An excuse for Monty Python quoting
MANDY COHEN: Ohhh! [whump] Who are you?
WISE MAN #1: We are three wise men.
MANDY: What?!
WISE MAN #1: We are three wise men.
MANDY: Well, what are you doing creeping around a cow shed at two o’clock in the morning? That doesn’t sound very wise to me.
Not wise?
A committee revising the latest prayer book said the term “Magi” was a transliteration of the name used by officials at the Persian court, and that they could well have been women.
“Magi is a word which discloses nothing about numbers, wisdom or gender embodied in the term,” a Synod spokesman said on Tuesday after the revision was agreed by the Church of England’s parliament which meets twice a year.
In the authorized 17th century King James bible used by up to 70 million worshippers in Anglican churches around the world, the gift-bearing visitors are referred to as “The Three Wise Men.”
…
The revision committee said: “While it seems very unlikely that these Persian court officials were female, the possibility that one or more of the Magi were female cannot be excluded completely.”
There is no theological dispute about the gifts they brought — gold, frankincense and myrrh — but the prayer has been changed to use the word Magi on the grounds that “the visitors were not necessarily wise and not necessarily men.”
Well, gotta make sure those fairy tales are accurate.
