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Keryg 2021: Calling the Magi 'Pagans'? Matthew 2:1-12
Anglican Brat
Shipmate
I recently saw a meme that said that the Magi were pagans who worshipped Christ.
Pagans? I thought they were Zoroastrians and therefore monotheists, or is pagan defined as anyone other than Jewish?
Pagans? I thought they were Zoroastrians and therefore monotheists, or is pagan defined as anyone other than Jewish?
Comments
And yes, as the magi were (presumably) Zoroastrians and therefore monotheistic, the concept of “paganism” that developed in the church later would not seem to apply, anachronistic or not.
So it's anachronistic only in the modern sense of the word.
As I understand it, academics debate whether Zoroastrianism is properly described as monotheistic, dualistic or pantheistic. But my knowledge may not cover much more than the nail of mt’s thumb.
I have among my friends both folk who define themselves as pagan and other who specifically identify as heathen. I can't say I quite understand the distinction but it seems important.
Latin and Germanic basically. But etymology is not meaning.
Some, sure, but heathen friends of mine get incandescent at the appropriation of Norse symbols by Nazis, and several of my pagan friends have different pantheons (e.g. Greek) with which they frame their relationship with the divine.
Yes. I was making a joke. Not all of mine are funny, I know.
True, but that one was quite clever and I had appreciated it!
Thank you.
Im guessing the context, but I imagine that the meme was relying on them being neither Jewish nor proto-Christians?
(Though of course from the text we don't know that they were not. I wouldn't be surprised if there's some pious fiction that has the baby Jesus teaching them the Nicene creed, and there are some options that are more believable).
In that case the word pagan is doing work that gentile isn't (although the combination of Jewish shepherds and gentile magi from the start would also be foreshadowing).
And I'm not sure of an easy word to take its place. Given the derogatory etymology mentioned for it the fact that the modern definition for paganism excludes Zoroastrianism probably relates more to them being forgotten about.
Scripture is silent as to what religion the Magi came from, or even whether they all came from the same one. It strikes me that the significant point as far as scripture is concerned is where they came to, not where they came from, apart from its being somewhere in comparative religion terms 'outside'.
Before I retired, there was somebody I worked with who called themselves a pagan. I don't really know enough about what that constituted beyond that they mainly worshipped 'the goddess'. Whether that was monotheism but with a different god, or whether they were quite content that other pagans could worship different gods, I don't know. They were vegetarian. So I'm pretty sure it didn't involve sacrificing animals. They hadn't been brought up as a pagan. They had chosen to be one as an adult.
Is that person a pagan or a heathen, or is there no difference?
To me that looks like they are both fuzzy, roughly equivalent terms. And I think the actual answer to the question is going to rely on Modern English dictionary details (and not be as exciting as the pursuit).
I guess one obvious related question would be to ask what did the various pagan groups call themselves. I guess it makes sense that polytheists and "non-standard" don't really have a well defined self-identity, you can focus on who you pay special attention to.
A slightly more Kergy spin might be to ask what the bible calls the various other religions (if at all)?
Anyhow working out from the text
Matthew 2, NIV and Transliterated?*
As mentioned there is only Magi and from Nick's post relates this and other clues to what they actually believed (regardless of how we would categorize it in modern terms).
There's also a Simon Magus. Which (if he isn't Zorosastrian) might make it harder to wrap the Magi up as being Zoroastrian. But I can't see any clue pointing in another direction?
*I'm not sure what the reliability and conventions of the version are. But if we're looking for the magic words (pun intended), it seems the easiest way of highlighting them.
That idea reminds me of Mark where the first human to acknowledge Jesus as the Son of God is a Roman centurion.
I believe we've had some self-identified pagans posting on the Ship. Not sure if they're still on board, but until they decide to weigh in, I will say that, based on my experience, yes, pagans are quite tolerant on religious matters, and would probably accept the worship of any variety of pagan gods, with the only stipulation being maybe that they disliked belief-systems that posited mankind as outside of nature, lording it over the rest of creation.
I also know that some feminists are disdainful of goddess-centred spirituality, finding it to be just the flip-side of the old patriarchal stereotypes, eg. saying that nature is our loving mother implies that cities are prostitutes, with the latter having a negative connotation(this from a classroom discussion on the poet Gary Snyder).
I have in my life resolutely failed to fit into any archetypal category, but I can see how this sort of thing might be helpful for some people. From what I can tell, most contemporary pagans are not theists in the sense of believing in a god as an objective reality.
I said earlier that you had both groups (shepherds and magi) but of course one is Matthew one Luke.
Somewhere down the line it must have been a deliberate choice which visit was focused on. Any indication why? I think of Matthew as being the more Jewish / king one (so in some ways it fits in other ways it seems backwards)
Obviously the Magi visit is coupled with Herod and Bethlehem. And is also (probably) set later than the birth narrative.
Personally I'd say two years includes Herod's margin for caution (so on that basis e.g.18 months seems more likely)
It's foreshadowing that one can derive from various Christmas pageants, but not from the Gospel accounts. As you mentioned, Matthew has magi but no shepherds while Luke has shepherds but no magi. The idea that both authors knew both versions of the nativity story but chose to focus on different aspects seems like the kind of desperate attempt at harmonization common among modern readers of a literalist or inerrantist mode.
My longer take on the details are in a different thread if anyone is interested.
Thanks for that summary.
I find the modern melding of the different nativity stories and need for the accounts to be factually true as well as metaphorically true misses the different messages that the gospel authors are giving to their intended audiences. So their contribution to their overall themes in their gospels is missed as the gospels are read as just a collection of separate events.
"desperate attempt".
Have you never heard of narrative framing?
Sheesh, it's as if you never told different accounts of a major event in your own life to different audiences before.
My husband, for example, has at least as many versions of "How I survived the Vietnam War and got to America" as he has audiences, and the darkness of the account is heavily influenced by the age of the listeners and the occasion of the storytelling. Quite a few incidents are told to no one, though I hear about them (overhear them, sometimes) in the depths of a very bad night.
Though it is interesting that the Author chose Zoroastrian Gentiles, when it would surely have been more straightforward to choose some of the Roman or Greek Gentiles who must have been hanging round the area.
I'm being deliberately ambiguous about 'the Author': I tend to the view that Matthew has mythical or legendary elements, in which case it is Matthew who is making a narrative choice to include Zoroastrians rather than Romans, and since it would be easier just to say 'and there were some legionaries tending their pila in the garrison nearby', he must have had some reason for making the story more complex than it needs to be. But I might be wrong and it all happen historically as described, in which case it is God who has decided to send Caspar, Balthazar and Melchior on a long journey, rather than just knocking at the door of the centurion down the road - and that must mean something too.
The writer put in some (admittedly not that sophisticated) research and effort into giving his 'magi' verisimilitude. In which case there's some mildly interesting reason for the choice .
Or the features that Matthew gives were sufficiently common that the Zoroastrian connection is dubious.
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And from the 'it happened' side. You have something similar as you say with God's choice.
One speculation I've seen somewhere (possibly the ship) was that they were other 'Daniels' educational/spiritual descendents. People educated in Persian thinking but also with some connections to Jerusalem.
That would give some motivation for an author to chose them or God to call them.
But does make a lot of assumptions.
I suppose one thing supporting its plausibility is that the list of nations at Pentecost (acts 2) also includes Parthians, Medes and Elemites hearing in their own tongue.
This raises a question about Greek syntax which I am not qualified to answer. I won't bother to give the Greek sentence. The key words are, in English, 'we', 'star', and 'east''.
The question is whether 'in the 'east' refers to 'we' or 'star'. I know some Greek grammar and vocabulary, but not much about syntax.
Also fwiw, the magi are identified as being “from the East” in the previous verse.
I don't go with the idea that there is one person, as per your husband, who is writing the separate accounts/prologues of Matthew and Luke (or the John account, or the not-account of Mark, or the Revelation account.)
It's more like Person A saying "I've got a story about a person who in so many ways is like stories of heroes of old, and they will recognise that in the telling." And Person B saying "I can do that as well, but my people relate more to a storyline of different heroes so I am going to frame it in terms that will get through to them."
Acts 2 has Which always surprises me with how north east it goes. But doesnt really tell us much about who they chatted to and doesnt really take us beyond Persia (though it's interesting that Judea is just thrown in the middle.)
I can't think of an obvious reference beyond that (and anything Daniel based)
Your point about knowledge about the north-east rather than the east generally is well made. The territories you refer to are those covered by the Persian Empire in its various forms.
Interesting that the churches you mention as established in the NE seem to have lasted well - as did those in Armenia and Georgia.
Can we even be certain of that? Rumours of a southern continent were circulating in the Roman period, and who knows what passed from a Torres Strait Islander to an Indonesian fisherman to an Indian merchant and so on until at least the idea was known.
Depends on who you're talking about. If you were an educated Jew in the first century you might have read Herodotus (who had much to say about the magi, both as one of the tribes of Medes and as a religious caste for the Persians) or Strabo. Most historical or geographical scholarly works of the time also doubled as sociological treatises on the people who lived in those places described. India seems to be as far east as these scholarly works are willing to describe, suggesting that as the limit of certain knowledge in that direction. The area north of the Black Sea and into the Caucuses also seems known, though better to Strabo than to Herodotus.
Usually quite deliberately. The Romans didn't want legions that would get bogged down by taking sides in local political squabbles, which would be a risk if you stationed auxiliaries in their native lands. This point was reinforced by the revolt of some Batavian legions who were stationed near their homeland and got caught up in a general Germanic uprising. (This was around the same time as the Great Revolt in Judea.)
After 20-25 years in the army auxiliaries were very Romanized and very often settled down wherever they mustered out of the army. From a Roman perspective this was very useful as it planted a whole bunch of culturally Roman colonies throughout the Empire.
It is odd that Judea gets thrown into the middle. I suppose maybe Luke was just scribbling down the list, as one does, and "oops: here" hit him at just that point.
Thank you, that's right! Terrible that I could not recall the name of a regular poster.
My fault, I should have been less imprecise. I meant something along the lines of those around me in the marketplace this morning. Probably by a century or so later, there would have been greater knowledge of the areas north after the establishment of Christian communities across northern Persia, in Armenia and perhaps in Afghanistan.
Again, that also depends on who you include as a first century Jew. There were significant Jewish populations within the Persian empire. Jews within Persia probably had as good an idea (if not better) about what lay beyond their country's northern and eastern borders as any other Persian subject.
This line of thinking seems to spring from the idea that Jews lived only within Judea in the first century and are only of historical interest insofar as they relate to Christianity. This leads to situations where the existence of the Iraqi Jews (for example) is ignored as an irrelevancy.