Word: magie
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Truth & Beauty. The Middle Ages depicted the Magi as three kings, and even gave them sonorous, Eastern-sounding names-Kaspar, Melchior and Balthasar. In fact, the "kings" are as imaginary as their names. The Magi were simply astrologer-priests, possibly from Babylon, and their number is uncertain; early paintings of the Christmas scene show anywhere from two to seven of them. Scholars are divided about the origin and meaning of the star that lured them to Bethlehem. Many critics dismiss Matthew's account of it as pure myth; Smit believes that the star actually was a major conjunction...
...critics conclude that some can be judged factual accounts - but others are clearly not to be taken literally as records of events in Jesus' life. Many form critics agree that the detail-laden narratives of Jesus' Passion are derived from eyewitness accounts. But the story of the Magi, and Matthew's account (27: 51-53) of the disturbances that took place in Jerusalem after Jesus' death, appear to be folk tales that were devised to impress the faithful with the magnitude of underlying events. Form criticism suggests that many sayings of Jesus were shaped...
Hippocrates once said that "a physician without a knowledge of astrology has no right to call himself a physician," and the Magi of St. Matthew's Gospel who followed the star to Bethlehem were astrologers. The Roman Catholic Church today condemns serious belief in astrology as a grave sin; but as a man of his time, the great St. Thomas Aquinas held that "the celestial bodies are the cause of all that takes place in the sublunar world." Among modern believers, the worst advertisement is Adolf Hitler, who had five astrologers charting a course for him. Perhaps the most...
...rattle before the doctor is called." Actually it is largely Wilson's aristocratic soft sell and impressive presence (he is 6 ft. 4 in. tall) that brought to Sotheby's such tasks as the record-breaking Goldschmidt collection sale in 1958 and Rubens' Adoration of the Magi, which in 1959 went for a record...
Though the Magi brought gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh to the Infant Jesus, the early church for centuries forbade or at least discouraged gift giving at Christmas; the Puritans, for example, banned both religious and secular Christmas celebrations as pagan in inspiration. Even today the seasonal exchange of gifts in many lands is made on Twelfth Night (when the Magi reached Bethlehem) or on New Year's Day. Still the early symbols-the pre-Christian gift giving, the evergreen as a mark of enduring life-became stubborn concomitants of the Christmas observance...