The visit of the Magi recounted in the second chapter of Matthew’s Gospel is one of the more curious parts of the Christmas story.
First, that we find it in this Gospel which is written primarily for a Jewish audience, and secondly, that such pagan astrologers should be lauded as those who come from a distant land to worship the infant Jesus. And then we have the matter of the star, which has excited the imagination of astronomers down the centuries; and that is before we get the accretions of legends and the perversions of countless nativity plays. The symbolism that we attach to the gifts they brought and the echoes that we find of Old Testament prophecies take us away from a consideration of what we might be able to reconstruct from their contemporary historical setting and why their coming so alarmed not just Herod but the whole of Jerusalem.
The visit of the Magi to Israel is not the only such visit we know about in the first century. In AD66, magi accompanied the King of Armenia when he visited Nero, as recorded by Suetonius and Pliny. This records them as being from Parthia. The long-lasting warfare between the Romans and the Parthians is not mentioned in the New Testament, but it is a backdrop to Roman policy in the Eastern part of the Empire and the political arrangements for Israel. The Parthians stopped the eastward expansion of Rome’s authority and they were never completely defeated, although at times, as in 66, Rome claimed its victory.
