This emboldened Xerxes ( Histories 7:37:4), but things didn’t work out well. They told him that the sun was special to Greeks, so when it abandoned its place in the daytime, the god was showing the Greeks that they would have to abandon their cities. In 480 B.C., he asked the magi to tell him the meaning of a solar eclipse that occurred as he was about to do battle with the Greeks. Consider the case of the Persian king Xerxes I (also known as Ahasuerus, who married the biblical Esther). The Persians also looked to magi to interpret heavenly omens. In the book of Daniel, magi are called upon to interpret dreams (1:20 2:2, 10, 27). Herodotus says that whenever a Persian wanted to sacrifice an animal to the gods, he would cut it up and then “a magus comes near and chants over it the song of the birth of the gods, as the Persian tradition relates it for no sacrifice can be offered without a magus” ( Histories 1:132:3). Around 440 B.C., the Greek historian Herodotus listed the magi as one of the six tribes of the Medes ( Histories 1:101:1).Īpparently, they were like the Jewish tribe of Levi in that they exercised priestly functions. ![]() Originally, the term magi referred to a group of people in Persia (modern Iran).
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