The [Three] [Wise Men] With Eric Vanden Eykel

Dan Beecher All we have left is Orient. We know that they were from the East, right? You're not taking that away from us, are you?

Dan McClellan That's not a great word to use there, so- Not, yeah.

Dan Beecher I didn't write the song, Dan.

Dan McClellan Hey, everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

Dan Beecher And I'm Dan Beecher.

Dan McClellan And you are listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion and combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How goes the combat, Dan?

Dan Beecher Man, we're out there. It's the most wonderful time of the year, or maybe when this airs, it's a little bit after- ... the most wonderful time of the year.

Dan McClellan We're headed- Well, it depends on your proclivities, if you're a Western Christian or an Eastern Christian.

Dan Beecher Sometimes- Oh, that's true ...

Dan McClellan some of those people like to hold things off for a little bit, but.

Dan Beecher That's true. There are dating questions at play, but that's not what today's episode is about. We'll probably have to get to that at some point.

Dan McClellan Yeah, at some point. They're busting down the door about that.

Dan Beecher But today we've got a fun guest. Dan, do you want to tell us who we have, who our mystery person is on today's show? Absolutely.

Dan McClellan Today, we're going to be talking with a friend of mine, Eric Vanden Eykel. He is associate professor of religion and also the Forrest S. Williams Teaching Chair in the Humanities at Ferrum College, just south of Roanoke, Virginia. So welcome to the show, Eric. How are you doing today?

Eric Vanden Eykel I am doing great. Thanks for having me on.

Dan McClellan Well, thank you for your time. Thank you for being here. We appreciate it. And what are we talking about today, Eric? Is it this book right here, The Magi?

Eric Vanden Eykel It is that beautiful blue book on the Magi, yeah. Yeah, that- This is a book, yeah.

Dan McClellan Go ahead.

Eric Vanden Eykel But it's a book that I published last year on the mysterious visitors in the Gospel of Matthew.

Dan Beecher I don't know what's so mysterious. I think we all know the story. Obviously, three dudes show up, they follow a star, they go, they visit, they're wearing crazy clothing. Mm-hmm. And they each have a single gift to give, and then they go home. Yeah. What's hard about this?

Dan McClellan Bingo bongo, you have a savior. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Eric Vanden Eykel They're right there on the cover, right? They've even- Right. You forgot the bit about their crowns, though, I think. Yeah. Yeah. You know?

Dan Beecher It's because they're kings. We know that they are kings. Nice and embossed, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Eric Vanden Eykel No, it's a beautiful cover, yeah. So I think that for a...

Dan Beecher This isn't a large part of the Bible. It's in one gospel. We're not even talking about four chapters or whatever. What are we talking about here?

Eric Vanden Eykel No, we're talking about 12 verses, and yeah, only in Matthew, and only very briefly. And the story is so short and so lacking in detail, right? And so all of the hymns and the iconography and everything that kind of develops around these characters, when people go back and reread the story, they're often surprised at how little there actually is there. Right. Because there's just nothing. There's hardly any detail at all.

Dan McClellan And we're going to talk a little bit more about this later, but there's an awful lot that has accreted to the tradition over the centuries. And a lot of what we, when we picture it in our heads, kind of like the way we picture Moses, sometimes it's Whitney Houston and it's the Prince of Egypt that is actually front and center in our imagination and the way we recreate these stories. With the Magi, or Magi if you're nasty, there are other traditions that are influencing how we think about that. I'm looking forward to talking about some of these things, and particularly some of the apocryphal tales that influence our understanding- Really interesting, yeah ... of the story. Yeah.

Dan Beecher You mentioned the different pronunciations. When I was looking, I sort of looked into this in a very non-academic way a few years ago, and I saw the word M-A-G-U-S used as sort of like a transliteration or something of the Greek or whatever. And so now, for me, for the rest of my life, in my mind, I'm going to think of the three Magoos. I don't think that's correct, but that's how I prefer to think of them.

Dan McClellan Well, the three wise guys is another way that- Mm-hmm.

Eric Vanden Eykel That's right, yeah ...

Dan McClellan some people refer to them.

Dan Beecher But maybe we should start with that word because there's a Greek word here, and it doesn't seem to be easy to know what that Greek word means. What are we talking about, Eric?

Eric Vanden Eykel Yeah, so the Greek word that Matthew uses is "magoi," and this is the plural form of "magos," which is what you encountered as the sort of Anglicized magus. So magos, though, when we're looking at this word in Greek, the easiest way to kind of translate it woodenly would be just to say something like magic or magician or something like that. But just like other titles today have these kind of connotations, like magician today has, depending on who you are and how you feel about magic, a magician could be somebody who is a showman or somebody who's kind of talented at sleight of hand and these sorts of things, or a magician could be someone completely negative. And so, when we're talking about kind of understanding what this word means- Trying to avoid those sorts of loaded words I think are helpful. But also in the ancient world, the same kind of thing goes. In the ancient world, there are some people who view magoi very positively, and then there are some people who view them as charlatans. And you see this in the New Testament. You see in Matthew, there's these magoi who don't seem evil or nefarious or anything like that. But then you go a couple books later in the Book of Acts, and they're negative characters. But anyway, getting back to this question, how do we translate this? There's been a number of different attempts. So there's some translations that use, they follow the King James and say, "Wise men." And so emphasizing the wisdom of these characters rather than their, if we could say, their magicalness, perhaps. But then there's also, I believe it's the NIV if I'm remembering correctly, that calls them astrologers. Which is probably a bit of a stretch, calls them that because of their interest in the star. I mean- But no trans-- Yeah.

Dan Beecher We know that they're interested in at least one star. Right. That's the thing.

Eric Vanden Eykel But the really funny thing is that in other ancient literature that you survey and you look at magoi in this ancient literature, one of the things that they just aren't often associated with is astronomy. They're not really all that interested. I mean, they are, but that's not primarily what magoi in ancient literature do. And they do a lot of different things. They're sort of religious figures, they're advisory figures. So there's the wisdom, there's also the kind of priestly function. So yeah, how do you translate it? I took the easy route in this book, and I just said, "Let's not. Let's just keep them as magoi." Translate them. Yeah. And let's just say that word's complicated, and we're going to embrace the strangeness. We're going to punt. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. That's a little translator tip. This word is untranslatable. Yeah. It kind of is. Yeah.

Dan McClellan And that's something you find a lot in the Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. It's like, why are they transliterating stuff all over the place? They're punting an awful lot. Right. So.

Dan Beecher Well, and to some extent, because it's such a short part of this book, there's no hints to really help you to get you any further than where you just said you are. You know what I mean? There's nothing about these guys. We don't know anything about these guys. No.

Eric Vanden Eykel I mean, all we know is, what Matthew tells us is that there's more than one. He uses the plural, so we know there's more than one. He never says three, he just says three gifts. Does he imagine three? Yes, probably. It doesn't matter, though. But where do they come from? They come from this kind of big area, the East. Mm-hmm. Which is not terribly helpful. And then they tell the people in Jerusalem, they say, "We're looking for the one born King of the Judeans, and we want to come and bow before him." That's it, though. We don't have any clues from Matthew of who he's imagining these specific visitors to be. Yeah.

Dan McClellan Now, in the Hebrew Bible, we've got a lot of references to things that are going on in the East, and they're generally pretty negative things. It's kind of a generic reference to those weirdos over there. Probably has to do with Persian things that are going on. In the late first century CE, when Matthew is being composed, how much is the scriptural heritage playing a role in what we think Matthew is getting at? Are we trying to evoke that imagery, those concepts of these mysterious people in the East who read the stars and cut open sheep and feel their livers? Or is it an independent kind of set of motifs that Matthew is appealing to here? Do you have a thought on that?

Eric Vanden Eykel Oh, I have lots of thoughts on that.

Dan McClellan Oh, excellent. Why don't you talk for the rest of the show then? Right.

Eric Vanden Eykel No, obviously I think Matthew is probably aware of this heritage and this kind of baggage that that location has, but I think there's sort of a maybe yes, maybe no. So there certainly has been in the past interpretations of Matthew, and these are very early interpretations, that say that when Matthew has these magoi visiting Jerusalem and Bethlehem, that they might be leaving that wicked and strange and mysterious place to sort of come to Jesus. So the kind of early impulse to kind of emphasize the conversion of the magoi. They are enslaved to these demonic forces in the East, and they're coming to be liberated by Jesus or whatever. So that's one interpretation. And so if that is the interpretation you have, which is actually not the interpretation I have, but if it is the interpretation that you have, then I suppose yes, Matthew is sort of participating in that. The East is the sort of negative location. My read of Matthew, though, is that he is more kind of using the East as still a strange and mysterious place, but almost in an alluring and sort of titillating way. It's the kind of- Exoticizing them ... fascination. Yeah, the fascination with the East and the kind of place- Okay ... where all of these ancient religious practices are, and so I think more kind of tapping into the East as a source of mystery, intrigue. ... power even, and these are the people who are sort of coming from the east to pay homage to the new king. So I think Matthew is tapping into it, yes, as a mysterious place, but as a mysterious place ultimately in a good way. Yeah.

Dan Beecher Do you think, for those of us who don't have a lot of background in this, contemporaneously to the author of Matthew, how would people have registered this? When we say the east, are we going to Iran, that area, to that Persia? Is this Zoroastrianism? Who are these people to the contemporaries of the time? Do we have a sense of that? Yeah.

Eric Vanden Eykel I imagine this, probably the majority of readers in this time period, imagining this probably as sort of Persia, that kind of area. But then also there's plenty of interpreters who take the east to mean even a land beyond Persia, the sort of mythical ends of the world or things like this. But yeah, I think just in terms of geographically, east indicating Persia. Yeah.

Dan Beecher We're not talking about India or China or- No, I don't think so.

Eric Vanden Eykel Yeah, and I think part of the key to this is that in a lot of Greco-Roman literature, magoi are a cast of priests in Persia. Okay.

Dan McClellan And this cast of priests, we know from a lot of literature and a lot of curricula and things that we've found that they went through extensive training to be- Yes ... filled in on the ways that the physical world manifests the will and things of the gods. I remember as an undergraduate reading all these things, if you see this, unfavorable. This, that, and the other, favorable. This, unfavorable. It's just lists of things followed by favorable or unfavorable. But I've always thought of this juxtaposition of the magoi and Herod, who's like, "Huh? What? What's going on?" as kind of saying this is so written into the very fabric of our existence that foreigners can read it. It's legible to them, and they come and say, "We've seen the star. The King of the Jews is here." And Herod's like, "Oh, I missed this." And I see it as kind of contrasting how the foreigners are better informed about this kind of thing than our own king. And is there any sense that what's going on here is we're trying to portray Jesus' birth as just something that anybody paying attention could not fail to miss, that this is something written in the very fabric of the universe? Well, yeah.

Eric Vanden Eykel I mean, the whole the magoi are clued in and Herod isn't, that becomes a very problematic dynamic in later interpretations of the story. But I don't know if what Matthew is saying is that this is so sort of self-evident that anyone's paying attention will actually see it, because he doesn't have people coming from the east, he has magoi coming from the east. Yeah. And as you said, these are highly trained religious professionals, probably, or at least that's the connotation that they have in the ancient world. And so really the whole point is it isn't the case that anyone can tell what's going on here. It's the case that these people, for whatever reason, can, and they're the ones who are paying attention to such things. Now why they're paying attention to those things, who knows? What in the world is the whole star? What is the star? Is it some kind of unusually bright thing that really, really stands out? Well, I mean, the point of the story seems to be that it isn't, right? It's something that they can see the significance in, but not everyone can.

Dan Beecher Yeah, it does seem like they are, A, privy to information that other people don't seem to have, and B, it seems to be more, I don't know. In my reading, it seems to be more a point of interest for them than it is any... Because as soon as they come and drop off their gifts, they're out. They leave. They don't join up. You know what I mean? Right. They don't stick around. They overtly go away. Mm-hmm.

Eric Vanden Eykel Yeah, and they leave as quickly as they get there, right? They go to the wrong place first, because the star tells them, or they interpret it as the King of the Judeans has just been born. And so they go to Jerusalem because that's the obvious place- Yeah ... where you would find the King of the Judeans. It's like saying, well, it's not the same as going to say something about the president or whatever. But if you walked outside and saw some star and the star told you, "Go and find the president of the United States," the most obvious place to go would be Washington, D.C., right? If I went to Richmond, that doesn't make any sense. And so yeah, they go to that wrong place, but then the star sort of appears and then leads them to the right place and to Bethlehem. But yeah, they get there, they give their gifts. I mean, the only other detail in terms of how long they were there is that apparently they were there long enough to go to sleep, because they had a dream. Yeah. Right. And then they were like, "Well, we need to go back by another way." But yeah, they don't camp out and get an apartment. Yeah. They do what they came to do, which they came to give their gifts and pay tribute to the king, and then they leave. They go home.

Dan McClellan So, two questions about them showing up. One, a lot of folks tend to think that it got kind of crowded around the manger on the night when Jesus was born, but this is something that's happening a little bit later. And to what degree do you think they're kind of functioning as a bit of a MacGuffin to kind of inform Herod that his challenger has been born so that he can go and do what Herod's got to do to kind of fulfill his role in this whole narrative? Are those fair questions?

Eric Vanden Eykel So, let me make sure I'm understanding your question. So the question being sort of are these guys sort of there to facilitate Herod's tyrannical, because Matthew's obviously trying to tell the story of Jesus' birth through kind of alluding to the story of Moses' birth. Mm-hmm. Like the slaughter of the innocents and all of this kind of stuff. Right. I think it's intriguing to kind of consider that possibility that that's what they are doing here. But I also think that the story and the connotations that that word magoi carries with it makes it a little bit, I guess my response would be if that's Matthew's goal, is that they are sort of facilitating this thing that Herod's doing, then Matthew has over-told the story, if that makes sense. Yeah. It's almost like if you had said, I had a student one time who made the suggestion when I was asking them, so we were talking about the flood stories in Genesis. It's like, "Well, so what's the point of this story?" Right? Like, "Why does this story exist? What's the meaning?" And they were trying to bring in vocabulary from earlier in the class, and so they said, "Is the flood story an etiology for the rainbow?" And it's like, well and lest anyone think that I'm student-shaming here, I'm absolutely not. It's a brilliant suggestion, right? Is it an etiology for the rainbow? Does it tell us where the rainbow comes from? And I sort of paused for a second and I thought, well, maybe, but that's an awfully violent and complicated story to explain the rainbow. Yeah. And so I would think that they tend to fit in with the story of Herod being Herod, right? Being the sort of that tyrant. But if that's their only function or even their primary function, I think that Matthew has oversold and over-told that story. Okay.

Dan McClellan And then, do we have an idea about the time after Jesus' birth that they show up? How many days, months, years are we talking about? Yeah.

Eric Vanden Eykel So I think that's a question that I think comes from attempts to read Matthew and Luke together, right? Because part of the kind of harmonizing impulse of reading Matthew and Luke together, these very different birth stories is Luke tells about the story of Jesus' birth, and then Matthew sort of imagines the magoi being there a couple of years later because of the reference to the two years old and whatever. And I think that's certainly possible that Matthew is imagining these visitors as coming to see Jesus after he's been alive for a while. But also I just don't really think he gives us enough clues. I just think he's sort of imagining them as kind of, yeah, just sort of showing up. And so later stories kind of try to answer this question, right? Like how much later did they come? And so some will say, "Well, the star appeared when Jesus was born, and then they set out, and they took a couple months or whatever to get there." And then others say, like, "The star appeared a year in advance or whatever, so that they arrived right when the birth had just happened." But yeah, it's a question, the timeline is a question that doesn't really seem to have a firm answer in Matthew.

Dan Beecher Remind me which of the gospels the drummer boy is in. That's Luke, right? I'm just trying to piece it all together. Oh, yeah.

Dan McClellan That's the gospel of Bing Crosby and- It's pa-rum-pum-pum-pum chapter two.

Eric Vanden Eykel Such a strange, the drummer boy has always stuck out to me as like, really? That's the...

Dan Beecher It's kind of an inane- Well, as we all know, when someone's just given birth, the thing that they really want is a drum solo.

Eric Vanden Eykel Yeah, a snare.

Dan Beecher I think that's the thing we're all hoping for in those quiet moments in a manger. Yes.

Eric Vanden Eykel What every woman wants.

Dan Beecher But speaking of sort of when we think about all of these stories, we do mesh them together. Every grandma has a crèche, a nativity scene, and there's Joseph and Mary, and Jesus in the manger, and then there's all of these other characters. There's angels and shepherds and various critters, and then there's these three dudes. Mm-hmm. Maybe you can talk to us because now we do, Dan, you alluded to it before. We've got names for these guys. We've got a whole bunch of different backstories and whatever. Where does all of that come from? Because I read those 12 verses in Matthew, and Balthazar or whatever doesn't come up, or whatever the names are. I don't- Yeah. No, that's the thing.

Eric Vanden Eykel You read them and you go, "Huh, that's it. Wow." Yeah, so that is a product of how we read, and it's a product of how we make meaning, right? Is that we always are reading stories. Everything we read, we're always reading in light of other things that we've read. And then also our brains are filling in the gaps when we have stories that don't have that detail, right? And so one of the greatest examples of this is if you just read the story of Jesus' birth in the Gospel of Luke. And in the Gospel of Luke, there is no stable, right? But this is a detail that readers' minds have filled in. Now, and if people are watching this right now, go to the Gospel of Luke and find the stable. You won't be able to find it. There's also no innkeeper in the Gospel of Luke. That's the Christmas pageant, right? The who's going to play the sorry or the evil innkeeper? Well, that role doesn't appear in Luke. There's simply no room for them in the kataluma, which whoever knows what that means. But anyway, so we mesh things together, and we fill in gaps, and that's just how the whole reading and meaning-making process works. And so in Luke, where does the stable come from? Well, there's a manger, and so manger is a feeding trough for animals. So where might you find a manger? Well, maybe at a stable, but also maybe in an alleyway, maybe in a cave, and all of these different kinds of places. And so when you're reading Matthew and all of the things that we've been talking about, right? Like how many people are there? Where are they actually from? What are their names? What do they want with Jesus? Those are all questions that earliest readers have, and then they start to fill in those gaps. And it's like if you're telling a bedtime story to your kid, "And then there was Magi who came from the East." What were their names? And then those details creep into the story as it's told and retold.

Dan McClellan You brought up a cave. Dan, you talked about meshing these things together. This is stuff that's already going on in the second century. We have Tatian's Diatessaron, which is a harmonization of all of the gospels, which is meshing these things together. We have an interesting text that seems to be the root of a lot of its traditions associated with the pre-birth and birth of Jesus, the Protoevangelium of James, correct? Yes. This is where we get the picture of Mary riding down to Bethlehem on a donkey. This is where we get the idea that they found them in a cave. Right.

Dan Beecher What other ideas do we get from- You're telling me the donkey isn't even real?

Dan McClellan The donkey's not real. They did not have donkeys- What's happening? ... in that time period. I'd be alive too.

Eric Vanden Eykel It's in the Pixar movie, though. No, the Protoevangelium, which is another text that's near and dear to my heart. The Protoevangelium does seem to be one of, along with the Diatessaron, it sort of seems to be one of the crucibles where these gospels traditions are starting to combine. And the ways that they're combining is really fascinating. So, like in Luke, you have this sort of Jesus born wherever he's born, right on the streets somewhere, or in a stable or in a cave or whatever. The whole point being he's born not in a house. And then Matthew, the Magi come to the house that Joseph and Mary live in. So there's two different stories here. Matthew has them living in Bethlehem, and that's why Jesus is born there. Luke has them traveling for the census, and that's why Jesus is born there. In the Protoevangelium, they are traveling to register in the census, but then they are outside of Bethlehem, and then they stop in the cave, which again, if you go back to Luke, that detail actually doesn't contradict Luke. It just provides a detail that Luke doesn't provide. Mm-hmm. But then the Protoevangelium author harmonizes these things by also having the Magi appear at this cave. And so the quote, unquote, "homeless Jesus," is a Lucan feature, but then the Magi and the star and all of that stuff, that's a Matthean feature, and then they get combined in there in that one story.

Dan McClellan And then we turn it up to 11 a little bit. Yeah. Yeah.

Dan Beecher And that's when- Yeah ... the drummer boy comes up on the donkey. And you've got- I think I'm getting it. I think I'm getting it. I'm working on it.

Eric Vanden Eykel We're so close. We're so close. Yeah.

Dan McClellan You've got a great chapter in here where you talk about four different apocryphal texts that feature the Magi that contribute to some of the different ways we think about them today. The Protoevangelium of James is one of them. We've also got the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, the Armenian Gospel of the Infancy, and the Revelation of the Magi. What are some of the things that these texts contribute to the accumulation of traditions about the Magi? Yeah.

Eric Vanden Eykel So, starting with the kind of, well, it's going back to the Protoevangelium. Starting with that, one of the things that I noticed when I was looking at that story is this early fascination with the star, right? So Matthew doesn't really do much with the star. It's there. But the Protoevangelium, the Magi make reference to the star, and they talk about why it was so interesting to them, right? And then the thing that they say is that it was so bright that all of the other stars in the heavens were dimmed because of its brightness, right? Which is a new detail, right? We don't get that in Matthew. We just get that they saw something of significance in the star.

Dan Beecher And so- And a detail that might be problematic in that like- Folks might have noticed that one. Right.

Eric Vanden Eykel And that's the thing, so the star sort of in later traditions, it gains the ability to sort of appear and disappear. And this is in Matthew as well, where the star reappears and leads them to Bethlehem from Jerusalem. But in these later texts, yeah, it becomes almost UFO-esque in a way that's like anyone who's paying attention would be able to see this, right? If there is a star in the sky that is so bright that it is dimming all of the other stars, then certainly that's something that people are going to notice. But the author of the Protoevangelium takes that detail and changes a couple of other little details, but that's the detail that he really takes and says, "All right, we're going to really turn this up to 11," right? "We're going to crank the brightness up on this thing," to sort of answer one of those questions that Matthew doesn't really seem interested in answering, to say, "Well, what did they find unique about the star?" And the author of the Protoevangelium says, "Well, it was how bright it was," right? And so that kind of detail gets emphasized there. In a text like the Armenian Gospel of the Infancy, which is another just fascinating text that I recommend anyone read because it's really, really interesting. But in the Magi material there, there's this other question that the author is interested in answering, which is why when the Magi arrive in Jerusalem, in Matthew it says, "Herod and all the people in Jerusalem were terrified when the Magi showed up." And it's weird, right? You look at this and you go, "Okay, but why?" Right? Yeah. Why are they terrified? And in the Armenian Gospel of the Infancy, the answer is, well, they're kings in this text, and they're military leaders, and they're traveling with thousands and thousands of troops. And when they arrive at Jerusalem, they camp out around the city. And so the Armenian Gospel of the Infancy, the people are terrified because they look out and they see that they're under siege. Literally, there's these huge armies that are laying siege to them. And so Herod is sending his people out going, "Go see what they want. Go see if they want to trade. Go see," whatever. And then the people come out and they say, like, "Hey, we can tell that you're traveling with stuff. We smell it. It's good." But that text is answering that question of like, "Well, why were they afraid?" Well, there was armies with them. And that text is doing other things as well. But all of these texts are kind of filling out those details. The Revelation of the Magi, I think I probably could have written an entire chapter on this text because the Revelation of the Magi is, I never actually checked this. I suspect that it's about as long as Matthew is. Oh, wow. Maybe not quite as long, but it's a long text.

Dan McClellan And- When is this dated?

Eric Vanden Eykel Oh, gosh. I knew you were going to ask me that. I think I would be comfortable just saying like sixth, seventh century. Okay. Thereabouts.

Dan McClellan So still fairly early. Yeah.

Eric Vanden Eykel But obviously there's a whole debate on that. There's some who really want to push it back and say, "Oh, there's a Greek original in the second century," but- ... everyone wants the Greek original- Yeah ... from the second century. But anyhow, but it's a Syriac text, and it's a first-person account of the Magi. And so they're the ones telling the story, and there's like 20 of them, too. So they're all living way out in this mythical land of Shur, and they're living at the base of the mountain of the cave of mysteries and treasures and all of this.

Dan McClellan And then the- That was in Aladdin ...

Eric Vanden Eykel and they're just kind of- I was going to say.

Dan McClellan That was in Aladdin, yeah. Yeah. It's really- Diamond in the rough ...

Eric Vanden Eykel it's really funny. It does sort of give that impression of like it's almost like a Disney film. But yeah, they're there, and they do all this ritual bathing, and they're waiting for the arrival of this star. They know what they're waiting for. And then in part of the thing, that star kind of descends, and then it goes into the cave, and then they follow it in. And in this text, the star actually becomes a character. The star is Jesus himself. Oh, wow. Yeah. It's really, really fascinating. The star says to the Magi, like, "Follow me. Follow me to Bethlehem, where I'm going to be born, where I'm soon going to be born." And then they leave the cave, and that's where they get the gifts, by the way. It's very convenient, the cave of treasures. Uh-huh. So they bring the treasures from the cave. But then they leave the cave, and it turns out they all saw something different. So one of them's like, "Oh, I saw an infant. Oh, I saw a young child. I saw a teacher. I saw somebody crucified." Oh, yeah. Yeah, so it's like this shape-shifting Jesus. But yeah, then it leads them on, and they follow it, and it levels mountains, and it helps them to cross rivers, and it multiplies their food for them, and all of this stuff. So it's sort of, yeah, these later stories, these apocryphal stories are almost kind of like fan fiction, right? They take the story that doesn't have a whole lot of detail- Mm-hmm ... and then they kind of fill it out, and they retell it. Yeah, it's a lot of fun.

Dan McClellan And that's so common within early Judaism and Christianity with Melchizedek. Not a whole lot going on there, but suddenly- Mm-hmm ... we've got a bunch of literature in Second Temple Judaism and later. Enoch gets- Right ... a whole universe in the cinematic literary universe- Right ... dedicated to Enoch. And it seems like such an interesting thing to have this little story become the focus of so much attention. Like what- It seems like there was a market for kind of- Yeah ... exploring these kind of neglected themes in parts of the Gospels. And you mentioned that there are many more apocryphal texts that expand on this, but that you just focused on the four in the chapter. Is this just associated with the celebration of Christmas? Is this a year-round fascination that people in the first millennium CE had? What's your sense on why there was such a market for these kinds of stories?

Eric Vanden Eykel Oh my gosh. That's a great question that I don't know if I have a really good answer for. It seems to be, I kind of get the sense just with the prevalence of these characters in not only stories. I can't even remember where I read this claim, but I read a claim somewhere that the Magi are third in terms of the most depicted characters from the New Testament or something like that. Oh, wow. I'm not even sure if you could measure a claim like that, but obviously Mary and Jesus are way up at the top. But in terms of recognizable characters, these are characters that regardless of whether you were brought up hearing this story or brought up celebrating Christmas or whatever, these are characters that do have a very broad, not a broad appeal, but a broad level of recognition. So my guess is that they were kind of not just characters that you brought out of your Christmas decorations box and set on your mantle once a year. But my kind of sense is that they did have a more enduring quality to them, and you sort of can see this in a couple of different ways. One of the things I talk about a bit in the book is the catacomb art. And so there's the Magi. Some of the earliest depictions of the Magi are in the catacombs in Rome, in the Priscilla catacombs. There's a painting of them in this beautiful chapel, and then they appear again in a couple of different places. There's another painting out in the hallway where they appear in a fresco with Mary, and then there's a marble slab where they appear as well. So they have kind of an enduring quality that seems to kind of supersede Christmas, I guess. I guess that all of that's to say I don't get the sense that they are seasonal characters. I get the sense that in the early Christian imagination, they were very prominent. In terms of why, that's the $10 million question is sort of what about them-- Well, it's in the subtitle of the book. Why do they still fascinate, right? Yeah. And they seem to have caught people's imaginations very early, perhaps because of how loaded that term is. The magos is a loaded term in Greek literature. But yeah, for whatever reason, they latched on, and yeah.

Dan Beecher It does seem like a part of the story or a part of their function is that they are some sort of outside confirmation of the divinity or of the divine provenance of this birth. You know what I mean? It seems like it's a nice touch just from a storytelling perspective. This is not just important to one small subset of people, to the Judeans or to whatever. This is a thing of sort of global importance, and this adds that externality of importance to the story. Yeah.

Eric Vanden Eykel There's a sense here with the way that Magi in other ancient literature are depicted. One of the really interesting things that you see time and again, you see this a lot in Herodotus. You see this a lot, though, that Magi are people who are drawn to kings. When Magi show up in a story, we're talking not in the New Testament, but when the Magi show up in a story, there's about to be some sort of political shakeup. When the Magi show up, there's either going to be a new king who is taking power or somebody's about to lose their job, and that's just kind of this theme that you see kind of over and over and over again. And even one of the-- There's two other in the New Testament, two other mentions of Magi both in Acts, and in one of them, this Magi has two names, Barjesus and Elimas, and he is also near the leader kind of figure. So they're sort of drawn to political power. So in my read of this story, it's actually less about validating the divinity of Jesus and more about validating Jesus' royal lineage and saying the Magi are here to confirm that this is the true king of the Judeans. Herod ain't it, but Jesus is, and that's one of the reasons why they show up, they give their gifts, they go. Because that's why they're there, yeah.

Dan Beecher Sorry, you just made me think of one of the interesting things that I liked about your book was you have a discussion fairly early on. I think it's in chapter two when you're talking about sort of how you're translating a few of these different words, and you talk about You've said a couple times today, King of the Judeans. Dan said King of the Jews earlier. Mm.

Dan McClellan And- Don't drag me into this- There's a question there ... man. I'm starting a fight. I'm starting a fight.

Dan Beecher Who wins?

Eric Vanden Eykel You have no idea what a fight you're starting here.

Dan McClellan Oh, man. I'm just- So, yeah ... speaking colloquially.

Dan Beecher Hey, man, I'm just asking questions. That's my job.

Eric Vanden Eykel Well, Dan, do you want to take the first punch, or?

Dan McClellan Well, no, I'm not siding with a specific part of this, but yeah, there's long been a discussion about how we are to understand this designation and this identity. Is this cultural? Is this religious? Is there even a thing such as religion at this time? Spoiler alert, no. Is this a geographic designation? Is this an ethnic designation? This is something that's been debated for a long, long time because it has relevance to when you can begin to start talking about something called Judaism. And there have been some books where people start off in the very first or in the introduction saying, "Hey, I'm just going to use Judean," or, "I'm just going to use Judahite," or, "I'm just going to use Jewish," or something like that. And here's what, I'm aware of all this, but I'm just- Right. Because you can't ever get a first down on this. You've got to punt on this in one- Yeah ... sense or another. So- Mm-hmm ... so yeah, I'm not taking sides. I use what is most colloquial and what is most recognizable to my audience. Yeah. Well, and- But thank you for pointing that out and opening up old wounds. Yeah.

Eric Vanden Eykel Oh, no. And this is one of those debates, it's a huge debate in our field, and it can sometimes get rather messy. And so, the ultimate punt would just be to say, "I'm just not going to translate it," right? That's the King of the Ioudaioi. Yeah.

Dan McClellan But really, I mean- Like you did with Magi. But- Exactly.

Eric Vanden Eykel But you can't do that with everything- Right ... because then- Yeah. Right ... then it's just lazy, but- ... but yeah, I translate it King of the Judeans here. I am not one of those who thinks that it is necessarily always the best translated as Judeans. I think it's very context-specific. And so in this particular story, I think that that very well captures the sort of ethnopolitical emphasis that Matthew is putting on the story by incorporating these people. Yeah. They are coming to see the rightfully born king of this particular ethnos. Yeah. And so Judean better captures that, captures that better than Jews. But yeah, I think it just depends on what you're reading, and that's one of the challenges of translation is that there is no one-to-one correspondence, really ever. There's always a question of context there.

Dan McClellan Apart from the People's Front of Judea, who are- Right ... splitters. So we're talking about how this is emphasizing the royal dimension of Jesus' identity and mission. Where do three kings come from? Because I get something in my world of responding to a lot of conspiracy theories. Mm-hmm. I get a lot of stuff about, oh, the Orion's Belt is called the Three Kings, and on this day, the belt points to the rising sun on the 25th. Oh. And so people just made this thing up. They just pulled everything out of the astrologer's handbook and said, "We're going to create this dude named Jesus."

Eric Vanden Eykel And- I mean, that's how I've always understood it. Well, yeah. I mean- You know ...

Dan McClellan I'm not going to go against the consensus view here. But- ... so growing up, I did not grow up within a religious family. We celebrated Christmas as more of a secular holiday, and I never heard the wise men referred to as the three kings. But evidently- Mm ... that's very prominent for a lot of folks. Where do we get the idea of the three kings?

Eric Vanden Eykel Yeah, so I think it does develop relatively early. I think one of the ways that it develops is this idea that they are coming from... In Matthew, they seem to be all kind of traveling together from the East or whatever, but then one of the popular ways of retelling the story is that they are sort of all coming from different places and converging on Bethlehem. And that kind of grows into this, the different rulers or different important people or different kings from various different places are coming together to kind of pay tribute to the real king. Mm-hmm. And I think part of this how do they become kings is the star business in Matthew, like what is the star doing in Matthew? And one of the things that I talk about in one of the chapters in the book is this kind of linkage between stars and rulers, which is something that you find in the Hebrew Bible. Mm-hmm. And it is something that you find in Roman literature as well, talking about Caesar and the star of Caesar and whatever, and that star is a sign that Caesar, after his assassination, was was divine or whatever. And then his son sort of uses this as propaganda to say, "I am the rightful ruler, and my dad is God. Is a God, and so I am the son of a God or whatever." And so stars do have this kind of linkage with rulers. Mm-hmm. And so stars rise just like kings rise, and stars fall, kings fall as well. And so with texts like, the Proto-Gospel of James, the Protevangelium, you sort of have the one star, Jesus, that is brighter than all the other stars, kings perhaps. And so then, maybe that's something that works its way into the imagination of like, oh, maybe these characters who were coming to bow before Jesus to humble themselves, maybe they were kings, but also just lesser kings. Mm-hmm. And so my hunch is that the star is very much one of the ways that people start thinking about them as royal figures. Yeah. And of course, the fact that they show up wearing crowns. There you go. You really can't discount that. It's right there in the pictures.

Dan McClellan So- And the gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Mm. Is there symbolism associated with royalty there, or is that something else? Yeah.

Eric Vanden Eykel So that's another great question. Depends on who you ask. If you ask some of the early church interpreters who are reading this story, many of them are interpreting the gifts as figurative of parts of Jesus' own identity, right? So the gold symbolizes Jesus' royal status, the frankincense symbolizes Jesus' divine status, and then the myrrh is prefiguring his death or humanity or something along these lines. I don't really find a whole lot of that in Matthew. I don't think for Matthew that's really the point of the gifts. I think Matthew believes that they are expensive. I think he's trying to think of the fanciest and most costly things that he can. And so this either means that these people are rich like kings, or that they have sold everything that they have in order to gain these things. So I think that the gifts are sort of definitely meant as helping to validate Jesus' position as the rightful king of the Judeans, but I think the gifts in Matthew say more about Jesus' kingship than they do about their kingship. Hmm. Okay. And there's also another text, and now the reference is escaping me, but it's in the book, where there's a Greco-Roman author who says that the kings in Persia can't be kings unless they are first Magi. Oh, interesting. So they're sort of like they are pulling the kings out of this pool of these figures. So there's also in the ancient world, outside of Matthew, there's also an association between Magi and kings.