Os magos

EYKEL, E. V. The Magi: Who They Were, How They’ve Been Remembered, and Why They Still Fascinate. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2022, 248 p. – ISBN 9781506473734.

George Tyrrell (1861-1909) dizia que a busca pelo Jesus histórico não passava de estudiosos olhando para um poço para ver seus próprios reflexos.EYKEL, E. V. The Magi: Who They Were, How They've Been Remembered, and Why They Still Fascinate. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2022 Jesus é a imagem espelhada daqueles que o estudam. Um fenômeno semelhante acompanha a busca dos magos históricos, aqueles viajantes misteriosos que vieram do Oriente, seguindo uma estrela até Belém.

Neste trabalho, o historiador Eric Vanden Eykel ajuda os leitores a entender melhor os magos e os intérpretes antigos e modernos que tentaram estudá-los. Ele mostra como, de meros doze versículos do Evangelho de Mateus, nasceu uma variada e vasta tradição literária e artística. O livro examina o nascimento da história dos magos, seus enriquecimentos, enfeites e expansões na escrita apócrifa e na pregação cristã primitiva, suas expressões artísticas em catacumbas, ícones e pinturas e seu legado moderno em romances, poesia e música.

O livro explora o fascínio que a história dos magos provoca nos leitores antigos e modernos e o que o legado da história dos magos nos diz sobre seus contadores de histórias e sobre nós mesmos.

Eric M. Vanden Eykel é Professor de Estudos Religiosos no Ferrum College, Blue Ridge, Virgínia, USA.

 

George Tyrrell insisted that the quest for the historical Jesus was no more than scholars staring into a well to see their own reflections staring back. Jesus is the mirror image of those who study him. A similar phenomenon accompanies the quest for the historical Magi, those mysterious travelers who came from theEast, following a star to Bethlehem.

Eric M. Vanden Eykel In this work, ancient historian and scholar Eric Vanden Eykel helps readers better understand both the Magi and the ancient and modern interpreters who have tried to study them. He shows how, from a mere twelve verses in the Gospel of Matthew, a varied and vast literary and artistic tradition was born. The Magi examines the birth of the Magi story;its enrichments, embellishments, and expansions in apocryphal writing and early Christian preaching;its artistic expressions in catacombs, icons, and paintings and its modern legacy in novels, poetry, and music.

Throughout, the book explores the fascination the Magi story elicits in both ancient and modern readers and what the legacy of the Magi story tells us about its storytellers–and ourselves.

Eric M. Vanden Eykel is associate professor of religion and the Forrest S. Williams Teaching Chair in the Humanities at Ferrum College. He is the author of But Their Faces Were Looking Up: Author and Reader in the Protoevangelium of James (2016) and is a general editor of the Journal for Interdisciplinary Biblical Studies. He lives in Roanoke, Virginia.