Topic: The Wisdom Of The Magi

"It has been conjectured that as the Magians were credited with a great skill in astrology they may have been able to forecast the birth of our Lord by the rules of their article but this conjecture must be peremptorily rejected. It ascribes to the pseudo-science of astrology a reality to which it has no claim, for it is inconceivable that the planetary configurations can really foretell the birth of princes. Even if it were admitted that such could be the case, no such event could be taken as indicating the One Birth for which the world was waiting, unless some direct and explicit revelation from God had been received to that effect. For that Birth was necessarily unique, and science can deal only with repeated events. No astronomical research is now, or was at any time, competent in itself to supply the indication needed; it was not in virtue of any natural learning that the wise men understood the meaning of the star. And if a mere astronomical research was helpless to supply any such power of prediction, still more emphatically must the claim of 'occult knowledge' be disallowed. So far as occult knowledge has had any basis in fact at all, it has been simply a euphemistic way of describing the frauds, impostures and crimes by which debased heathen priesthoods and 'medicine men' have imposed upon the gross superstition of their followers. The very suggestion that, by means like these, God's purpose would be made known shows that those who suggest it have not entirely shaken off the influence of heathenism."

Source: Erdman's Bible Encyclopedia, 1939, Erdman Publishing
Contributor: E. W. G. Masterman

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