Product Code Database
Magi (), or magus (), is the term for priests in Zoroastrianism and earlier Iranian religions. The earliest known use of the word magi is in the trilingual inscription written by Darius the Great, known as the Behistun Inscription. Old Persian texts, predating the Hellenistic period, refer to a magus as a Zurvanism, and presumably Zoroastrian, priest.
Pervasive throughout the Eastern Mediterranean and West Asia until late antiquity and beyond, mágos (μάγος) was influenced by (and eventually displaced) Greek goēs (γόης), the older word for a practitioner of magic, with a meaning expanded to include astronomy, astrology, alchemy, and other forms of esoteric knowledge. This association was in turn the product of the Hellenistic fascination for Pseudo-Zoroaster, who was perceived by the Greeks to be the founder of the Magi and inventor of both astrology and magic, a meaning that still survives in the modern-day words "magic" and "magician".
In the Gospel of Matthew, magoi) from the east/" itemprop="url" title="Wiki: Biblical Magi">Biblical Magi pay homage to the Christ Child,About a year and half old, not a newborn (Matthew 2:11) and the transliterated plural "magi" entered English from Latin in this context around 1200 AD (this particular use is also commonly rendered in English as "kings" and more often in recent times as "wise men"). Matthew 2 in Greek The singular "magus" appears considerably later, when it was borrowed from Old French in the late 14th century with the meaning magician.
Hereditary Zoroastrian priesthood has survived in India The Origins of Zoroastrian Priesthood in India, Parsi Khabar, April 29, 2009Dashur FirozeDASTUR M. Kotwal (July 1990), "A Brief History of the Parsi Priesthood", Indo-Iranian Journal, Vol. 33, No. 3, pp. 165–175. and Iran. They are termed Herbad, Mobad (Magupat, i.e. chief of the Maga), and Dastur depending on the rank.
The other instance appears in the texts of the Avesta, the sacred literature of Zoroastrianism. In this instance, which is in the Avestan language portion, the term appears in the Hapax legomenon moghu.tbiš, meaning "hostile to the moghu", where moghu does not (as was previously thought) mean "magus", but rather "a member of the tribe" or referred to a particular social class in the proto-Iranian language and then continued to do so in Avestan.
An unrelated term, but previously assumed to be related, appears in the older Gathic Avestan language texts. This word, adjectival magavan meaning "possessing maga-", was once the premise that Avestan maga- and Median (i.e. Old Persian) magu- were coeval (and also that both these were cognates of Vedic Sanskrit magha-). While "in the Gathas the word seems to mean both the teaching of Zoroaster and the community that accepted that teaching", and it seems that Avestan maga- is related to Sanskrit magha-, "there is no reason to suppose that the western Iranian form magu (Magus) has exactly the same meaning" as well. But it "may be, however", that Avestan moghu (which is not the same as Avestan maga-) "and Medean magu were the same word in origin, a common Iranian term for 'member of the tribe' having developed among the Medes the special sense of 'member of the (priestly) tribe', hence a priest." cf
Some examples of the use of magi in Persian poetry, are present in the poems of Hafez. There are two frequent terms used by him, first one is Peer-e Moghan (literally "the old man of the magi") and second one is Deyr-e Moghan (literally "the monastery of the magi").
Better preserved are the descriptions of the mid-5th century BC Herodotus, who in his portrayal of the Iranian peoples expatriates living in Asia Minor uses the term "magi" in two different senses. In the first sense ( Histories 1.101), Herodotus speaks of the magi as one of the tribes/peoples ( ethnous) of the Medes. In another sense (1.132), Herodotus uses the term "magi" to generically refer to a "sacerdotal caste", but "whose ethnic origin is never again so much as mentioned." According to Robert Charles Zaehner, in other accounts :
"We hear of Magi not only in Fars province, Parthia, Bactria, Chorasmia, Aria, Medes, and among the Sakas, but also in non-Iranian lands like Arabia, Ethiopia, and Egypt. Their influence was also widespread throughout Anatolia It is, therefore, quite likely that the sacerdotal caste of the Magi was distinct from the Median kingdom tribe of the same name."As early as the 5th century BC, Greek magos had spawned mageia and to describe the activity of a magus, that is, it was his or her art and practice. But almost from the outset the noun for the action and the noun for the actor parted company. Thereafter, mageia was used not for what actual magi did, but for something related to the word 'magic' in the modern sense, i.e. using supernatural means to achieve an effect in the natural world, or the appearance of achieving these effects through trickery or sleight of hand. The early Greek texts typically have the pejorative meaning, which in turn influenced the meaning of magos to denote a conjurer and a charlatan. Already in the mid-5th century BC, Herodotus identifies the magi as interpreters of omens and dreams ( Histories 7.19, 7.37, 1.107, 1.108, 1.120, 1.128).
Other Greek sources from before the Hellenistic period include the gentleman-soldier Xenophon, who had first-hand experience at the Persian Achaemenid court. In his early 4th century BC Cyropaedia, Xenophon depicts the magians as authorities for all religious matters (8.3.11), and imagines the magians to be responsible for the education of the emperor-to-be. Apuleius, a Numidian Platonist philosopher, describes magus to be considered as a "sage and philosopher-king" based on its Platonism notion. (2025). 9780199577804, Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199577804
Pseudo-Zoroaster – or rather what the Greeks supposed him to be – was for the Hellenists the figurehead of the 'magi', and the founder of that order (or what the Greeks considered to be an Religious order). He was further projected as the author of a vast compendium of "Zoroastrian" pseudepigrapha, composed in the main to discredit the texts of rivals. "The Greeks considered the best wisdom to be exotic wisdom" and "what better and more convenient authority than the distant – temporally and geographically – Zoroaster?" The subject of these texts, the authenticity of which was rarely challenged, ranged from treatises on nature to ones on necromancy. But the bulk of these texts dealt with astronomical speculations and magical lore.
One factor for the association with astrology was Zoroaster's name, or rather, what the Greeks made of it. His name was identified at first with star-worshiping ( "star sacrificer") and, with the Zo-, even as the living star. Later, an even more elaborate mytho-etymology evolved: Zoroaster died by the living ( zo-) flux ( -ro-) of fire from the star ( -astr-) which he himself had invoked, and even that the stars killed him in revenge for having been restrained by him. The second, and "more serious" Abteilung I, Band VIII, Abschnitt 1, p. 516 factor for the association with astrology was the notion that Zoroaster was a . The alternate Greek name for Zoroaster was Zaratas / Zaradas / Zaratos ( cf. Agathias 2.23–25, Clement Stromata I.15), which – according to Bidez and Cumont – derived from a Semitic form of his name. The Suda's chapter on astronomia notes that the Babylonians learned their astrology from Zoroaster. Lucian ( Mennipus 6) decides to journey to Babylon "to ask one of the magi, Zoroaster's disciples and successors", for their opinion.
In addition to the more famous story of Simon Magus found in chapter 8, the Book of Acts () also describes another magus who acted as an advisor of Sergius Paulus, the Roman proconsul at Paphos on the island of Cyprus, a Jew named Bar-Iesous (son of Jesus), or alternatively Elymas. (Another Cypriot magus named Atomos is referenced by Josephus, working at the court of Antonius Felix at Caesarea.)
One of the non-canonical Christian sources, the Syriac Infancy Gospel, provides, in its third chapter, a story of the wise men of the East which is very similar to much of the story in Matthew. This account cites Zoradascht (Zoroaster) as the source of the prophecy that motivated the wise men to seek the infant Jesus.
Varahamihira specifies that installation and consecration of the Sun images should be done by the Magas. al-Biruni mentions that the priests of the Sun Temple at Multan were Magas. The Magas had colonies in a number of places in India, and were the priests at Konark, Martanda and other sun temples.
Mair adduces the discovery of two figurines with unmistakably Caucasoid or Europoid features dated to the 8th century BC, found in a 1980 excavation of a Zhou dynasty palace in Fufeng County, Shaanxi Province. One of the figurines is marked on the top of its head with an incised ☩ graph.
Mair's suggestion is based on a proposal by Jao Tsung-I (1990), which connects the "cross potent" bronzeware script glyph for wu labels=no with the same shape found in Neolithic West Asia, specifically a cross potent carved in the shoulder of a goddess figure of the Halaf period. Ming-pao yueh-kan 25.9 (September 1990). English translation: Questions on the Origin of Writing Raised by the 'Silk Road', Sino-Platonic Papers, 26 (September 1991).
"By referring to the Iranians in these documents as majus, the security apparatus implied that the Iranians were not Munafiq, but rather Crypto-paganism. Thus, in their eyes, Iraq's war took on the dimensions of not only a struggle for Arab nationalism, but also a Jihad."
|
|
