THEY had the gumption to follow a star to Bethlehem and the foresight to shower gifts on the baby Jesus. But the Church of England has declared that the three visitors were not necessarily wise and may not even have been men.

According to the General Synod, the three wise men could have been women. Authorising a new set of collects or prayers for use in church services, the Church decreed yesterday that the visitors called “wise men” in the authorised King James version of the Bible must henceforth be referred to as “Magi”.

Magi is often used as a term for wise men, but it is unusual for any church to argue for it on the grounds that the men might have been women.

The sex of the wise men was challenged after Synod members called for “Magi” to be replaced by “wise men” because this term was “generally known and understood, even if it is not exact”.

The Synod’s revision committee argued that the original Greek, magos/magoi was a transliteration of the name of an official in the Persian court. According to recent New Testament studies, Matthew deliberately used an exotic word to emphasise the exotic nature of the visitors to Jesus.

Among the new collects is one for the Epiphany, the feast celebrating the coming of the Wise Men. It opens: “Creator of the heavens, who led the Magi by a star to worship the Christ-child: guide and sustain us.”

In its report the committee says: “To translate the term into something more universally understood (as the Authorised Version did) is to miss the point being made. Further, while it seems very unlikely that these Persian court officials were female, the possibility that one or more of the magoi were female cannot be excluded completely.”

The prayer, along with dozens of others, was authorised for use from this Sunday with the term “Magi” on the grounds that “the visitors were not necessarily wise and not necessarily men”.

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