Mystery of the Magi: The Quest to Identify the Three Wise Men

Mystery of the Magi: The Quest to Identify the Three Wise Men.  By Dwight Longenecker, Regnery History, 2017.

 

Every Christmas, Christians see manger scenes featuring three wise men, and the Christmas carol “We Three Kings” is sung regularly.  It’s widely accepted that three monarchs visited the manger where Jesus was born, and that they rode in on camels, were of diverse ethnic backgrounds and homelands, and were named Balthasar of Arabia, Melchior of Persia, and Gaspar of India.

 

But is this depiction of the past historically accurate?  In Mystery of the Magi, Fr. Dwight Longenecker argues that much of what the faithful think they know about the Magi is based primarily on legend and folklore.  The Biblical information on the Magi is comparatively meager, and it’s necessary to delve into existing historical evidence in order to figure out what really happened.  

 

In his opening pages, Fr. Longenecker writes:

 

“In the midst of secular Christmas, with Frosty the Snowman and Santa, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Bing Crosby dreaming of a white Christmas, we want the wonderful story of the Christ child born in a stable, heralded by angels, honored by shepherds, and worshipped by kings who followed a star.

 

Even the most hardened cynics want to keep Christmas.  Despite the rise of casual unbelief, most of us want to hand the family Nativity set on to our children.  Hypocrites and agnostics, we still gather for church at that one time each year.  It may be far from our everyday lives, and we may not really believe, but many of us want to believe.  Even if we don’t, we want to hear again the story of the innocent mother and the faithful father.  Even if we have doubts, we want to hear about the angels singing to the shepherds and the sweet old story of the wise men who were enchanted by a miraculous star.

 

But is there any truth to it all?”

 

Throughout the book, Fr. Longenecker criticizes both skeptics who refuse to give any credence to the supernatural and the miraculous, as well as those individuals who have faith but refuse to view certain stories or events critically.  Fr. Longenecker dubs these people “believers with blinders,” suggesting that they act as if the slightest query over the veracity of any Christian story is a slippery slope towards angry unbelief.  Rather, Fr. Longenecker argues that rigid fundamentalist interpretations can blind religious people towards various important aspects of their faith. 

 

Observing how common presentations of the Magi have changed over the centuries, Fr. Longenecker notes that there are reasons why many critical Biblical scholars have rejected large portions, if not the entirety, of the Nativity story as mythical, writing that:

 

“The Christmas story has been cluttered up with so many customs, traditions, legends, and strange characters over the years that it’s difficult to imagine that any of it might be rooted in history.”

 

Yet the scholars who dismiss the story of the Magi following a star based on nothing more than folklore receive chiding from Fr. Longenecker for failing to do their homework on the real historical evidence behind the Magi story.  The narrative of the Magi varies widely from region to region and century to century.

 

“The fact of the matter is that facts matter.  If an event is historical, it is real, and if it is real, then it affects the rest of history.  If an event really happened, we have to pay attention and fit it into our vision of reality.  If we regard the Bible stories as fairy tales but then learn that they are historical, we are compelled to reconsider our understanding of history and the other claims of Christianity.

 

The problem is that when we are dealing with ancient stories, separating fact from fiction is rarely east.  History and fantasy get jumbled up together.  A good example is King Arthur.  Historians believe there probably was a real chieftain named Arthur who ruled some British tribes during the time of the Saxon invasions.  Who Arthur was, however, and how he lived and where Camelot was located are difficult to ascertain.  Furthermore, the historical Arthur is a far cry from the character in Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, and T.H. White’s The Once and Future King– not to mention Disney’s animated Sword in the Stone or Monty Python and the Holy Grail.”

 

Over the course of the book, Fr. Longenecker finds ample evidence that there really were Magi– although the point that there were exactly three of them is never confirmed in the Bible.  The idea of there being three stems in part from the three gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, though there is no textual evidence that each Magi brought just one unique kind of gift.  Fr. Longenecker also explains that the common image of the Magi riding in on camels may be flawed– horses may be a more likely means of conveyance.  Contrary to the belief of many scholars, there is also hard evidence that a real astrological phenomenon occurred during this time.

 

At the heart of the book is a desire to find out the truth behind the Magi, which means that scholarship of dubious accuracy is particularly singled out for criticism.  Fr. Longnecker explains how much of mainstream Biblical scholarship has begun on shaky principles, writing that:

 

“Biblical scholars are not preachers.  They are not necessarily Christian believers.  Their task is the painstaking analysis of the ancient texts so that all of us can understand them better.  Biblical scholars therefore approach the gospels with the tools proper to literary, historical, archaeological, and linguistic research, building on the results of over one hundred years of detailed Biblical scholarship.  Like detectives, they sift through the Biblical texts and the other evidence in an attempt to discern what is historical in the stories and what is not.

 

The problem is that Biblical scholars often work under their own set of prejudices.  Assuming that miracles are impossible, they conclude that the supernatural elements of the gospel stories must be imaginary additions.  This bias infects everything they do.  If the believers with blinders assume that everything in the Bible stories must be true, the scholars and skeptics too often assume that everything in the Bible is false.

 

In fact, the truth lies somewhere in the middle, and one of the exciting things about exploring the story of the Magi is that we can embark on a fascinating adventure of discovery.  To do so we will take advantage of the strengths of both sides of the debate.  Assuming, like the believers, that the Bible stories are essentially historical and trustworthy, we will use the tools of the scholars to examine the text, study the elaborations, cut away what is legendary, and learn more about the context and history of the New Testament times.”

 

After reading this book, one is unlikely to ever listen to “We Three Kings” the same way ever again, nor is one likely to listen to the latest “debunking” of a major Bible story without turning a critical eye towards this new scholarship.

 

 

–Chris Chan