Anyone familiar with the narratives about Christ’s birth is aware
that a star led certain magi to the newborn Jesus—details that are found
only in Matthew’s Gospel (Matt 2:1-12 versus Luke 2:1-21). Was this
star that appeared at Jesus’s birth a great conjunction, or was it some
other kind of astronomical occurrence such as a supernova or comet? A
close look at Matthew’s birth narrative indicates that the star seen by
the magi cannot be reconciled easily with any natural, astronomical
occurrence. First of all, it is by observing this star’s rising in the
sky that the magi gain the knowledge that they must find “the newborn
King of the Jews” (2:2) in Jerusalem where they travel from their
distant “Eastern lands” (2:1). Moreover, this same star later leads them
accurately from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, at which point the star finally
stops above the house of Mary and Joseph where the newborn Jesus is to
be found (2:9-11).
Because of the strangeness of this star, John Chrysostom and
commentators followed by him have surmised that this was really an angel
appearing as a star (Hom. Matt. 6). Nevertheless, pagans and
Jews of the AD first century did believe that astronomical events and
other heavenly signs defying natural conventions could signify the birth
of a great king, or function as a sign of some notable person’s death,
as well as signifying other events of cosmic importance. As a sign of
Jerusalem’s impending destruction by the Romans in AD 70, the Jewish
historian Josephus notes that there had been “a star resembling a sword
that appeared over the city, and a comet that continued for an entire
year” (J.W. 6.289-290). Josephus states that God “in many ways
pre-signifies to our human race the acts of salvation,” while adding
that many Jews at that time were misled by an “ambiguous oracle found in
the sacred Scriptures” that “one from their land will rule the
inhabited earth” (J.W. 6.310-313). Josephus is referring to the
Balaam oracle of Numbers 24:17 which many Jews believed predicted the
coming of the Jewish Messiah. Balaam was a pagan seer who was called by
the pagan King Balak of Moab to inflict a harmful curse on the
Israelites as they camped near Jericho before entering the Promised
Land. However, Balaam was unable to do this because God inspired him to
bless and utter prophecies about the people of Israel. Balaam says these
important words in his oracle: “A star will rise out of Jacob, and a
person will rise out of Israel” (LXX, ἀνατελεῖ ἄστρον ἐξ Ιακωβ, καὶ
ἀναστήσεται ἄνθρωπος ἐξ Ισραηλ, Num 24:17). Balaam’s words were
understood to be a prophecy about Israel’s Messiah by Jews of Josephus’s
day and earlier (such as by the Qumran Essenes in the Dead Sea
Scrolls). It should not be surprising, then, that the Balaam oracle and
its reference to a messianic star functions as a backdrop to Matthew’s
presentation of the magi, as well as contributing to the astronomical,
indeed cosmic, significance of Jesus’s birth as God’s Messiah.
In Matthew’s Gospel, the magi are referred to in Greek as μάγοι (magoi).
In antiquity, magi is a general term that can refer to astrologers,
seers, soothsayers, dream interpreters, and magicians that used various
methods of divination to predict the future. Balaam himself is referred
to positively as a μάγος (magos) by Philo of Alexandria (Mos. 1, 276), while Eusebius of Caesarea refers to the magi in Matthew’s Gospel as “Balaam’s successors” (Dem. ev.
9.1). The specialized knowledge of such seers and astrologers has
contributed to the magi of Matthew’s Gospel being referred to as “wise
men,” a translation which in my view miscasts the presentation of the
magi in Jesus’s birth narrative. Moreover, references in popular
Christmas carols to “three kings” further obscures the magi’s role in
Matthew’s Gospel since they are not presented as kings, and the reader
is never told that they are three in number, but only that the magi
offered three gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Rather, early
Christian art has portrayed two, three, four, and eight magi, while the
Syriac tradition has suggested that there were twelve magi present at
Jesus’ birth. Although the term μάγος (magos) can be used
pejoratively at other places in the Greek New Testament to mean
“magician” (e.g. Acts 13:6-11), in Matthew’s birth narrative the magi
are portrayed in an exclusively positive light. The magi in Matthew’s
birth narrative are pagan astrologers (i.e. Gentiles) who use their
specialized religious knowledge to approach Jesus the Messiah. However,
their religious knowledge is limited: it does not allow them to make it
all the way to Jesus. For this to occur, these Gentiles need the help of
the Hebrew Scriptures. It is God’s revelation in the Hebrew Scriptures
that informs the magi more precisely that the one to be born in
Bethlehem is not only the King of the Jews, but the world’s Messiah (the
Christ, ὁ χριστὸς, Matt 2:4). There is irony in Matthew’s narrative as
King Herod the Great and certain Jewish religious authorities, having
the benefit of the Hebrew Scriptures, do not travel to Bethlehem to find
the newborn Messiah. Rather, Herod conspires to kill the newborn
Christ, but he will not find him (2:13-23), whereas the Gentile magi are
led by a star to find Christ and worship him. Moreover, Matthew has
skillfully used this plot to kill Jesus as a proleptic passion
narrative, foreshadowing the plot by certain Jewish religious
authorities at the end of Jesus’s life who conspire to have Jesus
crucified. So, too, the magi who see the cosmic sign of the star at
Jesus’s birth foreshadow certain Gentiles coming to worship Jesus after
his death, fulfilled by a group of Gentile Roman soldiers who see the
cosmic sign of an earthquake at the crucifixion and confess that Jesus
truly was the Son of God (27:54). These threads reach their dramatic
conclusion at the end of Matthew’s Gospel when Jesus appears to the
eleven disciples after his resurrection, commanding them to “make
disciples of all nations” (i.e. Jews and Gentiles) while also promising
to be with his followers until the end of the age (28:16-20).
* John Fotopoulos, "Christmas’s Great Conjunction,"
publicorthodoxy.org, December 24, 2020.
