Who were the Magi?

The Magi

There is a story we all know
From millennia ago
About the night when the Good Lord was born,
When angels sang to shepherds poor
And from the east magi explored
To find him so to him gifts to adorn.

Most of us unwittingly
Have so assumed that there were three
Of these wise men the Bible calls “Magi”,
But in truth we do not know,
The Bible does not tell us so,
If three there were when it could have been five!

“Magi” is of course Latin
But no doubt has its origins
From “Magoi” which of course we know is Greek
That describes a most select
Particular and Persian sect
Of important people who were priests.

As a side if you like tricks
From it we get the word “Magic,
That is to say from Magoi comes magician!
But that’s enough, I won’t digress
The story has been embellished
Over the years by popular tradition...

By Century number three
The magi had apparently
Become known to everyone as kings!
By the Century number six
Names had also been affixed
To these kings of oriental spring -

Bithisarea was one
Gathaspa another one
Melichior the name of third,
But how these random names arose
Or came about, nobody knows
For in Matthew their names are never heard!

Some ancient traditions
Even place them in position
With the sons of none other than Noah,
For the Bible tells us that
Noah’s sons went and begat
The populations of all Terra Nova...

So I guess it was believed
And commonly received
That these kings of old they represented
The Kingdoms of all Africa
Europe and all of Asia
When to Christ their three gifts were presented.

But by the fourteenth century
What we know from history
Is that the names of these three kings had changed
To Gasper and Melchior
Balthasar, all three leaders
Similar with letters rearranged…

So what in fact we really know
About the Magi long ago
Is they were a priesthood of the Medes,
And it has indeed been found
That they had a most profound
Awareness of religion and creeds...

Darius who was called Great
Established them over the state
Religion of all his Persian Realm
And in actual fact they were
Advisors and counsellors
For many years to those who wore the crown.

Now we know from History
That Israel met with tragedy
And for some time we know the ancient Jews
Spent time in captivity
For decades temporarily
Relocated so to pay their dues.

And so the Good Book it does tell
About the man called Daniel
Who became one day the Magi’s Chief,
And so from him some scholars say
It could well have been conveyed
The prophecies of old Hebrew belief...

So by the time that Jesus came
The politics was not the same
Judah now kept underneath the thumb
By the Roman empire
That by their might had then acquired
Many lands of which Judah was one

But there was another might
The Parthians, a mighty blight
Of whom the ancient Persians were a part,
It was from them the Magi came
In search of the one whose name
Would inspire more than ten billion hearts.

When they came into the land
It must have scared the little man
Herod whom Augustus had made king,
Insulting him with open scorn
"Where is the baby who was BORN
To be King and lord of everything?"

When eventually they came
To the house in Bethlehem
They found the child in his mother’s arms
And gave to him gold for a king
Frankincense a priestly thing
And myrhh, an ointment used so to embalm.

Maybe it could be that you
Don't believe the tale is true
But there's one thing that can't be denied
For more than many centuries
The Western World especially
Has been graced with the joy of Yuletide...

By Kerin Gedge

Copyright 2013






Special thanks to Dr Chuck Missler for his article Who Were the Magi? Published on the Koinonia House web site.

Click HERE to search The Vocabuverse by Letter