The Turning of the Magi

This blog received this from RK today and is astounded. This blog will uncharacteristically keep its cool on this matter (i.e., it won't go off on a rant, as it is quite frankly prone to do at the moment), and simply respond to it with these brief, brief words: "Come. On...."

The Three Fairly Sagacious Persons
By Jonathan Petre, Religion Correspondent
(Filed: 10/02/2004)

The Three Wise Men who brought gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh to the infant Jesus may not have been particularly wise and could have been women, the Church of England has ruled.

A committee revising new short prayers, or "collects", for the Church's latest prayer book, Common Worship, said the term "magi" was a transliteration of the name of officials at the Persian court and the possibility that they were female could not be dismissed.

The General Synod approved the new prayers yesterday at the opening of its week-long meeting in London but some members privately complained that the Church was becoming obsessed with politically correct language.

One said: "They are so eager to avoid upsetting the feminists that they will drop anything they think could be deemed offensive to the feminists."

Today the Synod is debating a motion to replace references to chairmen with the term "chair". A spokesman conceded it was anxious to avoid sexist language but said the ruling on the magi was consistent with the biblical texts.

The committee was responding to pleas to replace "magi" with "wise men" in one of the collects on the grounds that the term would be more easily recognised.

In the King James Bible, which until relatively recently was the authoritative English translation, Matthew 2:1 reads: "There came wise men from the East to Jerusalem, saying, where is he who is born King of the Jews?"

The committee, chaired by the Bishop of Sheffield, the Rt Rev Jack Nicholls, said recent scholarship suggested that Matthew "deliberately used an exotic word to emphasise the visitors' exotic nature". It added: "To translate the term into something more universally understood is to miss the point being made."

Although the Persians were unlikely to have been women, the possibility could not be excluded. So the committee had retained magi "on the grounds that the visitors were not necessarily wise and not necessarily men".

(from the Daily Telegraph website)

Doctor J is technically an Anglican, though in fact more of a dyslexic, agnostic, insomniac (who lays in bed at night wondering if there's a dog), but this is the sort galling stupidity that makes even the most liberal of us cringe in disbelief. (Doctor J also can't help but wonder what his aunt might think of this, who used to be a nun with the Anglican church for the better part of thirty-five years. Somehow, Dr J suspects she's not pleased, either.)