Bible Review

Justin, Dialogue with Trypho 77.4, 78.1. Although it might seem a stretch to the modern reader, Justin identifies Herod with the king of Assyria.

Protevangelium James 21.1–3, in New Testament Apocrypha, vol. 1, ed. Edgar Hennecke and Wilhelm Schneemelcher (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1963), p. 386.

Richard C. Trexler, The Journey of the Magi: Meanings in History of a Christian Story (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press), pp. 44–52. In 1903 the cardinal of Cologne sent some of the relics back to Milan.

The unidentified author (Pseudo John Chrysostom) of the fifth- or sixth-century Opus Imperfectum in Matthaeum, Homily 2.2 (Patrologia Graeca 56:637–638) gives this number, probably on the basis of an apocryphal gospel attributed to Seth. This Syrian tradition had a parallel in parts of the Armenian Church. Also see the seventh- or eighth-century Chronicle of Zuqnin in which 12 magi are described as seeing different faces in the star, each a different age. Leo’s enumeration appears in Sermon 31.1, 36.1.

The painting appears in the catacomb’s Capella Graeca. A short, general discussion of the art is found in Neil MacGregor, Seeing Salvation: Images of Christ in Art (New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press, 2000); and an older and finely detailed collection was done by Henri Leclercq, “Mages,” in the Dictionnaire d’archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie 10.1 (1920), pp. 980–1070.

Heikki Tuori, “The Star of Bethlehem and the Computer,” Uusi Suomi 8.1 (1976) (in Finnish).

See note 1.