wise men (Magi)

• seraphim told w.m. of Jesus’ impending birth

119:7.6Cer­tain wise men of earth knew of Mi­chael’s im­pend­ing ar­rival. Through the con­tacts of one world with an­other, these wise men of spir­i­tual in­sight learned of the forth­com­ing be­stowal of Mi­chael on Uran­tia. And the ser­a­phim did, through the mid­way crea­tures, make an­nounce­ment to a group of Chaldean priests whose leader was Ard­non. These men of God vis­ited the new­born child in the manger. The only super­nat­u­ral event as­so­ci­ated with the birth of Je­sus was this an­nounce­ment to Ard­non and his as­so­ciates by the ser­a­phim of for­mer at­tach­ment to Adam and Eve in the first gar­den.

• no star guided w.m. to Bethlehem

122:8.5At the noon­tide birth of Je­sus the ser­a­phim of Uran­tia, as­sem­bled un­der their di­rec­tors, did sing an­thems of glory over the Beth­le­hem manger, but these ut­ter­ances of praise were not heard by hu­man ears. No shep­herds nor any other mor­tal crea­tures came to pay homage to the babe of Beth­le­hem un­til the day of the ar­rival of cer­tain priests from Ur, who were sent down from Je­ru­sa­lem by Zach­a­rias.

• found baby Jesus and left gifts

122:8.6These priests from Mes­o­po­ta­mia had been told some­time be­fore by a strange re­li­gious teacher of their coun­try that he had had a dream in which he was in­formed that “the light of life” was about to ap­pear on earth as a babe and among the Jews. And thither went these three teach­ers look­ing for this “light of life.” Af­ter many weeks of fu­tile search in Je­ru­sa­lem, they were about to re­turn to Ur when Zach­a­rias met them and dis­closed his be­lief that Je­sus was the ob­ject of their quest and sent them on to Beth­le­hem, where they found the babe and left their gifts with Mary, his earth mother. The babe was al­most three weeks old at the time of their visit.

122:8.7These wise men saw no star to guide them to Beth­le­hem. The beau­ti­ful leg­end of the star of Beth­le­hem orig­i­nated in this way: Je­sus was born Au­gust 21 at noon, 7 B.C. On May 29, 7 B.C., there oc­curred an ex­traor­di­nary con­junc­tion of Jupiter and Sat­urn in the con­stel­la­tion of Pisces. And it is a re­mark­able as­tro­nomic fact that sim­i­lar con­junc­tions oc­curred on Septem­ber 29 and De­cem­ber 5 of the same year. Upon the ba­sis of these ex­traor­di­nary but wholly nat­u­ral events the well-mean­ing zealots of the suc­ceed­ing gen­er­a­tion con­structed the ap­peal­ing leg­end of the star of Beth­le­hem and the ador­ing Magi led thereby to the manger, where they be­held and wor­shiped the new­born babe. Ori­en­tal and near-Ori­en­tal minds de­light in fairy sto­ries, and they are con­tin­u­ally spin­ning such beau­ti­ful myths about the lives of their re­li­gious lead­ers and po­lit­i­cal heroes. In the ab­sence of print­ing, when most hu­man knowl­edge was passed by word of mouth from one gen­er­a­tion to an­other, it was very easy for myths to be­come tra­di­tions and for tra­di­tions even­tu­ally to be­come ac­cepted as facts.

• interview with Herod

122:10.1But the watch­ers for Herod were not in­ac­tive. When they re­ported to him the visit of the priests of Ur to Beth­le­hem, Herod sum­moned these Chaldeans to ap­pear be­fore him. He in­quired dili­gently of these wise men about the new “king of the Jews,” but they gave him lit­tle sat­is­fac­tion, ex­plain­ing that the babe had been born of a woman who had come down to Beth­le­hem with her hus­band for the cen­sus en­roll­ment. Herod, not be­ing sat­is­fied with this an­swer, sent them forth with a purse and di­rected that they should find the child so that he too might come and wor­ship him, since they had de­clared that his king­dom was to be spir­i­tual, not tem­po­ral. But when the wise men did not re­turn, Herod grew sus­pi­cious. As he turned these things over in his mind, his in­form­ers re­turned and made full re­port of the re­cent oc­cur­rences in the tem­ple, bring­ing him a copy of parts of the Sim­eon song which had been sung at the re­demp­tion cer­e­monies of Je­sus. But they had failed to fol­low Joseph and Mary, and Herod was very an­gry with them when they could not tell him whither the pair had taken the babe. He then dis­patched searchers to lo­cate Joseph and Mary. Know­ing Herod pur­sued the Naz­a­reth fam­ily, Zach­a­rias and Eliz­a­beth re­mained away from Beth­le­hem. The boy baby was se­creted with Joseph’s rel­a­tives.