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Revelation of the Magi
The Lost Tale of the Wise Men's Journey to Bethlehem
Translation and Commentary by
Readers accustomed to spending the time from Christmas to Epiphany contemplating the theological and historical puzzles generated by apocryphal literature could do worse than to include Revelation of the Magi in their year-end reading. The title refers to an 8th-century Syriac text that expands, to put it mildly, on Matthew's Nativity story. The book features this text's the first translation into English, done by Brent Landau, a newly minted professor of religious studies at the University of Oklahoma. The book includes historical background and lucid textual criticism, as well as a first attempt at a theological appreciation. (This work is a popularized version of Dr. Landau's dissertation for the Harvard Divinity School: that is available here; and look, the book has its own blog.) The book is not a shocking disclosure of hitherto unsuspected origins of Christianity or of alarming content of early Christian theology. Many readers will find its irenic attitude toward other religions very edifying. Nonetheless, it is plain that more is going on in this text than meets the eye. The Syriac text is not a new discovery. Acquired from an Egyptian source, it has been in the Vatican Library since the latter 18th century. An Italian translation has been available for several decades. A summary of the story in the text appears in a 5th-century Latin work, the Opus Imperfectum in Matthaeum. The narrative and some of its images were well enough known in the West to have affected late medieval iconography; if ever you see the Star of Bethlehem represented as a flying child, this story is probably responsible. The author surmises, in part for philological reasons, that the original of most of the text could have composed as early as the end of the second century. Some or all of the original may have been in Greek. Most of the text is a first-person-plural account of the Magi's journey from the land of Shir, which lies in the uttermost East, to their meeting with a remarkably chatty baby Jesus. They are led all the way by the star, which is also the divine child. The story then follows their return journey and their announcement in their homeland of the divine birth. In the final sections, which may be a later addition, the Magi and the people of Shir are baptized by the Apostle Thomas. There are 12 Magi in this story. Dr. Landau points out that the three Magi of the modern Christmas pageant are a later popular interpolation; if you look at the New Testament, he points out, you won't find the pregnant Mary riding on a donkey, either. Though the commentary does not emphasize the point, it's a fair surmise that the 12 Magi are supposed to parallel the 12 apostles. The text emphasizes that God has revealed himself in many ways: (13:7) “And you will believe without doubt, seeing in me signs of many forms.” The images the star shows them are pluriform. There are multiple deposits of revelation in the world; the Magi's homeland enjoys access to a sacred text that comes directly from Seth, the son of Adam and Eve. The people of Shir and their ancestors had been waiting for a great light to appear and guide them to a further revelation in the West. When the great day arrives, the star explains:
13:10 And I am everywhere, because I am a ray of light whose light has shone in this world from the majesty of the Father, who has sent me to fulfill everything that was spoken about me in the entire world and in every land by unspeakable mysteries, and to accomplish the commandments of my glorious Father, who by the prophets preached about me to the contentious house [Israel], in the same way as for you, as befits your faith, as it was revealed to you about me. The name "Jesus Christ" does not appear until the final section of the text, in which the Apostle Thomas visits Shir many years later, and which the author believes to be a late addition. As Dr. Landau points out, the notion that God offered some hints of revelation even to pagan peoples is not altogether absent from early Christian literature. However, the point is made so strongly in the text that the reader might be left with the impression that all these deposits of revelation are equivalent to that which comes through the Jews. The revelation brought by the star is apparently the culmination of all of these traditions. The walk-on of Thomas at the end of the story Christianizes pretty much the whole religious history of mankind, but it's a Christianity without the Old Testament. When the Magi see a revelation (and they see lots and lots), these wonders are "unspeakable." The term "Magi" itself is said to mean "those who pray in silence"; the text goes out of its way to say that identification of the Magi with Zoroastrianism is a mistake. Indeed, the ineffability of revelation is one of the most insistent points in the text: 11:5 And we cannot speak about the brilliance of the star of light, since its radiance was many times greater than the sun. The ineffability of the divine chimes with the principle that one tradition cannot be privileged over another, since the medium of any tradition would be language, and therefore would fall short of fully expressing its object. The proposition that dogmatic formulas are inadequate to express spiritual experience is not necessarily unorthodox. Stated as strongly as the text here does, though, it smacks of something a 20th-century theologian might have said. It approaches the doctrine of the transcendental unity of religions. Since the doctrine of the transcendental unity of religions was formulated in part under neo-Gnostic influence, this should probably not be a surprise. Revelation of the Magi is a Christmas story, like It's a Wonderful Life or A Christmas Carol. It's supposed to be fun rather than strict theological truth; at any rate, that is what the writer of the Opus Imperfectum seemed to think. Nonetheless, demon-hunting is also a diverting enterprise, so I cannot end this long review of a short book without mentioning the work's suspiciously rosy view of the Watchers. We meet them in two places in the text. Adam is quoted as saying to his son Seth:
8.1 And I did not understand my priority when I did not (yet) exist, and when I did exist, in what sort of honor I was, nor my authority over the entire world, nor my love among the holy watchers… And then we see them as the peers of angels:
21:2 [You] shall be deemed worthy . . . to see and hear these great things that cannot be spoken now and neither watchers nor angels are able to speak of them, because these things are very great even for them. Holy Watchers, eh? The Watchers pop up here and there in the more obscure literature of the Near East around the beginning of the first millennium; more recently, they seem to have made a home for themselves on network television. They are, arguably, alluded to in scripture in a positive sense in Daniel 4:14. Outside of hermetic tradition, however, in which the Watchers are the benign spirits of the people of the Golden Age, the Watchers are naughty antediluvian entities. They are probably the "spirits in prison" of Peter 3: 18-20: For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit; (19) in which also He went and made proclamation to the spirits now in prison, (20) who once were disobedient, when the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah, during the construction of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through the water. This is consistent with the second-century B.C. text, The Book of Jubilees, which is pseudegraphical to all the Christian world except Ethiopia, where it is canonical. Here we see Noah speaking after the Flood:
1-17 "[Thou] bless me and my sons, that we may increase and multiply and replenish the earth. 5. And Thou knowest how Thy Watchers, the fathers of these spirits, acted in my day: and as for these spirits which are living, imprison them and hold them fast in the place of condemnation, and let them not bring destruction on the sons of thy servant, my God; for these are malignant, and created in order to destroy. 6. And let them not rule over the spirits of the living; for Thou alone canst exercise dominion over them. And let them not have power over the sons of the righteous from henceforth and for evermore." 7. And the Lord our God bade us to bind all. And the chief of the spirits, Mastêmâ, came and said: "Lord, Creator, let some of them remain before me, and let them hearken to my voice, and do all that I shall say unto them; for if some of them are not left to me, I shall not be able to execute the power of my will on the sons of men; for these are for corruption and leading astray before my judgment, for great is the wickedness of the sons of men." 9. And He said: "Let the tenth part of them remain before him, and let nine parts descend into the place of condemnation." What are we to think of people who were on chummy terms with these antediluvian no-accounts? But are they the same no-accounts, or am I just pursuing an artifact of translation? With such things to keep us occupied, Christmas just does not get any better than this.
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