{"id":1977,"date":"2016-01-07T15:22:02","date_gmt":"2016-01-07T20:22:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pts.edu\/blog\/?p=1977"},"modified":"2021-08-02T10:19:39","modified_gmt":"2021-08-02T15:19:39","slug":"history-of-the-magi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pts.edu\/blog\/history-of-the-magi\/","title":{"rendered":"Three Wise Men Walk into a Manger"},"content":{"rendered":"

You know that nativity set that sits in your house? If you\u2019re a little bolder, maybe it sits on your lawn.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s older than you think. At least, part of it is.<\/p>\n

Most nativity sets today are really the combination of three streams of art. The center is what used to appear in paintings entitled \u201cMadonna and Child.\u201d It depicts the infant Christ with Mary and sometimes Joseph.\u00a0Off to one side you have the shepherds, which appeared separately in paintings called \u201cthe adoration of the Shepherds.\u201d\u00a0And then comes the really interesting part.\u00a0The adoration of the Magi.<\/p>\n

If you caught our Epiphany Kit in\u00a02016<\/a>, you may have seen how\u00a0interesting the Magi are.\u00a0But their legends only tell part of the story.\u00a0The magi as we find them in our nativity scenes are actually the result of centuries and centuries of artistic development. Everything from their posture to the style of their caps can be traced throughout the centuries.<\/p>\n

The progression and development in the pictures is fascinating.\u00a0Over time we see their caps become crowns, we see them take on different ethnic traits, and we see their posture change. These kinds of developments are worth considering, and Karen Bowden Cooper,\u00a0former curator of\u00a0the\u00a0Kelso Museum of Near Eastern Archaeology<\/a>\u00a0at the Seminary, has highlighted some of these developments and their significance in an excellent ebook entitled \u201cA Journey with the Magi<\/a>\u201d which looks at\u00a0the changes to the magi in Christian art.<\/p>\n

To me, perhaps the most interesting thing is the consistency of their depiction.\u00a0Throughout history, almost every picture you see shows three magi. Naturally this coincides with the number of gifts, but I still find it interesting that artists don\u2019t imagine two magi, each with all three gifts, or six magi with one gift per pair, or any other configuration. Throughout history, we have settled on the idea that there were three of them, one per gift.<\/p>\n

Another constant is that the magi are usually depicted as having travelled quite a distance. Again, Scripture doesn\u2019t tell us exactly where they come from. They\u2019re just \u201cfrom the East.\u201d Think about conversations you have with people you meet.\u00a0Here in Pittsburgh, someone who says \u201cI\u2019m from back East\u201d usually means New England, not Asia. Yet we have historically connected this word \u201cmagi\u201d with the word \u201cEast\u201d and chosen to depict the magi as visitors from a distant country.<\/p>\n

Scholars are divided on who the magi were, how many there may have been, and where they came from. Artists, however, are not.\u00a0Music, sculpture, and painting usually show us three magi from a distant land. Scholars are interesting, but in this case, I like the artists.<\/p>\n

If you want to read more, or don\u2019t want to choose between scholarship and art, you owe it to yourself to check out Dr. Bowden Cooper\u2019s ebook “A Journey with the Magi<\/a>.”\u00a0You get scholarly and artistic insights combined in a way that could only exist in a museum curator.<\/p>\n

As you pack up your nativity set this year, let yourself spend an extra second or two looking at those three little wise men, and appreciate the centuries of history that have given them to you.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Rev. Derek Davenport \u201905\/’17 <\/em>is a PTS alumnus of the Master of Divinity (MDiv) Program and Master of Sacred Theology (ThM), between which he served at a church in Orlando, Fla., for five years. Derek also participated the Seminary’s Miller Summer Youth Institute<\/a>. He serves as a preacher in Western Pennsylvania, researches church symbolism<\/a>\u00a0on his\u00a0<\/em>website,<\/em>\u00a0and tweets at\u00a0<\/em>@DerekRDavenport<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

(Updated 12\/21\/17)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You know that nativity set that sits in your house? If you\u2019re a little bolder, maybe it sits on your lawn. It\u2019s older than you think. At least, part of it is. Most nativity sets today are really the combination of three streams of art. The center is what used to appear in paintings entitled…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1978,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[194,196,193,195,197,198,192],"series":[],"class_list":["post-1977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ministry","tag-gifts-of-the-magi","tag-history-of-the-magi","tag-magi","tag-magi-in-art","tag-magi-in-christian-art","tag-mithras","tag-three-wise-men"],"yoast_head":"\r\nThree Wise Men Walk into a Manger - Pittsburgh Theological Seminary<\/title>\r\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Have you ever considered the history of the Magi? 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