in the Gospel of Matthew Three Magi
commonly called wise men visit Jesus and
Bethlehem to worship Him in another
video I discussed the history of the
Magi as religious functionaries in the
Persian Empire and how the word forms
the root of our English words magic and
magician but what about their gifts gold
frankincense and myrrh most modern
audiences know what gold is you know
that heavy shiny metal that investors
run to in volatile markets but for
ancient audiences they would have
recognized frankincense and myrrh for
what they were extremely expensive
luxury items with a huge range of
religious uses from animal sacrifices to
funerals and even magical spells
frankincense and myrrh are dried resins
from the plants in the boswellia and
kama fora genesis flowering plants
native to the Arabian Peninsula they
were harvested by cutting the bark of
the tree and allowing the resin to use
ow and harden a week later you would
come back and scrape the hardened resin
crystals off the plant and the
greco-roman world frankincense and myrrh
were luxury commodities that were
shipped all over the Roman Empire in
fact the Roman geographer plenty of the
elder estimated that between 1300 and
1700 tons of the stuff was shipped
annually into the Roman Empire each year
though now you can just buy it on Amazon
but what did people use it for one of
the primary uses of frankincense in
particular was burning it with animal
sacrifices as a fragrant incense in fact
burning incense was so intensely
associated with pagan sacrifice that
early Christian leaders such as
Tertullian forbade any Christians from
selling frankincense because then they
would be complicit to demonic activity
frankincense and myrrh also made an
appearance at Roman funerals if you were
a really rich upper-class Roman you
could show off how rich you were even
after death by burning tons of
frankincense we are told by the Roman
historian Suetonius that Nero burned
tons of frankincense for his wife's
funeral myrrh had a lot of similar uses
to frankincense it was also burned at
animal sacrifices was also burned at
funerals but it was particularly
associated with death rituals the
ancient Egyptians would use it during
the embalming process of mummies in the
Gospel of John Jesus's body itself was
prepared for burial with myrrh but
finally and this is my favorite use
frankincense
muhr were commonly used in magical
ritual in my favorite compendium of
ancient magic the Greek magical papyri
frankincense and myrrh appears
everywhere one spell which essentially
is a request for a God to send you an
Oracle through a dream calls for the
practitioner to light and offering a
frankincense and to carry it around
while chanting to the gods
so from these examples we can see that
fragrant incense was deeply tied to
divinity in the minds of ancient people
for example fragrance could signal
divine presence ancient authors
frequently described gods as smelling
like perfume and inhaling this perfume
could mean embodying the gods in a very
visceral way but moreover the scholar
Susan Ashbrook Harvey who wrote the
definitive book on fragrance and Late
Antiquity
argues how burning fragrant incense was
also a primary way that the ancients
believed they could communicate with the
gods burning incense releases smoke into
the air which would float up to the gods
the Roman author Lucien describes it
best a godly steam and for godly
nostrils Rises heaven words and drifts
to each quarter of the sky now we don't
exactly know what the author of matthew
had in mind when he described the Magi
bringing gold frankincense and myrrh but
early Christian authors tried to
interpret these gifts symbolically
saying that frankincense as a
sacrificial incense for shadows jesus's
priesthood and myrrh as something that
you would prepare dead bodies with
foreshadows Jesus's death and
resurrection but again the author of
Matthew is ambiguous so we don't exactly
know what he had in mind but next time
you hear about frankincense and myrrh
you'll know what it is something for
animal sacrifice something for preparing
dead bodies and even preparing magical
spells if you're so inclined - as always
thanks for watching subscribing and I'll
see you next time special thanks to dr.
Sarah bond for suggesting this topic her
article which inspired this episode is
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thanks again and I'll see you next time