[SedVictaCatoni]

General information: The "Three Wise Men" who journeyed to Bethlehem were of course magi, Zoroastrian priests and scholars.

Our word "magic" comes from magi.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Who knows how many there were. It could have been two. It could have been dozens. When Daniel and his brethren were in captivity in Persia, they had ample chance to teach their hosts about the Torah, and thus they knew about the Messiah. The predicted star finally shone, and they said let's hop on our camels and get going to worship this Kid.

[enviros_kill]

Some more background on the Magi and the actual birth date of Christ:

"The Star of Bethlehem," IMPRIMIS, Hillsdale College (Dec 1996): http://www.hillsdale.edu/imprimis/1996/Dec96Imprimis.pdf. A six page article that summarizes important facts supporting Christ's birth date of September 11, 3 B.C. Note that this date was also the Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah) and commonly considered to be the first day of Creation in Genesis ("birthday of the world").

"The Star that Astonished the World," Ernest Martin, Ph.D. http://askelm.com/star/star000.htm and http://askelm.com/books/book003.htm. This book is THE definitive work on what the Star of Bethlehem really was (Jupiter). It describes the numerous conjunctions and massing of planets that announced Christ's birth and pinpoints the exact day and time from astronomical, historical, and Biblical records. This evidence convinced the Magi astronomers (wise men) from Persia (Iran) to journey over 1000 miles to Bethlehem and pay honor to the 15-month old Christ child in December, 2 B.C. The Shockwave video (http://askelm.com/video/v020301.htm) produced by MSNBC is particularly good as it demonstrates the various conjunctions and retrograde planetary motions in a very clear fashion.

September 11th news, http://www.september11news.com/Sept11History.htm. Islamic jihadists killed nearly 3,000 of our fellow Americans on Sept. 11, 2001. The author of this site includes Christ's birth in his historical timeline of Sept 11 events. It is not surprising that the evil one of this world would besmirch the birth date of his eventual conqueror.

[enviros_kill]

Some more background on the Magi and the actual birth date of Christ:

"The Star of Bethlehem," IMPRIMIS, Hillsdale College (Dec 1996): http://www.hillsdale.edu/imprimis/1996/Dec96Imprimis.pdf . A six page article that summarizes important facts supporting Christ's birth date of September 11, 3 B.C. Note that this date was also the Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah) and commonly considered to be the first day of Creation in Genesis ("birthday of the world").

"The Star that Astonished the World," Ernest Martin, Ph.D. http://askelm.com/star/star000.htm and http://askelm.com/books/book003.htm . This book is THE definitive work on what the Star of Bethlehem really was (Jupiter). It describes the numerous conjunctions and massing of planets that announced Christ's birth and pinpoints the exact day and time from astronomical, historical, and Biblical records. This evidence convinced the Magi astronomers (wise men) from Persia (Iran) to journey over 1000 miles to Bethlehem and pay honor to the 15-month old Christ child in December, 2 B.C. The Shockwave video (http://askelm.com/video/v020301.htm ) produced by MSNBC is particularly good as it demonstrates the various conjunctions and retrograde planetary motions in a very clear fashion.

September 11th news, http://www.september11news.com/Sept11History.htm . Islamic jihadists killed nearly 3,000 of our fellow Americans on Sept. 11, 2001. The author of this site includes Christ's birth in his historical timeline of Sept 11 events. It is not surprising that the evil one of this world would besmirch the birth date of his eventual conqueror.

[Cronos]

Another piece of info -- sorry about this I find ancient cultures and religions (intertwined) fascinating.

The Ancient Aryan religion in it's primitive, barbaric form can be found amongst the old Norse legends with two families of Gods -- the Aesir and the Vanir who are more of less equal, though Thor, Odin etc are Aesir.

Indic and Irani cultures are similar -- both Aryan cultures but the religions differed:

In India, the Daeva family was elevated to the status of Gods so that Deva came to mean "God". This family included gods like Indra -- the God of Thunder and lightning -- like Thor -- chief of the gods, Surya the sun god and Agni the god of fire. However, Hinduism also incorporated other Caucasian pre-ARyan gods from the Dravidians -- a Caucasian race that existed in India before hte Aryans (lkind of like how the Sumerians were present before the Amorite, Semitic races) like Shiva or Vishnu
Anyhow, so the Daevas were made the chief gods while the Asuras were made lesser gods and then under the influence of Christianity and maybe Zoroastrianism, into demons, so now Asura means demon.

In Iran, the opposite happened with the Ahuras made Gods (Iranic and Indic differs slightly in pronunciation but otherwise are the main forebears of Indo-European) and Daevas reduced to household deities, minor gods.

Zoroaster choose one God -- Ahura Mazda, the god of light as the main, one of only two gods, the other being some other name I can'#t remember ;-P

Zoroastrianism had the philosophy that man's duty was to fight on the behalf of the God of good and to fight against evil.
The Persian Shahs were a pretty tolerant bunch -- as depicted byt he fact that they let the Judaens return home and by the fact that they didn't face as many problems in their Empire as their precursors the Assyrians and Babylonians had.

Zoroastrianism mixed with Christianity gave rise to religions like Manichaenism (can't remember the spelling) while Mazdaism had been a competitor for followers in the 2nd century in Rome with Christianity.

Then Islam came........