(Plural of Latin magus; Greek magoi). Rationalists regard the
Gospel account as fiction; Catholics insist that it is a
narrative of fact, supporting their interpretation with the
evidence of all manuscripts and versions, and patristic
citations. All this evidence rationalists pronounce irrelevant;
they class the story of the Magi with the so-called "legends of
the childhood of Jesus", later apocryphal additions to the
Gospels. Admitting only internal evidence, they say, this
evidence does not stand the test of criticism. The subject will
be treated in this article under the two divisions: I. Who the
Magi were; II. The Time and Circumstances of their Visit. We may
form a conjecture by non-Biblical evidence of a probable meaning
to the word magoi. Herodotus (I, ci) is our authority for
supposing that the Magi were the sacred caste of the Medes. They
provided priests for Persia, and, regardless of dynastic
vicissitudes, ever kept up their dominating religious influence.
To the head of this caste, Nergal Sharezar