Bible Discussion

There are three Greek words which appear in the New Testament and which are commonly translated as world in English. They are αἰών (aeon), κόσμος (cosmos), and οἰκουμένη (oikoumene, oy-koo-men-ay). It has become very important to the doctrines of mainstream so-called "Christian" churches that whenever these words appear and are translated as world, that they are understood to mean the entire planet and everything or everyone on it. However that was certainly not the case to the ancient Greeks, and it is the meaning of these words to Greek readers in the first century which should govern how Christians understand them, for the modern conception of the word is surely alien to any ideas which the Greeks themselves had when the New Testament was written. Here each of those three words shall be discussed.

 A question we are frequently confronted with goes something like “So if Christian Identity is true, why is one of the Magi a black man?” But of course, none of the Magi, or “wise men”, were black, and originally Christians would not even have conceived of such a notion.

The ancient Parthians, Persians and Medes were all originally and predominantly White people, while the occupants of Mesopotamia and the Near East today are basically comprised of mixed-race arabs, even if they do not consider themselves to be arabs.
A Parthian Soldier circa 2nd c. BC.The people of these regions became genetic arabs after they were conquered by the Islamic hordes in the 7th century and forcibly converted to the Mohammedan religion, whereafter they were amalgamated with both the arabic and Turkic races, among others. But in earlier times, wherever they were portrayed by the ancient Greek and Roman writers and artists, they were clearly depicted as being White, and from these came the Magi who visited the Christ child. The story of the Magi is related in the Gospel of Matthew, in chapter 2, where the King James Version has "wise men" for the plural form of the Greek word μάγος, or magus. According to the earliest of Greek historicans, Herodotus, the Magi were originally a priesthood among the Medes and Persians, and they were mentioned on the Behistun inscription of the Persian emperor, Darius the Great.