Question:
Taking advantage of your kindness, I would like to ask you something else: who were the Wise Men, and where did their names (Melchior, Gaspar and Balthasar) come from, if they do not appear in the Gospels? Many thanks for everything. Best regards. J.M.R.
Answer:
Dear friend:
The term “magi” (magoi) that appears in Mt 2:1 refers to what in antiquity were called “wise men”; in this case they were wise men who came “from the East” (Mt 2:1), which may be a reference to Arabia, Mesopotamia, or some place farther east of Palestine. The fact that they were guided by a star (2:2) suggests that they had been trained in astrology or in the science of navigation and of reckoning time by means of the configurations of the stars.
This is reinforced by the research carried out by G. Messina, according to which the word “magus” seems to derive from the Persian form “maga,” gift, which is the revelation of the Wise One of the Lord (Magda) first announced to Zoroaster. And hence also the names “magu” and “mogu”: partakers of the gift. A magus, then, comes to mean a disciple of Zoroaster.
Apart from a tribe of Media so named, the magi appear, in their earliest period, as a priestly caste of Media and Persia. They also devoted themselves to the study of wisdom. Strabo says that they were “zealous observers of justice and virtue.” And Cicero says that they are “the class of wise men and teachers in Persia.”
It was Origen who first proposed that the magi were three, on account of the three gifts offered to the Child (cf. Mt 2:11).
Before the sixth century no author expressly states that they were kings, except perhaps Tertullian, who suggested that they were “almost kings” (“fere reges”: cf. Adv. Jud., 9 and Adv. Marc., III.13), and this became popular through interpreting in this way the reference to Psalm 72:10 (the kings of the earth shall adore him and offer him their gifts), which seems to be implicit in Saint Matthew’s account. Art has presented them as kings since as early as the eighth century, whereas in the paintings of the catacombs of Saint Priscilla, from the beginning of the second century to the fourth, it depicts them only as Persian nobles.
The New Testament is silent about their number and their alleged royalty. From the eighth century onward they would receive names, with some variations (the first were Bithisarea, Melchior and Gathaspa). The names common today, Gaspar, Melchior and Balthasar, were given to them in the ninth century by the historian Agnello, in his work “Pontificalis Ecclesiae Ravennatis.” By the Middle Ages they were even venerated as saints. And the scene of the Magi adoring the Child Jesus also became a favorite theme in the art of bas-reliefs, miniatures and stained glass.
Author: Fr. Miguel Ángel Fuentes, I.V.E.
Source: El Teólogo responde
