StrongerBible

magos

μάγος

GreekG3097“wise men, Magi, ...”

Appears 6 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Mat 2:1Mat 2:7Mat 2:16 (2×)Act 13:6Act 13:8
Root family
Word studyResearch-gradeMAH-gosnoun

What magos means

1

an Eastern sage: a learned man from Persia or Babylon who read the stars, interpreted dreams, and advised kings

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong

This is the honored side of the word. It names the wise men of the East, a professional class of star-readers, dream-interpreters, and royal counselors whose learning went back to the priestly and court traditions of Persia and Babylon. The Greek Old Testament reserved this word for exactly that setting: in the book of Daniel it labels the Babylonian court experts (אַשָּׁף), and Daniel himself is even set over them.

Matthew reaches for this dignified sense when he brings the wise men from the East to worship the newborn king. Their star-watching marks them as astrologers, and their long journey and homage cast them as impressive foreign sages who recognize a king when Israel's own leaders do not. The tone is respectful, even admiring, though the word never fully sheds the whiff of the occult that clung to it in ordinary Greek.

English has no clean equivalent. Some translations say "wise men," some say "astrologers," and many simply carry the Greek word over as "Magi," which is really an admission that no single English word will do.

Mat 2:1Mat 2:7Mat 2:16 (2×)

Disputed

How Matthew presents the magi: as admirable Gentile sages, as ignorant outsiders, or as figures of deliberately uncertain background.

  • majorityThey are admirable Gentile astrologers whose homage to the newborn king foreshadows the welcome of the nations, echoing the Balaam oracle of Numbers 22-24.; R. E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah (rev. ed. 1993); W. D. Davies and D. C. Allison, Matthew (ICC), vol. 1 (1988)
  • minorityTheir strength is their ignorance: they know a star but not the scriptures, so revelation comes to the unlearned as Matthew 11:25 describes.; M. A. Powell, 'The Magi as Wise Men,' NTS 46 (2000) 1-20
  • minorityMatthew leaves their ethnicity open and may even envision them as Jewish.; D. C. Sim, 'The Magi: Gentiles or Jews?' HTS 55 (1999) 980-1000
2

a magician: a practitioner of sorcery and the occult arts, often a fraud who claims hidden power

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong

This is the disreputable side of the same word. By the first century, in everyday Greek, the term had largely slid into an insult: a magician, a sorcerer, a dealer in spells and secret arts, frequently a con artist trading on claims of supernatural power. Roman writers treated such practice as fraud, and Roman law treated it as a crime.

Luke reaches for this pejorative sense in the book of Acts, where he calls Bar-Jesus, also named Elymas, a sorcerer and false prophet. In Luke's telling such a figure is a counterfeit of real spiritual power, a rival to the apostles who is exposed and struck blind. Calling a man this word is an accusation, not a compliment.

The same Greek word thus carries opposite charges depending on who uses it. What decides the sense is the writer's own attitude: Matthew activates the respectful pole, Luke the contemptuous one.

Act 13:6Act 13:8

What scholars say about magos

The lexica agree on a diachronic split. The word is a loanword from Old Persian maguš, originally the Median priestly caste and Persian court diviners (Herodotus 1.101, 1.132). BDAG (3rd ed., 608) gives two glosses accordingly: a (Persian) wise man and priest skilled in astrology and dream interpretation for Matthew 2, and magician for Acts. Delling (TDNT 4:356-59) traces four stages, from priestly caste to possessor of superior wisdom to magician in the technical sense to charlatan, and concludes the pejorative sense had become dominant in general Greco-Roman usage from the first century BCE. Louw-Nida even places the two NT senses in different semantic domains (32.40, understanding, versus 53.79, magic). The pejorative pole is old: Bremmer (ZPE 126 [1999] 1-12) shows Heraclitus and Sophocles (Oedipus Tyrannus 387) already used it as invective, and de Jong (Traditions of the Magi, Brill 1997) treats the Greco-Roman sources as refracted but real information about Zoroastrian priesthood. In the Greek Old Testament the word is confined largely to Daniel (2:2, 2:10, 2:27; 4:7; 5:7, 5:11, 5:15), rendering the Aramaic term for Babylonian court enchanters, with Daniel himself set as their chief (5:11); it is never used of the Egyptian magicians of Genesis and Exodus. On Matthew, Brown (The Birth of the Messiah, rev. 1993) reads the magi as wholly admirable Gentile astrologers and stresses the Balaam typology of Numbers 22-24; Davies and Allison (ICC Matthew) and Keener (Matthew, Eerdmans) concur, while Powell (NTS 46 [2000]) argues their ignorance is the point and Sim (HTS 55 [1999]) questions the assumption that they are Gentiles. On Acts, Garrett (The Demise of the Devil, Fortress 1989), Klauck (Magic and Paganism in Early Christianity, Fortress 2003), and Keener (Acts) read the word as unambiguously pejorative, casting Bar-Jesus/Elymas as a satanic counterfeit of apostolic power. The name Elymas is widely derived from Arabic alim, learned or wise (Fitzmyer, Bruce, Barrett), which if correct preserves the older dignified sense even as Luke recontextualizes it as fraudulent.

In-depth research

This is a research paper, so it may be hard to read without scholarly background. It is useful if you want to dig even deeper into this word.

Sources

  • BDAG, 3rd ed., s.v. μάγος, 608lexicon
  • G. Delling, μάγος, TDNT 4:356-59dictionary
  • Louw-Nida, Greek-English Lexicon Based on Semantic Domains, 32.40 and 53.79lexicon
  • A. de Jong, Traditions of the Magi: Zoroastrianism in Greek and Latin Literature (Brill, 1997)monograph
  • J. N. Bremmer, 'Persian Magoi and the Birth of the Term Magic,' ZPE 126 (1999) 1-12article
  • R. E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah (rev. ed. 1993)monograph
  • W. D. Davies and D. C. Allison, Matthew (ICC), vol. 1 (1988)commentary
  • M. A. Powell, 'The Magi as Wise Men: Re-examining a Basic Supposition,' NTS 46 (2000) 1-20article
  • S. R. Garrett, The Demise of the Devil: Magic and the Demonic in Luke's Writings (Fortress, 1989)monograph
  • H.-J. Klauck, Magic and Paganism in Early Christianity (Fortress, 2003)monograph
  • C. S. Keener, Acts: An Exegetical Commentary (Baker Academic, 2012-2015)commentary

AI-generated word study · claude-opus-4-8

All attested forms of μάγος

genitive m p

μάγων

Mat 2:16, Mat 2:16

accusative m p

μάγους

Mat 2:7

accusative m s

μάγον

Act 13:6

nominative m p

μάγοι

Mat 2:1

nominative m s

μάγος

Act 13:8