Now that Christmas is over we can look ahead to Epiphany - the time when the wise men arrived to pay homage to the baby Jesus. I know that some churches refuse to allow the wise men to be put in the nativity crib for Christmas as it is a separate feast and occurs later. But in the popular imagination and in much of the church it is all bundled into the great winter festival!
So what do we actually know about the Magi.
1) The Gospel of Matthew doesn’t say how many Magi there were. Three became the most popular answer because of the three gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
2) Early Christians didn’t agree on where the Magi were from. The most popular answer was Persia (modern Iran), but others thought they were from Babylon or Arabia. East could really be any where exotic if you look at the map
3) Nobody knows what the Star of Bethlehem really was. Some recent theories say it was a comet but many early Christians thought it was an angel or the Holy Spirit.
4) Opinions differ about how long it took the Magi to reach Bethlehem. It could have been two years based on Herods questions or it could be twelve days based on the number of days between 25th December and 6th January.
And what was a magi anyway - a wise man? a magician? an astronomer? an astrologer? a leader of an eastern esoteric religious group? (but remember this is long before the prophet Mohamed was born!)
It is a feast with more questions than answers! And just to confuse things further I remember when I was in southern Spain last January I saw plastic models (sometimes almost life size) of the wise men decoratively climbing up the front of many houses and apartments. In local folk-law it is the wise men who bring the seasonal gifts for childrens stockings! I must have skipped that bit of the bible!
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