Bunk from BAR

Astonishing news!  The Magi's gifts were for medicinal purposes because baby Jesus had arthritis.

BAR must be hurting for real Christmas features since that journal consistently disclaims the Nativity of Jesus Messiah, the Son of God.

Researchers at Cardiff University in Wales studied uses of frankincense and found that this aromatic resin can relieve arthritis by inhibiting the inflammation that causes arthritis pain. This confirms the traditional use of frankincense to treat arthrtiis.  The trees that produce frankincense grow in Africa and Arabia and the trade in frankincense began there. The Afro-Arabian Dedanites were early to traders in frankincense according to Isaiah 21:13 and Ezekiel 27:20.  They traded in spice, ivory, incense, and textiles with lands as distant as India, Cambodia and China. They probably also traded in horses which were bred in Sheba. They traded in copper from the 4000 B.C. mines in the Air region of Niger.

Too bad BAR didn't dig a little deeper on this.  In ancient Egypt there the cippus were used for rites of healing.  It always shows the infant god Horus. Priests devoted to Horus (Horites) were known for their healing arts.

Water poured over the cippi of Horus was said to have curative power.  The vertical texts on either side of the central image of Horus suggest that this cippi was used to transform water into a curative libation.

BAR asks here, "Did the Magi “from the East” know of frankincense’s healing properties when they presented it to young Jesus?" 

Why not? Those Magi were lector priests who could read the ancient books kept in temples and palaces. They were descendants of the Horite ruler-priests who anticipated the coming of Horus in the flesh and who once ruled across the Afro-Asiatic Dominion.  In ancient Egypt, they were called hekau, which is related to the Egyptian word akhet, meaning horizon. They were sky watchers and experts in sidereal astronomy.  Strabo (XI, ix, 3) says that the Magian priests formed one of the two councils of the Parthian Empire. They knew that the Bethlehem star signaled the birth of the "King of the Jews" and they came to worship him. Now that's the story BAR ought be telling us!


Related reading:  Horite Expectation and the Star of Bethlehem; Abraham's Kushite Ancestors; What Language did Abraham Speak?; Thamudic Scripts