![]() I had contacted one of the makers of them and had him hold a set for me because I was going to also buy some stuff from him after the first of the year. Being a Christian I really like the story of the Three Wise Men coming to bring gifts to Jesus. wrote the song often called “We Three Kings of Orient Are,” which quickly became a popular American Christmas carol.For the second pomade of Christmas, the one I use will be…. Perhaps the most famous musical depiction of the three men dates back to 1857, when Pennsylvania Episcopal clergyman John Henry Hopkins, Jr. Paintings by artists like Botticelli, Peter Paul Rubens and Hieronymus Bosch (featured above) helped cement the image of the Magi as a diverse group of men in popular imagination. The Magi as a multiracial set of three figurines, made sometime before 1489, reflects the increased trade between Europe and Africa during the Medieval Period more than anything that was happening when the Gospel of Matthew was written, according to the art historians at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Medieval art played a key role in how many current Christmas traditions visualize these men. “Thereupon, after the celebration of Mass, they died. The wise men seem to have kept busy well into their golden years, at least according to a calendar of saints at the great cathedral in Cologne, Germany, where their alleged remains are housed: “Having undergone many trials and fatigues for the Gospel,” it reads, they met one last time in Armenia. “The second … beardless and ruddy-complexioned … the third, black-skinned and heavily bearded.” Scholars have suggested that the mix either was intended to underscore Christianity’s world-wide ambitions or referred back to an earlier diverse threesome, Noah’s sons Shem, Ham and Japheth. “The first is said to have been … an old man with white hair and a long beard,” reads a medieval Irish description. By the 700s they had achieved their current names–Melchior, Gaspar and Balthasar–and multiculti composition. Their number, which varied in different accounts from two to 12, eventually settled on three, most likely because of their three gifts. As early as the 2nd century, they were promoted to kings, probably because frankincense is associated with royalty in one of the Psalms. ![]() The Magi had a lively postbiblical career. When actual Persians came marauding in 614, it was the only place of worship they didn’t torch… The happiest guess of all turned out to be the one made in the 4th century by the decorators of the Church of the Nativity in Palestine, whose golden entry mosaic featured the Magi dressed as Persians, also renowned stargazers. ![]() Their interest in stars suggests Babylon, famous for its astrologers. The gifts they bore–gold, frankincense and myrrh–hint at Arabia, since unrelated Bible stories describe camel trains of similar tribute emanating from Sheba and Midian, both on that peninsula. Well, from where exactly in the Orient (which means simply “East”) were they, anyway? Matthew’s word Magi is a vague clue, since it can mean astronomers, wise men or magicians and was applied to people from all over. 13, 2004, cover story “Secrets of the Nativity,” and the many unsuccessful searches for physical evidence of the nativity scene: TIME described the centuries of efforts to make sense of the Magi in the Dec. Myrrh would also be used in oil used for anointing kings, which is significant given that the Magi had come looking for the king of the Jews. In Mark 15:23, Jesus is offered wine with myrrh before his crucifixion, because to be a painkiller, Swenson says. It’s been used as a perfume and in ancient Egypt, in embalming processes, and which Christians have interpreted as foreshadowing Jesus’s death. ![]() Myrrh is the “outlier,” according to Kristin Swenson, an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University and author of the forthcoming A Most Peculiar Book: The Inherent Strangeness of the Bible. Frankincense was a type of incense and perfume. Then, like now, gold represented wealth and power. It only describes “some men from the East” and “visitors from the East.” Matthew’s Gospel says soon after Jesus was born in the town of Bethlehem in Judea, ruled by the Roman King Herod, “some men who studied the stars came from the East to Jerusalem and asked, ‘Where is the baby born to be the king of the Jews? We saw his star when it came up in the East, and we have come to worship him.'” According to the Gospel, the men had followed a star to the house where Jesus and Mary were and presented gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. The only reference to these men in the Bible is in Chapter 2 of the Gospel of Matthew, and they’re not called “wise men,” or “kings.” There’s also no mention of how many men were there.
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