Replies

PBR: The Magi came from Persia, their ‘school of the Magi’ was believed to have dated all the way back to the days of Daniel the prophet, from his time in the schools of Babylon, and then Persia. (from the article)

scrabbleback: Is it known that the Magi came from Persia? (Post #5)

Paisan: In my KJV, east is capitalized, , , , (Post #7)

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I think not, in all of these comments.

Daniel and his three friends were of the royal line, deported to Babylon in what is now Iraq. They were emasculated, made eunuchs, and because of their lineage were employed as administrators of the prevailing ruler. They themselves rgerefore had no descendants, and thus could not be a threat to any other royalty lineage. There was no indication that Daniel ever left the region of Babylon, but remained there and served as a chief administrator of the kings ruling from that site.

Because the Temple was destroyed, the education of Jewish boys in religion and government was no longer conducted in Jerusalem. In its place, wherever the dispersed Jews congregated, synagogues and their yeshivas were established for that purpose, and came under the conduct of the Levitical Boblical teachers, all throughout the lands, and have continued to this day as the method.

Daniel, being a devout Jew, would have nothing to do with cooperating with the phony magicians, soothsayers, and "wise men." PBR's attribution to the Magoi of being influenced by Daniel is not only an assumption, but a bad one at that. In fact, the Bible says nothing about the Magoi coming from Persia, or even from the direction east of Jerusalem/Bethlehem. Neither the Bible nor history annals say nowhere that they even existed.

As far as "east" in Matthew 2:1 and 2 is concerned, in no KJV that I have ever read or owned is the word capitalized. If one has a Bible in which it is capitalized, then it is not a KJV at all (maybe a NKJV or "New Scofield Edition"?). All copies of the KJV are consistent and uniform, right down to the punctuation and italicization (except for a couple of known matters not relevant here).

But actually, "east" in these verses ought to be capitalized, for the words in the Greek refer to a place name, not a direction as one would gather from the (wrongly) ambiguously interpreted English.

Here is the difference: in the Greek, the word is ἀνατολή (pronounced an-at-ol-ay'), which in the geopolitical sense is the place name "Anatolia", which refers to the eastern plains of the isthmus of Middle Asian Turkey. That region dates from the time that Greece and Persia fought over that territory, It was called "East" by the Greeks of that day because it was to the east of their homeland, just as a Yankee would call Dixieland "the South." (But today, a Los Angeles native would say that Mobile is in the South, even though Alabama is directly to the east by compass from California.)

What I am saying here is that when the Magoi told Herod, "We in Anatolia have seen His Star," everyone would have known that they came from the lands far to the north of Jerusalem, from the very same direction from which Abraham came down to Canaan, two thousand years before. They did not come from Babylon, or Persia, or India, or China.

OK, if y'all have got this, let me know. Then I will go on and tell you who I presume who the Magoi were descendants of, exactly where they came from, and what star they were referring to.

imardmd1: . . . who the Magoi were descendants of, exactly where they came from, and what star they were referring to. (Post #14)

To continue:

At one time, all the humans except a very few (eight persond to be exact) had sinned as Adam and Eve, failed to repent (like Cain), and were either ignoring The Creator had begun to worship other gods of their own creation. Therefore God, being disappointed and disobeyed, saw that He could not win them back, and washed the world clean of them, exccept for Noah, his sons, and all their wives.

Coming down off snowy Moount Ararat, they and all the animals sought awarmer arable, farmable land in which to settle and expand. I believe that thet began to repopulate the earth, starting from the region near Lake Van, namely from thst area later to be called Anatolia.

But as they spread, and beginning to depend on some of the animals for sustenance and/or as laboring beasts. And also, they began to re-institute astronomy to know when to plant and when to harvest. I believe that as generations were born, faithfulness to the Creator again began to wane, and be supplanted with the worship of those holding the keys to the positions of heavenly bodies as well as to the exotic animals.

We know now, from archaeology, that in that area a site grew up that existed solely for religious worship, a place that was highly developed in structures, a place now called Gobekli Tepe (in Turcic meaning "Pot-belly Hill") only a few miles northwest of Abraham's birthplace, which was "Ur of the Chaldean mountains," now called Sanliurfa. Here is a picture of Gobekli Tepe, the center of worship:

Worship Center at Gobekli Tepe E

In the other direction, about twenty-five miles to the southwest of Sanliurfa, lies Haran, which the archaeologist have also discovered. That is where Terah and his son Abraham, his grandson Lot settled, not going any further toward Canaan until after Terah died, whence Abraham set off under Gd's guidance, taking lot with him, and leaving Nahor behind in Ur of the Chaldees, the north Syrian land called Padan or Padan-aram (Gen.25:29). This area is also located in what was, in Jesus' time, called Anatolia.

I am going to suppose, without straining the truth, that the people of Padanaram were heavily involved in wotshiping false gods, consistent with being near the huge worship center near them, that Terah's predecessors were involved in it, and that is why God directed Abraham to move far away from his family there, to separate him from that culture and start a new one.

But I also believe that this worship center was also the place where the wisdom of prognosticators of times to plant and harvest inherently claimed the attention of humans over a very broad area, and that this cult controlling the intellectual property of the Aramaic culture persisted from long before Abraham's time right down to that of Jesus.

So that is who the Magoi were, and where they came from. When y'all have digested that, I will go on to my suppositions regarding the star sign of the Messiah of the Jews,