Nativity scene investigators

John Palmer

'Multicultural' interpretations of Christmas may cause complaints today, but the roots of the story
suggest they are part of the tradition.

Fri 15 Dec 2006 10.02 GMT

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Seasonal complaints that the nativity story is being subverted by a contemporary multicultural
presentation of the events surrounding the alleged birth of the infant Jesus have become commonplace.
Some Christians play down the essentially Jewish character of the entire story. But even mainstream
Christian and Jewish biblical experts have a problem in explaining the role played in the narrative by the
so-called three "Wise Men" or "Kings" who, we are told, came from the east, following a star, to worship
the infant Jesus in Bethlehem and were not Jews.

The mythology which has developed around these characters in the past 2,000 years has given them
names (Balthazar, Caspar and Melchior) and a variety of different countries and regions of origin. But
the only reference to them in the Christian New Testament is in St Matthew's account of the birth where
he describes the distinguished visitors as "Magi" - not Kings or Wise Men - and gives them no names. He
does not even say there are three of them.

The word "Magi" is the plural of the word Magus - the title of the priests of the ancient (but still extant)
Persian region of Zoroastrianism. Zoroaster (the Greek form of the old Persian Zarathustra) was the
prophet of arguably the world's first monotheistic religion and is thought to have lived around 1000 BC.
For Zoroaster the one universal god was Ahura Mazda. But why on earth would a Jewish/Christian
evangelist introduce a priest of the Persian religion of Ahura Mazda into an account of the supposed
birth of the Messiah when all the other characters in the drama are clearly Jewish?

In their accounts of the Jesus story the evangelists were concerned to show how his birth, career and
death would be a fulfilment of ancient prophecies. These they read into verses from the Hebrew "Old
Testament". Hence the claims that as the Messiah, Jesus had a lineage going back to King David (about
whom we know next to nothing apart from the biblical account.)

Although the role of Persia and Persian religious ideas in shaping historical Judaism have been
marginalised or completely forgotten by Christian, Jewish (and also Islamic) scholars, Matthew would
have been aware of just how important they were. He would have known that the Persian King Cyrus,
who liberated the Hebrews from captivity by the Babylonians, was actually hailed by Jehovah, according
to the Hebrew prophet Second Isaiah, as "a Messiah" himself. Matthew would also have known that it
was the Persian Kings who made possible the return of the Hebrew exiles to Palestine and the building
of the temple in Jerusalem. Under the enlightened rule of the Persian empire, support was given to a
series of Jewish prophets who codified the varying beliefs of the Hebrews into the monotheistic
theology of modern Judaism which was inherited by its eventual offspring - Christianity and Islam.

Prior to their encounter with Persian monotheism (and concepts such as heaven, hell, redemption,
angels and the eschatology of the "Final Days"), Hebrew religious ideas had only got as far as recognising
one god for the Judean and Israelite peoples - not a universal God of the kind celebrated by Second
Isaiah and later writers. Scholars recognise in the more radical forms of Judaism that flourished in the
years before Christ, many direct echoes of Persian Zoroastrian beliefs (particularly among the Zealots
who may have created the Dead Sea scrolls). Indeed some even see in the word Pharisee an adaptation
of the word Parsi (or Persian). Perhaps the Jewish evangelist, Matthew, writing his account of the Jesus
figure as Messiah felt the need to claim Persian recognition of Jesus as Messiah and thus introduced the
Magi - the Persian priests - travelling to greet the infant.

The tiny Parsi community in India is today the largest fragment of what survives of ancient
Zoroastrianism. But why does Matthew include the narrative about the Magi "following a star" on their
long journey to Bethlehem? Zoroastrians point out that the roots of the name Zarathustra means
"Follower of the Star". Perhaps a "multicultural" reading of this story is not wide of the mark after all.

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