Word: wises
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Last year she had a chance to move up to a singing part. Another pastor retired, and Shields was in line to become a wise man. She declined. "I wouldn't give up my angel role," she says. The mother of three grown children, she thrives on the long walk up the center aisle, the infant in her arms. "I love holding the baby," who this year will be 5-month-old Emma Zintara, Shields says...
...based on forensic clues. There is no specific physical evidence for the key points of the story. There are the Christian testimonies, which begin with Paul in the 50s A.D. and are supported in part by a 1st century Roman reference to "Jesus, the so-called Christ," a "wise man" who "won over many of the Jews and also many of the Greeks," and who is described as crucified in accounts from the next century. Beyond such testimony, there are literary tools used to weigh plausibility. Were the Christian narratives written close after the events? Were there many talkative eyewitnesses...
Well, from where exactly in the Orient (which means simply "East") were they, anyway? Matthew's word Magi is a vague clue, since it can mean astronomers, wise men or magicians and was applied to people from all over. The gifts they bore--gold, frankincense and myrrh--hint at Arabia, since unrelated Bible stories describe camel trains of similar tribute emanating from Sheba and Midian, both on that peninsula. Their interest in stars suggests Babylon, famous for its astrologers. The happiest guess of all turned out to be the one made in the 4th century by the decorators...
...case, Matthew's wise men were a classic case of fish out of water. ("Like a meeting of Iranian ayatullahs in Nebraska," quips Theodore Jennings Jr. of the Chicago Theological Seminary.) This impression may have been no accident, since it expressed Matthew's growing frustration at the majority of fellow Jews who dismissed his messianic claims for Jesus and may have ostracized and persecuted some of his co-believers. Thus it was the Magi rather than Jews who followed the star to Jerusalem and innocently alerted Herod. In a dire foreshadowing of Christ's Passion, Matthew reports that rather than...
...wise men seem to have kept busy well into their golden years, at least according to a calendar of saints at the great cathedral in Cologne, Germany, where their alleged remains are housed: "Having undergone many trials and fatigues for the Gospel," it reads, they met one last time in Armenia. "Thereupon, after the celebration of Mass, they died. St. Melchior on Jan. 1, age 116; St. Balthasar on Jan. 6th, age 112; and St. Gaspar...