by Brent Landau
10. For example, no original copies of any of the writings of the New Testament exist. The earliest copy of a New Testament writing is a tiny papyrus fragment of the Gospel of John, usually dated to 125–150 c.e. (The Gospel itself was most likely written in 90–100 c.e.) Apart from this fragment, the earliest copies of New Testament writings are from the late second and early third centuries or later.
11. Theodore bar Konai tells us that the Magi arrived in Jerusalem during the month of April—a rather odd claim, given that practically all ancient Christians celebrated the arrival of the Magi (Epiphany) in early January. The only other ancient Christian writing that claims that the Magi came to Jerusalem in April is none other than the Revelation of the Magi.
12. A translation of the Opus Imperfectum’s summary of the Revelation of the Magi is found in the appendix.
13. The author knows that the Magi’s name in their language refers to their practice of silent prayer, that the sacred mountain of the Magi is called the “Victorious Mountain” (as opposed to “Mountain of Victories” in the Syriac text), and that this mountain has a cave, a fountain, and trees (though the placement of these features differs slightly in the two witnesses).
14. Most notably, the Apostle Thomas section of the Revelation of the Magi contains a baptismal hymn sung by Thomas that invokes the Holy Spirit; several similar hymns exist in the Acts of Thomas. The account of the Magi’s baptism also shares a number of parallels with baptismal scenes in the Acts of Thomas. But it is important to emphasize that these are parallels of form, not content: the Revelation of the Magi and the Acts of Thomas do not share any narrative elements.
15. This is because the Apostle Thomas section of the Revelation of the Magi appears to have been written in direct response to what is said in the first-person section of the Revelation of the Magi and would not have circulated separately.
16. In fact, as Raymond E. Brown has noted in The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke (2nd ed.; New York: Doubleday, 1993), belief in the historicity of the Magi story has, in the recent past, been used as an indicator of whether a scholar was inside or outside of the mainstream of biblical studies.
17. Of course, there have been numerous attempts to link the Star of Bethlehem to a supernova, comet, or other celestial phenomenon. But these attempts almost always fail to recognize that the behavior that Matthew attributes to the star—especially its ability to mark the direct spot of the child Jesus in Mt 2:9—cannot occur in any natural fashion.
18. If we assume that that Jesus was born in approximately 4 B.C.E. (the most common date estimated by scholars) and that the Magi visited Jesus shortly thereafter, more than fifty years would pass before Paul wrote his earliest letters, which are the earliest Christian writings we possess.
19. The most famous of the apocryphal Infancy Gospels are the Protevangelium of James, which focuses more on the upbringing of Mary than Jesus, and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, famous for its depiction of Jesus as a vindictive child possessing frequently deadly miraculous powers. The Infancy Gospel that the Revelation of the Magi has used is preserved in medieval Latin and Irish manuscripts and is a lengthy expansion and harmonization of the materials found in the canonical infancy narratives, plus a number of traditions not found elsewhere.
20. This name is on the analogy of “Planet X,” a designation coined by the astronomer Percival Lowell (the namesake of Flagstaff’s Lowell Observatory) for an unknown planet beyond the orbit of Neptune—a hypothesis that, although flawed in some respects, ultimately led to the discovery of the planet Pluto. Although the name “Infancy Gospel X” is by no means ideal, unfortunately so little work has been done on this text that no more descriptive name presents itself.
21. For more discussion of the number of the Magi, see the note at 16:2 in the translation.
22. Pseudonymity, or the practice of writing under a false name, is acknowledged by most scholars to describe the authorship of many New Testament writings. This includes all four canonical Gospels (even if some scholars believe that the nucleus of one or more of the Gospels ultimately goes back to the name associated with the text) and roughly half of the letters attributed to Paul (even if some of the spurious letters perhaps contain authentic Pauline fragments).
23. I assume here that the author was male simply because of the much higher literacy rate of men as compared with women in the ancient world. But none of my arguments about the purpose of the Revelation of the Magi necessarily demand male authorship.
24. The most famous sending forth of the disciples to worldwide evangelism is the so-called Great Commission of Mt 28:18–20: “All authority in heaven and on earth has beengiven to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
25. In fact, a number of early Christian writers were uncomfortable with Matthew’s Magi story precisely because it did not indicate that their visit to Christ had altered their lives in any fashion. One commentator, Tertullian (On Idolatry 9), solved this problem by understanding Matthew’s phrase “they departed to their own country by another way” (Mt 2:12) to mean that they had converted to faith in Christ.
26. These accompanying notes are intended to aid readers in understanding the basic meaning and significance of important passages in the Revelation of the Magi. For greater detail and analysis, please consult my dissertation (available online at http://ou.academia.edu/BrentLandau/Papers) and my forthcoming critical edition of the Revelation of the Magi for the Corpus Christianorum Series Apocryphorum, published by Brepols.
27. The titles of the individual chapters are my own, and do not appear in the manuscript of the Chronicle of Zuqnin (the Syriac world chronicle in which the Revelation of the Magi is preserved). Only two symbols in the text require comment. In places where the manuscript has suffered damage, square brackets [ ] contain what I consider to be the most likely original reading. In places where it is impossible to determine the original reading, square brackets simply contain the words text missing. In contrast, parentheses ( ) indicate places where a word or words have been added to clarify the meaning of the text beyond a literal translation of the Syriac.
28. The short descriptive statement contained in 1:1 is the work of the compiler of the Chronicle of Zuqnin, not the author of the Revelation of the Magi. This is certain not only from the appearance of such statements elsewhere in the Chronicle, but also because this statement misrepresents the Revelation of the Magi in two important ways. First, the statement emphasizes the gifts that the Magi bring, but the Revelation of the Magi cares much less about these gifts than the canonical account of Mt 2:1–12 does. Second, the statement uses the proper name Christ, but this name is used only during the Apostle Thomas’s appearance at the end of the Revelation of the Magi, an incident that is most likely a secondary addition to the Revelation of the Magi.
29. The association of the Magi with royalty began quite early in Christian exegesis, perhaps thanks to such suggestive passages as Ps 72:10–11 and Is 60. Tertullian (Against Marcion 3.13) remarks that in the East, the Magi are treated practically as kings. For Augustine in the fourth century, they are definitely kings, and their piety is contrasted against King Herod’s impiousness (Sermon 200). However, in the first-person-plural section of the Revelation of the Magi, there is almost no mention of their royal status. The term king never appears in reference to the Magi; the only indication that the Magi are kings occurs at 18:5, where they remove their crowns and lay them at Christ’s feet in recognition of his kingdom.
30. The phrase “kings, sons of kings” is how Syriac writers describe hereditary kingship, as compared with the inconsistent manner of succession found in the Roman Empire.
31. The residence of the Magi here derives, unsurprisingly, from Mt 2:1. Throughout the Revelation of the Magi, h
owever, it appears that “East” is not simply directional, but has the status of a specific nation with a corresponding ethnic group (cf. “Easterners” in 24:4). There are nine such usages of “East” in the Revelation of the Magi (in addition to three
directional instances), though the name “Shir” (2:4 and corresponding note; 4:1) also appears in the Revelation of the Magi as the land of the Magi. It may be that the “great East” is understood in the Revelation of the Magi as a quite large country or region, of which Shir is the outermost district, as 2:4 seems to imply.
32. This statement reveals the Revelation of the Magi as a pseudepigraphon (i.e., a writing that makes false claims about the identity of its author), stating as it does that it was produced by the Magi themselves. No other Magi pseudepigrapha are known to exist from antiquity, and this is one of only a handful of cases where Christians produced writings purported to have been authored by non-Christians.
33. According to the Revelation of the Magi, the word Magi is related etymologically to their practice of praying in silence, which the text mentions on several other occasions (cf. 1:3, 2:1, 3:8, 5:7, 5:11, 12:2). Yet, a verbal similarity between the words Magi and silence is not easy to find in any of the obvious languages of transmission (Syriac, Greek, or Latin). It may simply be an exoticizing device and not an actual word derivation. Strikingly, the Opus Imperfectum in Matthaeum (the fifth-century Latin commentary on the Gospel of Matthew that contains a brief version of this same legend about the Magi) agrees with the Revelation of the Magi in almost verbatim fashion on this point: “And they were called Magi in their language, because in silence and with a silent voice they glorified God.” This close agreement suggests that the author of the Opus Imperfectum had not simply heard of this legend, but also had access to a written version of the Revelation of the Magi. In a number of Syriac monastic writings, silence is a means for inducing ecstasy. Unlike these monastic traditions, though, the Revelation of the Magi nowhere suggests that the silent praying of the Magi facilitates ecstatic experience. It has sometimes been thought that Zoroastrian priests prayed in silence, but other scholars have rejected this view. A hagiographic Syriac text, the Life of John of Tella, relates that the Magi frequently convey information to one another in silence by using hand gestures. However, this is not in the context of prayer, but rather the interrogation of a prisoner.
34. This title for God is used infrequently in Jewish and Christian literature (cf. 2 Mc 14:46). However, it does appear in Babylonian, Zoroastrian, and Hindu materials from antiquity. Though it is very difficult to prove that the author of Revelation of the Magi knew of its use in any of these written materials, the fact that it had a reasonably wide currency in non-Christian religious traditions may explain its use here. One of the major agendas of the author is the depiction of the Magi as a kind of quasi-pagan group that nevertheless distantly echoes Christian terminology and practice.
35. The “gift” is an important theological concept in the Revelation of the Magi, mentioned on multiple occasions throughout the text. In the abstract, it is the mechanism by which an unknowable God communicates with the inhabitants of the upper and lower worlds. In a concrete sense, it refers specifically to the revelatory activity of Christ. The Syriac term underlying this concept must be distinguished from the other term used for “gift” in the Revelation of the Magi, which refers to the offerings brought to Christ by the Magi (Mt 2:11; see note at 4:7). The New Testament, like the Revelation of the Magi, generally uses the abstract sense of the term, describing the “gift” of the Holy Spirit, Christ, or God (cf. Jn 4:10; Acts 2:38, 8:20, 10:45, 11:17; Rom 5:15–17; 2 Cor 9:15; Eph 3:7, 4:7; Heb 6:4; Jas 1:17).
36. The Revelation of the Magi is one of only a handful of ancient texts to refer to the Magi as “wise.” For the most part, the familiar description of the Magi as “wise men” appearsonly from the Renaissance onward.
37. Cf. Jn 1:3.
38. In the development of traditions about the Magi, the attribution of names to them is a relatively late exegetical development. The most familiar names in the West for the (three) Magi are Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar, but these names appear only in the sixth century in the Excerpta Latina Barbari, a Latin translation of a Greek chronicle. As for the names found in the Revelation of the Magi, I have incorporated without changes the spelling of the names as found in the Latin translation accompanying the most recent critical edition of the Chronicle of Zuqnin. The names play no further role in the Revelation of the Magi’s narrative beyond this single mention, and their presence in other Syriac sources strongly suggests that 2:3 is a later accretion to the Revelation of the Magi. In a peculiar case of interrelation, the Revelation of the Magi has a list of the Magi numbering twelve, but nowhere explicitly does it say that there are twelve Magi, whereas the Opus Imperfectum in Matthaeum does state that there were twelve Magi, without giving a list of names. The information of the Opus Imperfectum is perhaps more archaic, and specific names may have been given to the twelve Magi only at a later time (but cf. 16:2 and accompanying note for a possibly even earlier tradition of a larger, numerically unspecified membership for the ranks of the Magi).
39. The name “Gudaphar” is almost identical to “Gûdnaphar” (Gundaphorus), an Indian king baptized by the Apostle Thomas in the Acts of Thomas. The Acts of Thomas is the earliest written source that narrates Thomas’s missionary activities in India. Although King Gûdnaphar appears to have been a historical figure, it is unclear whether he was indeed ruling at the time that the Apostle Thomas is supposed to have been in India—a very contentious debate in and of itself.
40. In contrast to the “land of the East,” the name “Shir” is less common in the Revelation of the Magi, used only twice. However, it appears in a number of other ancient texts as a mysterious and faraway land, sometimes identified with China. In one of the Gnostic Christian texts discovered at Nag Hammadi, “Mount Shir” is the place where Noah’s ark comes to rest; more remotely, “Mount Nisir” is where the ark of Utnapishtim lands in the Epic of Gilgamesh. The Revelation of the Magi is the only ancient Christian text that identifies the homeland of the Magi as Shir. The majority opinion of ancient commentators was that the Magi came from Persia, understanding the term Magus in its technical sense of a Zoroastrian priest; cf. Clement of Alexandria (Miscellanies 1.15); Origen (Against Celsus 1.58–60); John Chrysostom (Homilies on Matthew 6.2). Most early Christian artistic representations of the Magi also imply this, depicting them in the typical Persian dress of a pointed “Phrygian cap,” belted tunic, and leggings; cf. especially the mosaic of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna (pages 4 and 5) and the wooden door detail of Santa Sabina in Rome (page 14). A notable and early minority opinion regarding the homeland of the Magi is Arabia; cf. Justin Martyr (Dialogue with Trypho 78, 106); Tertullian (Against Marcion 3.13, Against the Jews 9).
41. The concept of a great world ocean outside of the inhabited world had existed in antiquity at least as early as Homer. The location of the Magi’s homeland in the Opus Imperfectum in Matthaeum is described in almost identical language: “situated at the very beginning of the East near the Ocean.”
42. The precise geographical layout envisioned here is ambiguous; it is unclear whether the Ocean or Shir is east of the land of Nod. The most logical solution seems to be that thatthe Ocean is directly east of Shir, which is east of Nod.
43. Cf. Gn 4:16, though there it is the place of Cain’s exile. Nod is mentioned very little in extrabiblical literature, and in no other cases does it appear to be the dwelling place of Adam.
44. I.e., “when Adam had Seth.” The idea that Adam had received foreknowledge of the future and transmitted it to later generations through Seth or some other means occurs in numerous Jewish and Christian noncanonical writings. This understanding most likely derives from the incident of Adam eating from the Tree of Knowledge, which would have provided him with some sort of predictive ability.
45. Cf. Gn 3:23–24.
46. Mention of Seth’s
purity also appears in several other Jewish and Christian sources, and has implications for the character of his progeny. See Josephus Antiquities 1.68–69.
47. Cf. Gn 4:26 for the tradition that during the time of Seth and his son Enosh “people began to invoke the name of the LORD.”
48. In claiming that Seth produced a written revelation, the Revelation of the Magi also has some general similarities with writings preserved in the Nag Hammadi corpus.
49. Cf. Gn 7:1.
