Church wisdom: Nix 'Wise Men'

New York Daily News ^ | February 11, 2004

[sarcasm]

LONDON - The three Wise Men may have been neither wise nor men, the Church of England has decided.

The church's decision was in response to moves to replace the term "Magi" with "Wise Men" in a series of short prayers.

The church's governing body ruled there was no evidence of the sex or sagacity of the three gift-bearers to the infant Jesus.

"While it seems very unlikely that these Persian court officials were female, the possibility ... cannot be excluded completely," it said.

[SAJ]

''We, three kings, of Orient are''
''Bearing gifts, we traverse afar''

My scriptural knowledge is a trifle rusty -- Melchior, Balthazar, and ???

I'm certain that the incredible body of knowledge here on FR can oil my failing memory, and all suggestions are welcome! Drat, drat, drat...who IS the third king? (muttering at self)

[Ulysses]

My scriptural knowledge is a trifle rusty -- Melchior, Balthazar, and ???

The scriptures never name these "magi from the east." Also, the scripture never says anything about there being three of them. Could have been two. Could have been two hundred.

[Salman]

An undermined number of persons of undetermined gender and undetermined intellegence. Yeah that's the ticket. According to tradition if not explicit scripture they are racially diverse, so that's in order.

But how do you cast the parts for the Christmas pageant, now?

[Stallone]

How 'bout we calls 'em da Wise Guys?

Whaddaboutit?

[Roy Tucker]

The Devil and her minions are laughing.

[Roy Tucker]

Caspar, by the way.

[Caipirabob]

Redefine, redefine, redefine, then say "it's all cr*p anyways".

Teach your children well, they will be the ones to carry the truth forward.

[blueyes]

The first to visit Christ were the shepards in the field, having been notified by angels. The wise men didn't show until it was time to flee to Egypt.

[I still care]

This is so idiotic. The magi, in all likelihood, came from Persia. There is no way they were women in that patriarchal society.

The worst thing about political correctness is the way it discards the truth.

[trebb]

Yes- these fools will be the inspiration for a new book: "Jesus Cried"

[MIchaelTArchangel]

More news from the Church of Political Correctness and What's Happening Now.

[Cronos]

The Church of England? Huh? Wassat???

[WhiteGuy]

A. Church of England, Peoples Front of Judea, - Splitters

B. So what do I do with the 4ft. tall plastic light-up "wise men" that I put out in the yard every year?

[Cronos]

''We, three kings, of Orient are'' ''Bearing gifts, we traverse afar'' My scriptural knowledge is a trifle rusty -- Melchior, Balthazar, and ???

It's Gaspar as in Gaspar the friendly ghost ;-P

But in sripture there's no details about the number of the Magi or their names, the names in fact are medieval creations. The Magi were Persian Zoroastrian priests. You can still find Zoroastrians in india where they escpaed from the Slamies. They do NOT have female priests, they have NEVER HAD female priests. Hence the Magi in Christ's time could NOT have been female.

the coE is way past it's expiry date. Why try to create female heroines when there already are plenty of them in the Bible -- Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Deborah, Judith, Esther, Jael wife os Sisera, the virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene, the women of jeruslaem, the women who were the first to see the risen lord (they were deemed more worthy than the apostles by God, so if that doesn't say it all!) etc. etc.

[SAJ]

Many thanks!

[SAJ]

Thank you (was driving m'self more nuts than usual).

[Roy Tucker]

I don't want to start the whole Sola Scriptura discussion on this thread since we are all on the same page, poking fun at the modern COE, but the names are not medieval creations but go back to the sacred tradition of the Christian church which also goes back 2000 years.

[VOA]

"While it seems very unlikely that these Persian court officials were female,
the possibility ... cannot be excluded completely," it said.

So I guess we can't totally dismiss the possibility that they were
gay leather fetishists, either.

No wonder many mainline churches in the UK are emptying out.
They sound more and more like a real-life version of Monty Python's view of the
insane upper-class.

[Cronos]

According to www.newadvent.com

No Father of the Church holds the Magi to have been kings. Tertullian ("Adv. Marcion.", III, xiii) says that they were wellnigh kings (fere reges), and so agrees with what we have concluded from non-Biblical evidence. The Church, indeed, in her liturgy, applies to the Magi the words: "The kings of Tharsis and the islands shall offer presents; the kings of the Arabians and of Saba shall bring him gifts: and all the kings of the earth shall adore him" (Psalm 71:10). But this use of the text in reference to them no more proves that they were kings than it traces their journey from Tharsis, Arabia, and Saba. As sometimes happens, a liturgical accommodation of a text has in time come to be looked upon by some as an authentic interpretation thereof. Neither were they magicians: the good meaning of magoi, though found nowhere else in the Bible, is demanded by the context of the second chapter of St. Matthew. These Magians can have been none other than members of the priestly caste already referred to. The religion of the Magi was fundamentally that of Zoroaster and forbade sorcery; their astrology and skill in interpreting dreams were occasions of their finding Christ. (See THEOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF THE AVESTA.)

The Gospel narrative omits to mention the number of the Magi, and there is no certain tradition in this matter. Some Fathers speak of three Magi; they are very likely influenced by the number of gifts. In the Orient, tradition favours twelve. Early Christian art is no consistent witness:

• a painting in the cemetery of Sts. Peter and Marcellinus shows two;
• one in the Lateran Museum, three;
• one in the cemetery of Domitilla, four;
• a vase in the Kircher Museum, eight (Marucchi, "Eléments d'archéologie chrétienne", Paris, 1899, I 197).

The names of the Magi are as uncertain as is their number. Among the Latins, from the seventh century, we find slight variants of the names, Gaspar, Melchior, and Balthasar; the Martyrology mentions St. Gaspar, on the first, St. Melchior, on the sixth, and St. Balthasar, on the eleventh of January (Acta SS., I, 8, 323, 664). The Syrians have Larvandad, Hormisdas, Gushnasaph, etc.; the Armenians, Kagba, Badadilma, etc. (Cf. Acta Sanctorum, May, I, 1780). Passing over the purely legendary notion that they represented the three families which are decended from Noah, it appears they all came from "the east" (Matt., ii, 1, 2, 9). East of Palestine, only ancient Media, Persia, Assyria, and Babylonia had a Magian priesthood at the time of the birth of Christ. From some such part of the Parthian Empire the Magi came. They probably crossed the Syrian Desert, lying between the Euphrates and Syria, reached either Haleb (Aleppo) or Tudmor (Palmyra), and journeyed on to Damascus and southward, by what is now the great Mecca route (darb elhaj, "the pilgrim's way"), keeping the Sea of Galilee and the Jordan to their west till they crossed the ford near Jericho. We have no tradition of the precise land meant by "the east". It is Babylon, according to St. Maximus (Homil. xviii in Epiphan.); and Theodotus of Ancyra (Homil. de Nativitate, I, x); Persia, according to Clement of Alexandria (Strom., I xv) and St. Cyril of Alexandria (In Is., xlix, 12); Aribia, according to St. Justin (Cont. Tryphon., lxxvii), Tertullian (Adv. Jud., ix), and St. Epiphanius (Expos. fidei, viii).