THE BIBLE: Who Were the "Magi" ?

Ever  since  I  started  going  to  Sunday  Mass  at  St.  Rose  of  Lima  Catholic  Church  on  Kings  Highway  near  the  White  Horse  Pike  in  Haddon  Heights,  New  Jersey,  I  have  been  greatly  pleased  with  the  quality  of  the  homilies  at  Mass.  They  are  always  about  the  readings  from  Scripture,  and  they  are  always  a  digestible   scholarly  analysis  of  history  and  theology  comprising  the  background  of  the  readings.

In  other  words,   they  are  what  the  Church  intends  homilies  to  be !

Which  makes  Mass  what  the  Church  intended  Mass  to  be  --  a  gathering  of  the  family  at  the  dinner  table;  accompanied  by  good  talk.  Right ?

So,  congratulations  to  the  Pastor  at  St.  Rose  of  Lima,   Fr.  E.  Joseph  Byerley !  Good  job !  Good  job !

The  Masses  of  January  4,  2015  celebrated  the  Epiphany  of  Our  Lord  --   the  Mass  of  the  Adoration  by  the  Magi.

Who  were  the  Magi ?

Fr.  Peter  Idler,  in  his  homily,    discussed  the  gradual  mutation  of  the  magi  in  Church  iconography   from  3  Babylonian  Zoroastrian  scholar/occultists  to  3  diverse  kings  of  the  East,  as  insight  into  the  significance  of  the  kings  in  Matthew's  gospel   --  namely,  the  extension  of  the  salvation  process  to  non-Jews  --  matured.

And  both  Fr.  Brown,  in  The  Birth  of  the  Messiah,  and  The  Jerome  Biblical  Commentary,    focus-in  on  the  fact   that  these  guys  from  the  east  are  interpreting  the  appearance  of  a  "star."    They  are  astrologers,  in  other  words.

While  I  believe  that,  indeed,  the  primary  role  of  the  story  is  to  illustrate the  opening  of  the  salvation  process  to  Gentiles,  not  just  Jews,    I  always  favored  the  analysis  that  while  the  "magi"  might  have  started-out  referring  to  Zoroastrian  scholar / occultists,    it  gradually  came  to  refer  to  "scholars,"  generally  --  including  the  Jewish  scholars  still  living  in  Persian  society  after  the  Babylonian  exile.

And,  note  that  while  interpreting  the  appearance  of  a  star   seems  "astrological"  and  therefore  occultic,   Matthew's  inspired  gospel   takes  the  appearance  and  movement  of  the  star  very  seriously.

And  so  those  who  see  in  the  story  a  reference  to  a  "conversion"  of  "sinful  occultists"  to  Christianity  are  probably  wrong.

In  any  event,  note  also  that  the  allegedly  Zoroastrian  "magi"   prove  to  at-least-nominally-Jewish  Herod   that  the  star  is  significant  by  quoting  Micah  5:1-3  --  inspired  Hebrew  Scripture  --  to  Herod.

I.e.,  Herod  the  at-least-nominally-Jewish  king  accepts  the  magi's  instruction  on  Judaism !

In  other  words,   the  "magi"  were  in  fact  Jewish  scholars  from  Babylon.

That  does  not  eliminate  their  role  as  pictures  in  the  gospel   of  the  extension  of  the  salvation  process  to  Gentiles.    Matthew  uses  Jesus'  move  to  Zebulun  and  Naphtali  --  lands  of  Jewish  tribes  --   as  pictures  of  the  preaching  of  the  gospel  to  the  Gentiles.