c. 1997 Religion News Service

JERUSALEM _ He has hiked the Rocky Mountains and has guided inner-city youths in Outward Bound-style adventures. But for decades, Robin Wainwright’s big dream has been to make a camel trek through the desert steppes of Iraq and Jordan _ guided by the stars that led the biblical Magi from the east to the infant Jesus in Bethlehem.

Wainwright, a visiting professor of church history at the University of California in Berkeley, hopes to retrace the Wise Men’s mystical journey on the eve of the new millennium, leading a camel train that will embark from southern Iraq in August 1999 and arrive in Bethlehem on Christmas Day 1999.

Wainwright and his wife Nancy, who together manage a private charity called the Catlin Foundation, were in Jerusalem and the West Bank recently to lay plans for the trek, which they hope will not only be a spiritual voyage, but also a peace mission to the warring nationalities and religious groups of the region.

Wainwright, a descendant of the noted American painter George Catlin, who chronicled the lives of American Indians in the mid-1800s, has been dreaming about making his journey across the Middle East ever since 1963.

Then a young wilderness explorer and college philosophy student, Wainwright said his spirit of adventure was tickled by a reading of the account of the Wise Men in the New Testament:”Now, when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the King, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, saying `Where is he that is born King of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the east and are come to worship him.'”(Matthew 2:1-2)”When I read about the Magi, my first reaction, coming out of my wilderness experience was, `Gee, that would be a heck of a trip,'”recalls the 55-year-old Wainwright.

For nearly three decades, however, his youthful fantasy remained just that _ although the lure of the desert drew him to Jordan to spend a year studying biblical history and archaeology in 1967 _ just prior to the Six Day War. He later founded a wilderness challenge program for Southern California’s inner-city youth called Sea and Summit Expeditions, and set out on a career as a seminary teacher and manager of private foundations.

It was just five years ago, in the aftermath of the trauma of the Gulf War, that Wainwright read the story of the Magi once more and, together with his wife, decided to take his fantasy and transform it into reality _ the reality of a peace mission to the strife-torn Middle East. The Magi, today and in antiquity, he says, symbolize the universal human longing for peace.”The Magi were from a powerful priestly caste of individuals who came to Jerusalem and Bethlehem in search of peace and in search of the king of peace,”Wainwright says.

A scientific and educated class, the Magi may have been Zoroastrians, who preached tolerance toward all faiths. As skilled astronomers and astrologers, they were employed in the service of a succession of rulers, including the Parthian kings of greater Persia, which is today Iran and Iraq.

According to Ernest Martin, a biblical historian who is an authority on the Star of Bethlehem and whose research has inspired planetarium programs on the subject, the Magi probably began their journey to Palestine in August, 3 B.C., shortly before Jesus’ birth, and arrived in Bethlehem on Dec. 25, 2 B.C., when Jesus was a toddler.

Scholars differ on the precise year of Jesus’ birth. The conventional counting of A.D., or, Anno Domini, Latin for”the year of the Lord,”and B.C., before Christ, is based on the calculations of the date of the birth of Jesus by the sixth-century Russian monk Dionysius Exiguus. It is now considered that the calculation was off by several years, since Jesus was born before the death of Herod the Great in 4 B.C.

The biblical”star in the east,”which guided the journey, was probably a series of extraordinary astronomical events linked in astrological lore to the Jewish tribe of Judah, said Martin, who was in Jerusalem to promote his latest book on the subject,”The Star that Astonished the World.””There were eight major astronomical conjunctions that took place between August of 3 B.C. and December of 2 B.C., involving the planet Jupiter, which was known to the astrologers as the King Planet,”Martin says.”During the conjunctions of 3 B.C., Jupiter … came into contact with the King Star, Leo the Lion, which was also a sign for the Jewish tribe of Judah, from which the messiah was supposed to be born.”The Magi would have known about these prophesies. And with all of these magnificent celestial displays taking place in the heavens, they came to Jerusalem following this star,”Martin argues.

As the biblical account relates, the Magi first visited King Herod, aging and childless, to find out if an heir to the Roman-backed king of Judea had been born. Herod was puzzled and disturbed by the Magi’s queries, but his astrologers pointed them to Bethlehem, noting the ancient prophecies that the Jewish messiah would hail from that city. Then, when the Magi departed from Herod’s palace, they caught sight of the star once again, hovering over the town of Bethlehem, according to Matthew’s Gospel.

In Martin’s theory, this star was once more the planet Jupiter, which during the winter solstice of 2 B.C. would have stopped midway in its celestial trajectory across the sky on Dec. 25, planted in the”bosom”of the constellation Virgo, the virgin.

If Wainwright succeeds in bringing his camel caravan to Bethlehem by Dec. 25, 1999, his arrival will mark 2,000 years to the day of the Magi’s presumed 2 B.C. arrival _ once you subtract a leap year for the transition from the last century B.C. to the first century A.D., according to Wainwright.

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But while the ancient Magi faced both political and natural obstacles in their search for the newborn”king,”the modern re-creation of the journey is likely to be even more complicated, Wainwright says.

Since the Magi lived and worked in various cities of ancient Persia, Babylon, and even Arabia, historians are uncertain about the precise departure site for the journey to Bethlehem. Wainwright hopes to launch his trip from Ur, in southern Iraq, the birthplace of the biblical Abraham, and a symbol of the common patronage of Judaism, Islam and Christianity.

Winning both U.S. and Iraqi permission to make the trip, however, will be complicated, given U.S. and United Nations sanctions that have been in place since the Gulf War. As a U.S. citizen, Wainwright faces a $50,000 fine if he travels to Iraq without obtaining special permission.

Meanwhile, the regime in Baghdad must also be convinced of the American promoter’s peaceful intentions. And scouts must be sent to the dozens of villages along the route to win the confidence and support necessary for the caravan’s day-to-day safety.

Even in Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian West Bank, where western tourists are a more sought-after commodity, the logistics of building support for the voyage among rival churches and political authorities are going to be formidable, Wainwright acknowledged after spending a week wrangling with authorities here about logistical plans for the caravan’s passage from Jordan to Jericho, Jerusalem and Bethlehem.”Can you imagine a caravan of camels going through downtown Jerusalem,”he muses.”You have to have political protection and traffic control.” To overcome the obstacles, the Wainwrights joined forces with Colorado Christian promoter Jay Gary, who has formed an international consortium called Holy Land 2000 to plan and market religious and cultural events for the turning of the millennium. The Magi’s voyage is being billed as one of the premier”happenings.” (END OPTIONAL TRIM)

Wainwright estimates it will take $500,000 to make the actual journey _ funds which he has already raised. But he also hopes to raise some $2 million more in pledges for development aid to the poverty-stricken villages the camel train will pass through.

He believes offering concrete development aid will soften official suspicions about the trip and help make it a real peace mission through the politically and religiously divided region.”Most of what you hear about in the news in the Middle East is the violence,”Wainwright says.”But there are also people working at the grassroots level for reconciliation and peace, people you never hear about usually. I’d like to put a face on some of those people, and show that all of them _ Jews, Christians and Muslims _ have some of the same aspirations, as children of Abraham.” DEA END FLETCHER