Kings, Wizards and Swords: The Dark Infancy Narrative of Matthew, Conclusion

   

When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:

“A voice is heard in Ramah,
    weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
    and refusing to be comforted,
    because they are no more.”

Here is a dark and dim fairy tale. Into Herod’s kingdom arrive, from the east, not three kings, and not even properly wise men as in smart cookies, but Magoi, that strange word which has its origins in the Zoroastrian priesthood and which, rendered into Greek and Latin actually means wizards, sorcerers. Up until middle ages the three Magi are invoked in spells and charms and regarded precisely as magicians. Were they Zoroastrian priest or were they sorcerers? This is a modern question. The truth is to the ancient mind and he medieval one as well, one was the other. There was lilte difference between astronomy and astrology. Science and magic were both scio, knowledge. The separation we use now just did not exist then.

Let’s remember there were several famous wise men in the bible. Balaam the prophet was regarded as a sorcerer and called upon by Israel’s enemies to perform spells against Israel in the book of Numbers. God tells Balaam to bless Israel instead and he does, but God does not tell him to stop practicing sorcery and the Bible does not dismiss his ability. In the Numbers, Balaam predicts that a star shall arise form Jacob and early Christians reference this as the Christmas star, the Magi as spiritual if not actual descendants of Balaam.

Regarding other sorcerers, Joseph of the coat of many colors fame, not only receives tame dreams like his namesake in Matthew, but actively seeks visions from a chalice and practices scrying according to the book of Genesis, and later on, in the book of Daniel we are told that Daniel was in fact one of the king of Babylon’s wisemen. There are some who would read Shadrach, Meshech and Abednego as different from the group called the “king’s wisemen,” but the fact is they are among them, and wisemen is not synonymous with senators or councilors. It is synonymous with enchanters and sorcerers and seers, and see is what Daniel does.

But if these wisemen really were Persian Magoi, and it seems they were, they would not have been simply crossing the desert from Persia to Israel, but from the Parthain Empire into  the Roman Empire. They would have been men of the world. It is hard to believe such men would have stumbled into the city that was not even actually the capital of Herod’s kingdom—Herod and later on Pontius Pilate lived in Caesarea by the sea—and asked a question as un politic as ;’where’s the new king of the Jews? You know, the real one, who’s coming to replace you?” It’s even less believable that wisemen would be foolish enough to believe Herod was sending them to get word of him so that he could “worship him too”. More than both of those things, it is unbelievable that Herod would not simply have had them followed.

This story, which has not made it into any other Gospels, I am not entirely sure was meant to be seen as true. The part of me that abhors childkilling (all of me) hopes this story isn’t true. The other part of me knows Matthew is telling us something that has little to do with the factuality of the story. The text is asking us to ask questions, and providing no immediate answers. Immediate answers are for children. A true question turns over again and again in the mind. Who is this child? The song asks, “What child is this?” What does it mean to be king, or be king of the Jews? And, if this child is God, what does it mean that his appearing brings not delight, but mayhem, that his birth brings a “loud crying” in Ramah? Though Matthew has left us watching this child depart toward Egypt and grow smaller and smaller as he and his parents reach the horizon, we cannot follow them. Even as we hear the tramping of Herod’s soldiers’ feet, we must rewind. We must return to the beginning, to the only other telling of this story we have in the Gospel of Luke.