One factor for the association with astrology was Zoroaster's name, or rather, what the Greeks made of it. It is disputed whether the magi were from the beginning followers of Zoroaster and his first propagandists.
'Magi' is the proper plural, as previously stated by Hitdice and others. Once the magi had been associated with "magic" – Greek magikos – it was but a natural progression that the Greeks' image of Zoroaster would metamorphose into a magician too. Guided by the Star of Bethlehem, the wise men found the baby Jesus in a house; Matthew does not say if the house was in Bethlehem.

Delivered to your inbox! Victor H. Mair (1990) suggested that Chinese wū (巫 "shaman; witch, wizard; magician") may originate as a loanword from Old Persian *maguš "magician; magi". Rather it appears that they constituted a priesthood serving several religions. as "magician". The first meaning ("magician") derives from the sense of "practitioner of the Zoroaster's craft", and the second meaning ("priest") from the sense of "practitioner of Zoroaster's religion". "By referring to the Iranians in these documents as majus, the security apparatus [implied] that the Iranians [were] not sincere Muslims, but rather covertly practice their pre-Islamic beliefs.

The term only appears twice in Iranian texts from before the 5th century BCE, and only one of these can be dated with precision. Mair adduces the discovery of two figurines with unmistakably Caucasoid or Europoid features dated to the 8th century BCE, found in a 1980 excavation of a Zhou Dynasty palace in Fufeng County, Shaanxi Province.

As early as the 5th century BCE, Greek magos had spawned mageia and magike to describe the activity of a magus, that is, it was his or her art and practice.

"[4] According to Robert Charles Zaehner, in other accounts, "we hear of Magi not only in Persia, Parthia, Bactria, Chorasmia, Aria, Media, and among the Sakas, but also in non-Iranian lands like Samaria, Ethiopia, and Egypt.
In this instance, which is in the Younger Avestan portion, the term appears in the hapax moghu.tbiš, meaning "hostile to the moghu", where moghu does not (as was previously thought) mean "magus", but rather "a member of the tribe"[2] or referred to a particular social class in the proto-Iranian language and then continued to do so in Avestan. As long as the Persian empire lasted there was always a distinction between the Persian magi, who were credited with profound and extraordinary religious knowledge, and the Babylonian magi, who were often considered to be outright imposters. This page was last edited on 19 September 2020, at 07:40. ), 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.

attributed the storms to a clash of wills between the two most powerful, In Paris, for example, Lucian apparently associated with the occult, By then this man who had been born before the age of the wireless seemed to exude a, Also, Melinda [Gebbie, Moore's partner] will also be contributing a pop-up temple for today's modern. Magus In the New Testament, one of the wise men from the East, traditionally held to be three, who traveled to Bethlehem to pay homage to the infant Jesus. For other uses, see, all male children two years or younger were slaughtered, "The Apocryphal Books of the New Testament", "The Mindset of Iraq's Security Apparatus", Questions on the Origin of Writing Raised by the 'Silk Road', The Magi in Medieval Mosaics, Sculptures, Tympanums and Art, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Magi&oldid=981772897, Pages with numeric Bible version references, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 4 October 2020, at 10:38. It is disputed whether the magi were from the beginning followers of Zoroaster and his first propagandists. What made you want to look up magus?

magus n noun: Refers to person, place, thing, quality, etc. [13], "Magus" redirects here. Since its composition in the late 1st century, numerous apocryphal stories have embellished the gospel's account. Mair reconstructs an Old Chinese *myag.

Their influence was also widespread throughout Asia Minor.

From Latin magus, from Ancient Greek μάγος (mágos, “magician”), from Μάγος (Mágos, “Magian”), of an indeterminate Old Iranian origin (see Μάγος for details). (2.11) In a dream they are warned not to return to Herod, and therefore return to their homes by taking another route.