The Church of England General Synod has decided to drop the terms “Three Wise Men” and “Three Kings,” and instead refer to them as “Three Magi.” While this may warm the cockles of D&D players everywhere, the intent was not to be more mystical — it’s that someone decided that, well, there was an outside chance one or more of them could have been women.
A committee revising the latest prayer book said the term “Magi” was a transliteration of the name used by officials at the Persian court, and that they could well have been women. “Magi is a word which discloses nothing about numbers, wisdom or gender embodied in the term,” a Synod spokesman said on Tuesday after the revision was agreed by the Church of England’s parliament which meets twice a year.
In the authorized 17th century King James bible used by up to 70 million worshippers in Anglican churches around the world, the gift-bearing visitors are referred to as “The Three Wise Men.” Now they are to be called just “Magi” and no longer gender-specific in the Anglican prayer book.
“Changing ‘Wise Men’ to ‘Magi’ seems to be an entirely sensible move,” the Synod spokesman said.
The revision committee said: “While it seems very unlikely that these Persian court officials were female, the possibility that one or more of the Magi were female cannot be excluded completely.”
Um … okay. Whatever. But now the question is — if displays are put up at Anglican churches to show the three Wise Folk, will one of them (or perhaps more) be a woman? Just to be on the safe side?
At any rate, I’m certainly glad that the Church of England is busy tackling the tough issues at their synod.
(via Cronaca)
Hey, at least one of those three magi is a hostile alien and another is a Starfleet officer trying to prevent changes to the time-line that would result in Zefram Cochran never making humanity’s first jump to warp. I give fifty/fifty odds it’s Kirk wearing a triumphant magi hat if the hostile alien turns out to be a female hostile alien with triumphant beehive.
I still remember the preacher on the first Sunday after Christmas many years ago who asked us all to look up the verse in the bible that says there were three of them.
Well, there you go. The mythology surrounding the “wise men from the East” (not only their number, but their names, and even their ethnic background) dates back to at least 6th century Armenia — the number, at least, probably mapping to the gifts listed as given. What’s amazing is that so much is being made of a “largely harmless legend” …