Why do we call the three Wise Men in the story of Jesus the Three Kings?

I have searched my scriptures, and found no reference to them being kings. Anyone know?

Because kings were presumed to be wise?
Plus its probably easier to get "kings" to go into songs than "wise men"
I know one was called balthazar.

Because they were freaking loaded with gold that they carry everywhere? That sounds like a king to me.

I think their names were Balthazar, Gaspar and Melchior?

I thought they were magi rather than actual "kings", but I really don't know my bible lore very well at all.

I highly doubt that, as magic was considered satans work. Or something.

Well it all depends on who wrote the song first, if it was from a non-English origin, the translation would have to be close though it can't be exact. If it was English in origin well not like Anglophones get it all right all the time... you know the war will be over in a few days, Pot is terrible for you, can't get preggers if the girl is on top... see us English speaking people are odd.

The translation depends on when it was written and what its source was.

Every edit reflects the bias of the text it copies and the bias of the one in charge of copying it.

Wasn't there a king that wanted to rid Bethlehem of all little boys because the wise men went to see Jesus?

That was Herod, he was a real person and is seen as a bad guy as he was a friend of Rome. I don't THINK there are that many sources about the murder other than the bible, but I am not sure.

Magi means something different to "wizards" besides there is some debate if the phrase "suffer not the witch to live" in Genesis actually means "suffer not the poisoner to live".

Also kings haven't generally been rich, they are often in a large amount of debt.

Oh, sure, the bad ones are.

The good ones are wrestling French kings for fun.

In Spain they are thought to have been three wise kings from the orient...hence "We three kings of orient..."

Oh...and in Spain they have their own holiday...El Dia de Los Reyes...its in hte beginning of January

Hey dude, don't double post, if you need to add anything in just edit your post.

Now thats not strictly true Henry the VIII losing to the king in a wrestling match was a bad move , and he was in more debt than ever . Now Henry the VII was a much better king . Plus we have had some noticably funny monarchs.

Maybe the kings of the orient were meant to represent how even mysticism paid homage to christ, most of these stories were middle ages in origin so that for the most part is based on the ideas from then.

sorry...



Your right, it's not necessarily true, but then today we'd really have no way of knowing for sure. I'm jsut saying what my people believe. There are otehrs who say they're simply wise men, and still otehres who say they never existed (like me). The only place (I think) that we have recorded information of htem is the bible...and what the christian religion says.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_wise_men

Well, that article does suggest that they were indeed Magi.

Although, Wikipedia is hardly the most trustworthy source for accurate information.

You know the French guy cheated as well as I do.

After all, a civil war in France is a competition to see who can sew a white flag the fastest.


Recent studies have shown that on any subject not controversial enough to warrant constant vandalism, Wikipedia is often as good a source as an encyclopedia as it's updated more frequently.

Hee hee hee...

And when you get down to it, almost all vandalised pages are of contraversial topics or things not covered in any encyclopedia.

People just don't trust Wikipedia because it's a new way of doing it.

That's so lame. How bigoted and bored does one have to be to spend time purposely posting misinformation on Wiki on pages that contain "evil" things?

Some people need a better hobby.

Considering pages about religion and politics are the most frequently vandalised, it's not really that,

Although there was a period where my favourite radio show (axed against all reason) faced so much vandalism it managed to get a very large number of pages locked. People were adamant that things didn't tickle Tony Martin's funny bone but a plethora of other things instead.

Which Radio Show was this? Did they fix the misinformation?

Get This, with Tony Martin, Ed Kavalee and Richard Marsland. They did eventually lock the page (and subsequently had to lock the C3P0, R2D2 and Karl Stefenovic pages - a running joke on the show was that Karl was a robot) and fix the misinformation to the chagrin of the hosts of the show.

They found the debacle hilarious.

That's so awesome. What a silly bit of misinformation to spread around! At least the vandals managed to come up with a funny idea.

And now that I think about it, I would totally listen to any radio show that was actually hosted by a robot.

There is also no reference to there only being three. Three gifts were presented, but no where did it mention that only three wise men came ...


They were Magi, basically, gentile (non-jewish) priest-like people that read the stars for predicting the future and stuff...


Well, at the time, the idea of the devil in Jewish terms wasn't around. Satan is a hebrew word meaning adversary or accuser. It wasn't until the New Testament that Satan was given domain of anything. Lucifer is a latin word meaning "Light-bringer," which is a synonym for Venus which was known as the Morning Star (the last celestial body (thought to be a star) seen before dawn). The term morning star was taken from a passage in ... Isaiah, I think, which follows the description of the fall of Babylon.


Herod, he was a motherf...


There are no other sources about the "Massacre of the Innocent" outside of the New Testament.


Well, the gifts that were given were significant, because while the Jews waited on their messiah, no one was sure what the son of God would be. So, the three gifts kind of gave little baby Jesus legitimacy in a few different aspects: Gold can represent royalty (ie, king), Frankincense can represent priesthood/prophet, and Myrrh can represent healing.

Well, it was the guys on the show who said it - repeatedly and with heavily doctored soundbytes to support their accurate claims - but they stumbled onto the Wikipedia vandalism by accident and tacitly encouraged it by reading out humorous adaptions on air.


Think the horoscope section of your preferred Newspaper except not as many people listened to magi.


And this itself was probably a concession to the section of early Christians who needed an Opponent for their Messiah. After all, there was a significant portion who refused to go back on the view that Jesus was like Hercules, you know, literally half-god, and since he never had any obvious triumph over an adversary it makes sense that they'd write one in.

Of course, given that almost all the religious texts would have been changed and adapted and interpreted in a fashion similar to this, it's just as relevant to the mythology as the other stuff.


It made sense. He gets told somebody is being born to replace him, he kills all the potential competition. He wasn't the first to try it. Probably wasn't the last, either.

It's a bit heavyhanded for my liking.


Just like there's no source that suggests the Jews were ever slaves in Egypt outside the Hebrew Bible (I think it's politic to separate the testaments as Hebrew and Christian Bibles these days) which really puts Moses in a different light if he showed up in Egypt and dropped a bunch of plagues on people who hadn't done anything wrong.


And of course, the generous view of Judas is that he himself was mistaken as to the type of "messiah" that Christ purportedly was (Messiah is a tricky term to throw around because our understanding of it is only a fraction of what it meant at the time) and his "betrayal" of Jesus was simply him trying to expedite the violent uprising he was sure was to come.

Although I do like the story better when he's just a jerk.

I got the impression that the betrayal was what he was destined for. He could not have chosen otherwise, as the betrayal was crucial for the divine plan to come to pass.

Yeah, but that kind of mucking about negates all of free will and means that nobody really can do anything other than what they do so God's just a jerk making some people to send them to hell.

Presumably for his amusement.

Exactly.

But if there IS such a thing as a "divine plan", it's logical that there's no free will and we're just "microscopic cogs in a catastrophic plan, designed and directed by his red right hand!"

(Nick Cave. I love his music)

I prefer the idea that God is a Tender Pervert.