birth through kind of alluding to the story of Moses’s birth, like the slaughter of the innocents and all of this kind of stuff. I think it’s intriguing to kind of consider that possibility that that’s what they are doing here. But I also think that the story and the connotations that, that, that that word magoi carries with it makes it, it makes it a little bit. I, I guess, I guess my response would be, if that’s Matthew’s goal, is that they are sort of, they are sort of facilitating this thing that Herod’s doing, then Matthew has overdetermined the story, if that makes sense. Yeah. It’s almost like if you had said, I had a student one time who, who made the suggestion when I was asking them.

So we were talking about the flood and the flood stories in Genesis. Yeah, it’s like, well, so what’s the point of this story, right? Like, what, why, why does the story exist? What’s the meaning? And they said they were. And they were trying to bring in vocabulary from earlier in the class. And so they, they said, is the flood story an etiology for the rainbow? And I was like, well, and lest anyone think that I’m student shaming here, I’m absolutely not. It’s a brilliant suggestion, right? Is it an etiology for the rainbow? Does it tell us where the rainbow comes from. And I sort of paused for a second. I thought, well, maybe, but that’s an awfully violent and complicated story to explain the rainbow. And so, and so I would. I would think that, like, you know, they tend to fit in with that, with. With the story of Herod being. Being. Being Herod. Right. Being the sort of. That. That tyrant. But if that’s their only function or even their primary function, I think that.

That Matthew has oversold and overtold that story.

Okay. And then do we have an idea about the time after Jesus’s birth that they show up? How many days, months, years. Are we talking about years?

Yeah. So I think that question. That’s a question that I think comes from attempts to read Matthew and Luke together. Right. Because part of the kind of harmonizing impulse of reading Matthew and Luke together, these very different birth stories is Luke tells about the story of Jesus’s birth, and then Matthew sort of imagines the mag. The magoi being there a couple of years later because of the reference to the two years old and, and. And whatever. And I think that’s. I think that’s certainly possible that Matthew is imagining these visitors as coming to see Jesus after he’s been, like, alive for a while. But also, I just don’t really think he gives us enough clues. I just think he’s sort of imagining them as kind of. Yeah. Just sort of showing up. And so later stories kind of try to. Try to. Try to answer this question, right? Like, how. How much later did they come?

And so some will say, well, you know, the star appeared when Jesus was born, and then they set out and they, you know, took a couple months or whatever to get there. And then others say, like, the star appeared, you know, a year in advance, or whatever, so that they arrived right when the birth was. Had just happened. But yeah, it’s a question. The timeline is a question that. That doesn’t really seem to have a firm answer.

In Matthew, remind me which of the gospels the drummer boy is in? Is that. That’s Luke, right? I’m not. I’m trying. I’m just trying to piece it all together.

Oh, yeah, that’s the Gospel of Bing Crosby.

And.

It’s Pa Rum Pum Pum Pum, chapter two.

Such a strange. Such a strange. The drummer boy has always stuck out to me as like, really? That’s the, you know, like, it’s kind of.

Well, I mean, as we all know, when. When someone’s just given birth, the thing that they really want is a drum solo. I think that’s the thing we’re all hoping for in those, in those quiet moments in a manger.

Yes. What every woman wants.

But speaking of sort of, you know, when we, when we think about all of these stories, we do mesh them together. We mesh together. You know, we like every, every grandma has a, you know, a creche, you know, a nativity scene. And there’s Joseph and Mary and Jesus in, in the manger and, and then you know, there’s all of these other characters. There’s. There’s angels and shepherds and various critters and then there’s these three dudes. How much like maybe you can talk to us. Because now we do. We have. You know, Dan, you alluded to it before. You know, Dan, you alluded to it before. We’ve got like names for these guys. We’ve got, you know, a whole bunch of different backstories and whatever. Where, where does all of that come from? Because I read those 12 verses in Matthew and Balthazar or whatever doesn’t come up or whatever the names are.

I don’t.

Yeah, you. Yeah. No, I mean that’s the thing. You read them and you go, huh, that’s it. Wow. Yeah. So I mean that’s, that is a, it’s. I mean it’s a product of how we read and it’s a product of how we make meaning, right? Is that we, we always are reading stories. Everything we read, we’re always reading in light of other things that we’ve read. And then also our brains are filling in the gaps when we have, when we have stories that, that don’t have that detail, right? And so one of the greatest examples of this is, is if you just read the story of Jesus’s birth in the Gospel of Luke . And in the Gospel of Luke there is no stable, right? But this is, this is a detail that readers minds have filled in now. And, and if people are watching this right now, go to the Gospel of Luke and find the stable. You won’t be able to find it. There’s also no innkeeper in the Gospel of Luke . You know, that’s, that’s the, the. The. The. The Christmas pageant, right? The who’s who’s going to play the. The. The. The sorry or the evil innkeeper.

Like. Well, that role doesn’t appear in Luke. There’s simply no room for them in the, the kataluma, which is. Whoever knows what that means. But anyway, so we sort of, we, we mesh things together and we fill in gaps and, and that’s just kind of how, how the, how the whole reading and meaning making process works. And so In Luke, where does the stable come from? Well, there’s a manger. And so manger is a feeding trough for animals. So where might you find a manger? Well, maybe at a stable, but also maybe in an alleyway, maybe in a cave and all of these different kinds of places. And so when you’re reading Matthew and all of the things that we’ve been talking about, right, like how many people are there, where are they actually from? What are their names, what you are, what do they want with Jesus? Those are all questions that earliest readers have. And then they start to kind of fill in those gaps and you know, it’s like if you’re telling a bedtime story to your kid and then there was magi who came from the east, what were their names?

You know, and then they sort of, those details kind of creep into the, into the story as it’s told and retold.

You brought up, you brought up a cave. Dan, you talked about meshing these things together. This is stuff that’s already going on in the second century. We have Tatian’s Diatessaron, which is a harmonization of all of the Gospels, which is meshing these things together. We have an interesting text that seems to be the root of a lot of its traditions associated with the pre birth and birth of Jesus. The Protevangelium of James. Correct that this is where we get the picture of Mary riding down to Bethlehem on a donkey. This is where we get the idea that they found them in a cave. This is where we. This is where we. What other ideas do we get from.

You’re telling me the donkey isn’t even real?

The donkey’s not real. They did not have donkeys in that time period.

It’s in the Pixar movie though. No, the, the, the Protevangelium, which is a, another text that’s near and dear to my heart. The Protevangelium does seem to be one of, I mean, along with the Diatessaron, it sort of seems to be one of the kind of crucibles where these Gospels traditions are starting to, are starting to kind of combine. And so, you know, in, and, and the, the ways that they’re combining is really fascinating. So like in Luke you have this sort of Jesus born wherever he’s born, right on the streets somewhere, or in a stable or in a cave or whatever. The whole point being he’s born not in a house. And, and then Matthew, the, the, the Magoi come to the house that Joseph and Mary live in. So there’s kind of two different stories Here Matthew has them living in Bethlehem and that’s why Jesus is born there. Luke has them traveling for the census, and that’s why Jesus is born there in the Protevangelium.

They are traveling to register in the census, but then they sort of are outside of Bethlehem and then they stop in the cave, which again, like, if you go back to Luke, that detail actually doesn’t contradict Luke. It just sort of provides a detail that Luke doesn’t provide. But then the Protevangelium author harmonizes these things by also having the Magi appear at this cave. And so, you know, the. Yeah, that sort of. That sort of quote unquote, homeless Jesus is a Lucan feature. But then the Magi and the star and all of that stuff, that’s a. That’s a Matthean feature. And then they get kind of combined in there in that.

And then we turn it up to 11 a little bit.

Yeah, yeah.

And that’s when the, the drummer boy comes up on the donkey.

And you’ve got.

Getting it. I think I’m getting. I’m working on it.

We’re so close.

You’ve got. You’ve got a great chapter in here where you talk about four different apocryphal texts that feature the Magi, that contribute to the. Some of the different ways we think about them today. The Protevangelium of James is one of them. We’ve also got the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, the Armenian Gospel of the Infancy, and the Revelation of the Magi. What are some of the things that these texts contribute to the accumulation of traditions about the Magi?

Yeah, so. So with. I mean, starting with the kind of. With. Well, going back to the Protevangelium, starting with that. One of the things that I sort of noticed when I was looking at that, that story is this kind of early fascination with the star. Right. So Matthew doesn’t really do much with the. The star. I mean, it’s sort of. It’s there. But the Protevangelium, the Magi make reference to the star and they talk about why it was so interesting to them. Right. And then one of the things that they say is that it was so bright that all of the other stars in the heavens were dimmed because of its brightness. Right. Which is a new detail. Right. We don’t get that in Matthew. We just get that they saw something of significance in the star and a.

Detail that might be problematic in that. Like, folks might have noticed that one.

Right. Well, and that’s the thing is that the, the. So the star sort of in later traditions kind of it gains the ability to sort of appear and reappear, appear and disappear. And this kind of has, this is in Matthew as well where the star reappears and leads them to Bethlehem from Jerusalem. But, but, but in these later texts, yeah, it becomes, it becomes almost UFO-esque in a way that’s like anyone who’s paying attention would be able to see this, right? Like if there is a star in the sky that is so bright that it is dimming all of the other stars, then certainly that’s something that people are going to notice. But, but you know, the author of the Protevangelium takes that detail and changes a couple of other little details, but that’s the detail that he really takes and says, all right, we’re going to really, you know, turn this up to 11, right? We’re going to, we’re going to crank, we’re going to crank the brightness up on this thing to sort of answer one of those questions that Matthew doesn’t really seem interested in answering to say, well, what did they find unique about the star?

And the author of the Protevangelium says, well, it was how bright it was, right? And so, so that, that kind of, that kind of detail gets emphasized there in a text like the Armenian Gospel of the Infancy, which is another just fascinating text that I recommend anyone read because it’s just, it’s really, really interesting. But in the Magi material there, there’s this other question that, that there, that the author is, is interested in answering, which is why when the Magi arrive in Jerusalem in Matthew, it says Herod and all the people in Jerusalem were terrified when the Magi showed up. It’s, and it’s weird, right? You look at this and you go, okay, like, but why, right? Like why are they, why are they terrified? And in the Armenian Gospel of the Infancy, the answer is, well, they are, they, they’re kings in this, in this text. And they’re, and they’re military leaders and they’re traveling with, with thousands and thousands of troops. And when they arrive at Jerusalem, they camp out around the city.

And so the Armenian Gospel of the Infancy, the people are terrified because they look out and they see that they’re under siege. Like, literally there’s, there’s, there’s these huge armies that are, that are, that are laying siege to them. And so Herod is sending his people out going, go see what they want, go see if they want to trade, go see, you know, whatever. And then the people come out and they say, hey, we can tell that you’re traveling with, with stuff. We smell it, you know, it’s good. But, but that’s, that, that, that, that text is answering that question of like, you know, well, why were they afraid? Well, there was armies with them and that text is doing other things as well. But all of these texts are kind of filling out those details. The Revelation of the Magi. I think I probably could have written an entire chapter on this text because the Revelation of the Magi is. I never actually checked the, this. I suspect that it’s about as long as Matthew is. Maybe, maybe not quite as long, but it’s a, it’s a long text. And when is this dated? Oh gosh. Knew you were going to ask me that. I think like, I think, I think I would be comfortable just saying like, I, 6th, 7th century.

Okay, so still still fairly early.

Yeah, but I mean there’s obviously, there’s a whole, there’s a whole debate on that. whole, there’s a whole debate on that. There’s, you know, some who really, who really want to push it back and say, oh, there’s a Greek original in the second century. But you know, every, everyone wants the Greek original from the 2nd century, but anyhow, but, but it’s a Syriac text and it is a, it’s a first person account of the Magi. And so they’re the ones telling the story. And there’s like 20 of them too. So they’re, they’re all like living way out in this mythical land of Shir. And they’re like, they’re living at the base of the mountain, of the cave of mysteries and treasures and all of this. And then the, I mean.

That was in Aladdin. Yeah, yeah, diamond in the rough.

It’s really funny. It does kind of, it does sort of, you know, give that, give that impression of like, it’s almost like a Disney film. But, but yeah, they’re, they’re like, they’re there and they are, you know, they like do all this ritual bathing and they are. And they’re, and they’re waiting for the arrival of this star. Like they know what they’re waiting for. And then, and then in part of the thing, that star kind of descends and then it goes into the cave and then they follow it in. And in this text the star actually becomes a character. The star is Jesus himself. And so the star, yeah, it’s really, really fascinating. The star says to the Magi, like, follow me, follow me to Bethlehem where I’m going to be born. Where I’m soon going to be born. And then they leave the cave and, and that’s where they get the gifts, by the way. It’s very convenient. The cave of treasures. Bring the treasures from the cave. But then like they leave the cave and, and, and it turns out they all saw something different. So that’s one, one of them’s like, oh, I saw an infant. Oh, I saw a young child.

I saw a teacher. I saw somebody crucified. And so, yeah, so it’s like this shape shifting, the shape shifting Jesus. But yeah, then it, then it, it leads them on and they follow it and it like levels mountains and it helps them to cross rivers and it like multiplies their food for them and all of this, all of this stuff. So, so it’s sort of. Yeah, these, these later, these later stories, these apocryphal stories are almost like kind of like fan fiction, right? They, they take these, these. The story that doesn’t have a whole lot of detail and then they kind of fill it out and they retell it. Yeah, it’s a lot of fun.

And that’s, and that’s so common within early Judaism and Christianity with, you know, Melchizedek. Not a whole lot going on there, but suddenly we’ve got a bunch of literature and Second Temple Judaism and later Enoch gets a whole, you know, universe in the cinematic literary universe dedicated to Enoch. And it seems like such an interesting thing to have this little story become the focus of, of so much attention. Like what. It seems like there was a market for kind of exploring these, these kind of neglected themes and parts of the Gospels. And you mentioned that there are many more apocryphal texts that expand on this, but that you just focused on the four in the chapter. Is this just associated with the celebration of Christmas? Is this a year round fascination that people in the first millennium CE had? What’s your sense on why there was such a market for these kinds of stories?

Oh my gosh. That’s a great question that I don’t know if I have a really good answer for the. I mean it seems to be. Yeah, I mean I, I kind of get the sense just with the prevalence of these characters in not only, not only stories. I mean I, I can’t even remember where I read this, where I read this claim, but there was, I read a claim somewhere that the Magi are like third in terms of the, the most depicted characters from the New Testament or something like that. I’m not even sure if you could measure a claim like that, but obviously like Mary and Jesus are like way up at the top. But I mean, in terms of recognizable characters, right? I mean, these are. These are characters that, regardless of whether you were, you know, brought up hearing the story or brought up celebrating Christmas or whatever, these are characters that. That do have a very, very broad. Not, not a broad appeal, but a broad level of recognition.

I mean, so it. My guess is that the. That they were kind of not just. Not just characters that you brought out of your Christmas decorations box and set on your mantel once a year. But my, my kind of sense is that. That they did have a more enduring quality to them. And you sort of can see this in a couple of different ways. One of the things I talk about a bit in the book is the catacomb art, right? And so there’s the Magi. Some of the earliest depictions of the Magi are in. In the catacombs in Rome, in the Catacomb of Priscilla. There’s a. There’s a painting of them in this. In this beautiful chapel. And then there’s. They appear again in a couple of different places. There’s another painting out in the hallway where they appear in a fresco with Mary. And then there’s a. A marble slab where they appear as well. So this sort of. They have kind of an enduring quality that seems to kind of supersede like Christmas.

I guess they’re not. I guess. I guess that’s all of this to say. I don’t get the sense that they are seasonal characters. I get the sense that in the early Christian imagination they were very prominent in terms of why. I mean, that’s the. That’s the ten million dollar question. Right. Is sort of what. What about them? Well, it’s in the subtitle of the book. Why do they still fascinate? Right. Yeah. And they seem to have caught people’s imaginations very early, perhaps because of how loaded that term is. Right. The magoi is a loaded, loaded term. And in Greek literature. But yeah, for whatever reason, they. They latched on.

And yeah, I mean, it does seem like a part of the story or a part of their function is that they are some sort of outside confirmation of the divinity or of the divine providence of this birth of. You know what I mean? It seems, it seems like it’s a nice touch just from a. Just from a storytelling perspective. It is a. This is. This is not just important to one small subset of people, to the Judeans or to whatever. This is an. This is an. A thing of sort of global importance. And this adds that externality of. Of of importance to the story.

Yeah, it’s you know, so there’s a. Yeah, there’s a sense here with. With the way that the. The way that Magi and other ancient literature are depicted. One of the. One of the really interesting things that you see time and again, you see this a lot in Herodotus. You see this a lot, though, that they are. That Magi are people who are drawn to kings. When. When Magi show up in a story. We’re talking not in the New Testament, but the Magi show up in a story. They are. There’s about to be some sort of political shakeup. Like, you know, when the Magi show up, there’s either going to be a new king who is. Who is. Is taking power, or somebody’s about to lose their job. And that’s just kind of this theme that you see kind of over and over and over again. And even one of the Magi. There’s two other. In the New Testament, two other mentions of Magi in both in Acts. And in one of them, this Magi named has two names, Bar Jesus and Elymas, and he is also near the leader kind of figure.

So they’re sort of drawn to political power. So in my read of this story, it’s actually less about validating the divinity of Jesus and more about validating Jesus’s royal lineage and saying, you know, the Magi are here to confirm that this is the true king of the Judeans, Herod, ain’t it? But Jesus is. And that’s. And that’s one of the reasons why they show up. They give their gifts, they go. Because that’s why they’re there. Yeah.

One of the interesting things. Sorry, you just made me think of. One of the interesting things that I liked about your book was you. You know, you have a discussion fairly early on when you’re. When in. I think it’s in chapter two, when you’re talking about sort of how you’re translating a few of these different words and you talk about you. You’ve said a couple times today, King of the Judeans. Dan said King of the Jews earlier. And there’s a question there, man, I’m starting to fight. I’m starting to fight. Who wins?

You have no idea what a fight you’re starting here.

I’m just speaking colloquially.

Hey, man, I’m. I’m just. I’m just asking questions. That’s my job.

Well, Dan, do you want to. Do you want to take the first punch or.

Well, no, I don’t. I’m not. I’m not siding with a specific Part of this. But yeah, there’s long been a discussion about how we are to understand this designation and this and this identity. Is this cultural? Is this religious? Is there even a thing as such as religion at this time? Spoiler alert. No. Is this a geographic designation? Is this an ethnic designation? Like, there’s, this is something that’s been, it’s been debated for a long, long time because it has relevance to when you can begin to start about some, or to start talking about something called Judaism. And there have been some books where, you know, people start off in the very first or in the introduction saying, hey, I’m just going to use Judean or I’m just going to use Judahite or I’m just going to use Jewish or something like that. Just. And here’s what, I’m aware of all this, but I’m just. Because you don’t, you know, you can’t ever get a first down on this. You’ve got a punt on this in one sense or another.

So, so, yeah, I’m not taking sides. I’m just kind of, I use what is most colloquial and what is most recognizable to my audience.

But thank you.

Thank you for pointing that out and opening up old wounds.

Oh, no, this is, and this is, and this is one of those debates. It’s a huge debate in our, in our field and it can sometimes get, get rather, rather messy. And, and so, and so I do, you know, the ultimate punt would just say, would just be to say like, I’m just not going to translate it. Right. Like that’s, you know, the King of the Ioudaioi.

Yeah, but like you did with Magi.

Exactly. But you know, you can’t do that with everything because then, then it’s just lazy. But, you know, but the, yeah, I translated King of the Judeans here. I am not one of those who thinks that it is necessarily always the best translated as Judeans. I think it’s very context specific. And so in this particular story, I think that that very well captures the sort of ethnopolitical emphasis that Matthew is putting on the story by incorporating these people, you know, they are coming to see the, they are, they are coming to see the rightfully born king of this particular ethnos. Yeah. And so it. Judean better captures that, captures that better than, than Jews. But yeah, I think, I think it just depends on what you’re. I think it depends on what you’re reading. And that’s one of the challenges of translation is that there is no one to one correspondence really ever.

It’s always, there’s always a question of.

Context there, apart from the People’s Front of Judea who are splitters. So, so we’re talking about how this is emphasizing the, the royal dimension of Jesus’ identity and, and mission. Where do three Kings come from? Because I get something in, in my world of, of responding to a lot of conspiracy theories. I get a lot of stuff about, oh, the Orion’s Belt is called the Three Kings. And on this day the belt points to the rising sun on the 25th. And so then, so people just made this thing up. You, you know, they just pulled everything out of the astrologer’s handbook and said, we’re going to create this dude named Jesus.

I mean, that’s, that’s how I’ve always understood it.

Well, yeah, I mean, you know, I’m not going to go against the consensus view here, but so I’ve, I. Growing up, like, I did not grow up in, within a religious family, we celebrated Christmas as more of a, of a secular holiday. And I never heard the wise men referred to as the three Kings, but evidently that’s very prominent for a lot of folks. Where, where do we get the idea of the three Kings?

Yeah, so I think, I mean, that, that sort of, it does develop relatively early. So it’s, you know, they, I think one of the ways that it develops is this idea that they are coming from, you know, in Matthew, they seem to be all kind of traveling together from the east or whatever. But then one of the popular ways of retelling the story is that they are sort of all coming from different places and converging on Bethlehem. So sort of a. And that, that kind kind of grows into this. You know, the, the, the different rulers or different important people or different kings from various different places are coming together to kind of pay tribute to the real king. And so this is, and I think part of this. How do they become kings? Is the, in Matthew? Like, what is the star doing in Matthew? And one of the things that I talk about in, in one of the chapters in the book is this kind of linkage between stars and rulers, which is something that you find in the Hebrew Bible and it is something that you find in Roman literature as well, talking about Caesar and the star of Caesar and whatever.

And you know, that that star is a sign that, that Caesar is, after his assassination was, was divine or whatever. And then his son sort of uses this as propaganda to say, I am the rightful ruler. And you know, my, my dad is, is God is a God. And so like I am the son of a God or whatever. And so, so stars do have this kind of linkage with, with rulers. And so stars rise just like kings rise and stars fall, kings fall as well. And so with texts like the Proto-Gospel of James , the Protevangelium, you sort of have the one star Jesus that is brighter than all the other stars. Kings perhaps. And so then, you know, maybe that’s something that works its way into the imagination of like, oh, maybe these characters who were coming to bow before Jesus to humble themselves, maybe they were kings, but also just lesser kings. And so my hunch is that, that, is that the star is very much one of the ways that people start thinking about them as royal figures.

And of course the fact that they show up wearing crowns.

There you go.

You know, you can’t really, you really can’t discount that. I mean, it’s right there in the pictures.

And the gold, frankincense and myrrh is, is there symbolism associated with royalty there or is that something else?

Yeah, so that’s another great question. Depends on who you ask. If you ask some of the early church interpreters who are reading this story, many of them are interpreting the gifts as figurative of, of parts of Jesus’s own identity. Right? So the gold symbolizes Jesus’s royal status. The frankincense symbolizes Jesus’s divine status. And then the, and then the myrrh is figuring, pre-figuring his death or humanity or something along these lines. I don’t really find a whole lot of that in Matthew. I don’t think for Matthew that’s really the point of the gifts. I think Matthew believes that they are expensive. I think he’s trying to think of the fanciest and most costly things that he can. And, and so this either means that these people are rich like kings, or that they have sold everything that they have in order to, to, to gain these things. So I think that the gifts are sort of definitely meant as helping to validate Jesus’s position as the rightful king of the Judeans.

But I think the gifts in Matthew say more about Jesus’s kingship than they do about their kingship.

Okay.

And there’s, there’s also another text, and now the reference is, is escaping me, but it’s in the book where there’s a Greco-Roman author who says that the kings in Persia can’t be kings unless they are first magi. So there’s sort of like a, like they are pulling the kings out of this pool of these figures. So there’s also in the ancient world outside of Matthew, there’s also an association between Magi and kings.

I notice as we’re talking about the different ways that people are kind of negotiating with this story, it’s always amplifying, it’s always escalating. It’s always trying to find additional significance, additional meaning, which is something that I talk about a lot on, on, on social media, that people are always looking for new and better ways to make the text meaningful or useful to them. And even if that means adding details and, and expanding the story, that’s just kind of a natural part of the life cycle of, of these stories as they are transmitted, they get expanded upon, they get elaborated on, they get amplified. And obviously this is no exception. In fact, this seems to be one of the. It’s an exception in the. The other direction. It seems to be something where something that doesn’t take center stage for whatever reason has become an awful big deal to a lot of folks around the world. And, and, and you end your book with a discussion about some ways that the, the Magi are, are represented in media today.

What are some of the more fascinating manifestations of that that you talk about?

Yeah, so. Well, one of the kind of the things that sort of persists, and it’s an early. It’s a, it’s a rather early interpretive move that, that became very stubbornly persistent, I suppose, and that is interpreting the significance of the Magi first and foremost as being Gentiles. And that is, I think, one of the most really interesting things that persists in a lot of more modern depictions is sort of these. Or. And a lot of theological interpretations of these is like, this is. These are Gentiles who come to worship Jesus and then you’ve got Herod and those, you know, those evil Judeans who just want to kill Jesus. Right. And so this kind of dichotomy develops between the sort of good Gentiles and the bad Jews. And I’m. Please, if you’re. If you’re listening to this on audio, see the scare quotes, the quote-unquote, bad Jews. I’m not.

That’s not my position. And so that is. That is something that I found in a number of spots in the kind of early tradition. But it’s also one of the things that I found in a very surprising place, which is a children’s book. So I looked at a, at a, at an illustrated children’s book that was put together a couple of years ago, and I chose it at random off of Amazon. I just went on and I tried to find the most recent Wise Men book that I could just to say, like, let’s just, let’s just do a random children’s book. And I even found that sort of anti-Jewish rhetoric in the children’s book of the way, you know, the, the, the, the way that the, the Magi are, are depicted, right? They all come to Jerusalem and then, and they’re dressed all nicely or whatever. And Herod is this like fat slob with yellow skin and like, you know, he’s just filthy greasy, all of this. And then, and the fascinating thing was like looking at this text but as a children’s book is an illustrated text. And so the images are as important as the words.

And looking at, you know, when Herod and his advisors go to consult their archives and, which is clearly a reference to the, to the, to the, the Hebrew Bible. And the book talks about the musty smell that they give off the, that the texts do because obviously the Judeans aren’t reading their Bibles, right? And then, you know, you look at this image and Herod and his people are like crouched in the darkness, whereas the Magi are waiting out in the courtyard in the full sunlight. And it’s just this really, really fascinating like not fascinating in a good way, but fascinating in this way of the way that we’ve sort of moved to tell this story and the way that people are learning about this story is very much instilling that kind of anti-Jewish, that anti-Jewish rhetoric, right, is like we’ve got the good, the good Gentiles and the bad Jews. And so I found that in a children’s book which was not something I was expecting to find.

I wasn’t going and looking through children’s books for it. I just picked this one up and I looked at it was like, well, damn. And, and so that’s, that’s, that’s sort of a, you know, fascinating but also in a bad way. And the other, the, another kind of positive example though is the, you know, one of the books that I examine is Lamb, the Gospel According to Biff, which is a fantastic novel. It’s sort of a modern day infancy gospel in many ways. But in this novel, Jesus and his best friend Biff go off east down the Silk Road to find the Magi to ask them who is Jesus, right? Because Jesus is sort of like, “I know I’m different, I know I’m God, I know I’m a messiah, whatever, but I don’t know what that means.” And then there’s a rabbi who’s like, “you know, your mom said that these three dudes showed up when you were born.” “They seem to know something about you.” “So, you know, why don’t you go find them?” And so they do. They go off and find them and there’s, you know, there’s one of them’s an Ethiopian magician, one of them’s a Hindu renouncer, and then one of them’s a Buddhist monk.

And. And this book is fascinating because the entire thing sort of focuses on the question of what were the Magi after when they came to visit Jesus? And one of them is in search of immortality and one of them is in search of enlightenment. So that. That sort of question of, like, what were they after? And it’s a really, really creative way of addressing that.

That’s fun.

And less supersessionism in that one.

Yeah, less. I mean, the book. The book is problematic as well, but in terms of the. In. In terms of the story of. I. I found less of the anti-Judaism in that one. Yeah. Which is refreshing.

What we’re left with, if I can. If I can close us out with a. Another pop culture reference, is that you have completely ruined a song to the point where now it’s “we an unspecified number of non-kings.” All we have left is Orient. We know that they were from the East. Right. You’re not taking that away from us, are you?

That’s not a great word to use there.

So.

I didn’t write the song, Dan.

Yeah, no, I mean, one of the things that I do is. Is ruin things. And so that is. That should not be any surprise. But yes, we unspecified number of wearied travelers from an unspecified location, you know. Yes.

So, but I mean, if there’s a theme to this show that we’ve learned and you know, anyone who’s followed Dan’s TikToks or whatever, it’s ruining. This is. The whole show is about. It seems that the pursuit of biblical scholarship is largely about ruining fun things that we thought we knew.

Yeah, ruining. Or as I prefer, complicating.

Yeah. And I think I prefer to say I show up, muddy the waters, and then scurry away.

That’s much like the Magi.

Yeah, there you go. Exactly.

Perfect.

If I had to go through graduate school, ain’t nobody gets to be happy with all these stories.

Oh, well, Eric, this has been delightful. Where can people find your book? Because I know that they’re going to want to dive into it and get. And get a lot more out of this thing. So talk to us about your book.

Yeah, absolutely. So the book is called The Magi: Who They Were, How They’ve Been Remembered, and Why They Still Fascinate. So at the risk of sounding very cliche, it’s wherever you get your books from, you can find this one. So it’s, it’s online pretty much everywhere. Amazon, Barnes and Noble and then also Fortress Press is the publisher and their, their website is a great place to, to get it as well. But yeah, I hope you’ll pick it up and read it and connect with me if you got questions or comments or insults or anything like that.

Oh, I wouldn’t invite our listeners to. I don’t think that’s a good idea at all.

No. Okay. Definitely don’t connect with me. I am inaccessible. I am, I am a riddle wrapped in darkness. So.

But a wise man nonetheless.

Well, thank you. Thank you.

Well, thank you Eric Vanden Eykel for joining us today. We really appreciate it. Friends at home, thank you for joining us too. If you would like to become a patron of the show, help make it go, gain access to an early and ad free version of every episode as well as the potential for patrons only content, you can go to our our patreon, which is patreon.com/dataoverdogma. If you need to write to us, please feel free to reach out at contact@dataoverdogmapod.com and we’ll see you again next week.

Bye everybody.