The Magi
Who They Were, How They’ve Been Remembered, and Why They Still Fascinate
By Eric Vanden Eykel
Fortress Press, 218 pages, $28
Throughout Christmastide one can find statues of the three Magi making long journeys from the back of church naves toward nativity scenes. Few home nativity sets are complete without some wise men to place amid the shepherds, donkey, lambs, and Holy Family.
Depictions of these travelers follow a set of conventions that mark them as the Magi of Matthew 2:1-12, even though these artistic details come less from the gospel than from the intervening traditions that have accrued around these figures. There are three of them, wearing pointed hats or turbans, and one of them is often depicted as African in origin. Further legend ascribes names to them: Caspar (or Gaspard), Melchior, and Balthasar. Matthew never describes their number, their dress, or their names, only referring to them as magoi, the plural of the Greek magos, from which our modern word for “magic” derives, who have come “from the East” (2:1).
This book by Eric Vanden Eykel, associate professor of religion and the Forrest S. Williams Teaching Chair in Humanities at Ferrum College in Virginia, highlights key features of Matthew’s narrative of the Magi, traces the development of their story in early and medieval tales based on the biblical story, and surveys patristic and modern references to this great tradition.
Vanden Eykel begins by separating Matthew’s biblical account from its later developments. He helpfully provides a historical consideration of the varied associations Matthew’s term magoi had for first-century readers. He surveys the depiction of magoi such as Simon Magus and Elymas Bar Jesus in the Acts of the Apostles, Babylonian dream-interpreting magoi in Daniel, and priests, diviners, and courtesans who occasionally become kings in Philo, Josephus, Strabo, Xenophon, and Herodotus. Rather than drawing a one-to-one connection between any of these literary parallels, Vanden Eykel correlates them with Matthew’s account of the magoi, following a star, “from the East,” offering sacrificial gifts to do honor to one they have determined through their divination to be “king of the Jews” (Matt 2:2). He highlights the connotations Matthew’s use of the term magoi ascribes to Jesus as true king, in contrast to Herod.
This survey of contextual possibilities for Matthew’s use of magoi sets the stage for the picture Vanden Eykel constructs of the early and later developments of the tradition in the second-century Protoevangelium of James, the seventh-century Latin Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, the sixth-century Armenian Gospel of the Infancy, and the eighth-century Syriac Revelation of the Magi. Discussions of the Magi in Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr, Ephrem the Syrian’s Hymns on the Nativity, John Chrysostom’s Homilies on Matthew, and other later patristic texts correspond with the apocryphal narrative developments of this tradition, developing the characters of the Magi as “pagan” astrologers who are converted and abandon their divination practices after their encounter with Jesus. In the process, Vanden Eykel highlights elements of anti-Jewish discourse in the developments of this tradition, and he makes timely observations about how the depiction of one of the magoi as African from the 14th century onward corresponded to the growth of the slave trade.
The final chapter considers modern retellings of the story of the Magi, including O. Henry’s Gift of the Magi, Christopher Moore’s novel Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal, and Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor’s more traditional rendering of the story in her popular 2018 children’s book Home by Another Way: A Christmas Story. These modern adaptations draw out many of the themes Vanden Eykel presents earlier in the book in ways that show the enduring value of the tradition and its development in our era.
This book would be an excellent, accessible resource for preachers and catechists wanting to press more deeply into the aspects of this interesting and important Christian story as they relate to the Bible, the development of postbiblical traditions, and the ways cultural dynamics shape how people read and interpret the Bible in different eras. For anyone interested in the development of Christian traditions, or the role of Bible, legend, art, and story in the Christian faith, Vanden Eykel’s The Magi would be stimulating reading.
The Rev. Dr. Paul D. Wheatley is assistant professor of New Testament at Nashotah House Theological Seminary.