The Wise Men
1-12. The star in the east and the visit of the Magi (peculiar to St. Matthew). The incident fits well into secular history. About the time when the star appeared (7 or 6 b.c.), Herod the Great, being alarmed by a prophecy that the royal power was about to pass away from him and his line, put the authors of it to death. It is evident, therefore, that the announcement by the wise men that Herod's supplanter in the kingdom had actually been born, would drive him to violent measures. The slaughter of the infants by Herod seems confirmed by the independent account of the heathen historian Macrobius (400 a.d.), who says that when news was brought to Augustus that Herod had ordered children under two years old in Syria to be slain, and that among them was a son of Herod, the emperor remarked, that it was better to be Herod's pig (hun) than Herod's son (huion).
That the Magi should be familiar with and sympathise with Jewish expectations about the Messiah, is not a difficulty. Synagogues existed throughout the East, and exercised a wide influence. At Damascus nearly all the women were proselytes (Jos. 'Wars,' ii. 20. 2: cp. also Matthew 23:15; Acts 2:9; Acts 13:43, etc.). Belief that the appearance of the Messiah was imminent— a belief widely cherished in Jewish circles, see Luke 2:25-26; Luke 2:38;—joined to belief in the appearance of signs in the heavens at the birth of great men, would sufficiently account for the journey of these astrologers, even if they were ignorant of the more definite expectation, which, according to Edersheim, was entertained at this time by the Jews, that two years before the birth of the Messiah His star would appear in the East. The existence of Messianic expectations throughout the East at a somewhat later period is expressly affirmed not only by Josephus, but also by the heathen historians Tacitus and Suetonius. As to the nature of the star, the most probable view is Kepler's. He calculated that in 7 b.c. there occurred three times a most remarkable conjunction of the planets Jupiter and Saturn in the constellation Pisces, which was next year reinforced by Mars. This triple conjunction was followed by the appearance of a remarkably coloured evanescent star, which was the true star of the Magi. If this view be correct, our Lord's birth occurred about 6 b.c. (i.e. six years before the vulgar era of the nativity), and the visit of the Magi followed soon afterwards.
The spiritual significance of the story lies on the surface. Whereas Herod and the Jews were ignorant of the birth of the Messiah among them, and, when informed of it, manifested the most malignant hatred against Him, strangers from afar knew of it before then, and hastened to pay Him reverence. The incident is thus a prophecy of the history of the succeeding centuries, in which the chosen people have persistently rejected the Messiah, and the Gentiles have accepted Him. The incident also illustrates the true relations between science and religion. In the persons of the Magi, science paid homage to religion. The Magi were the men of science of the period, and their science brought them to Christ. And so it is now. The science of yesterday was (according to not a few of its exponents) hostile to faith, proudly boasting that it could solve the mystery of the universe. The science of today is more humble, acknowledging that the deepest natural knowledge only touches the outer fringe of things, and that so-called scientific 'explanations' of the universe are not explanations at all, but only descriptions. Religion and science move on different planes. There is and can be no real antagonism between them, and their natural relationship is one of mutual respect, and cordial cooperation.