Dreams in the New Testament: Joseph, the Magi and Pilate's wife

Compared with the Old Testament, the New Testament speaks of dreams with greater restraint, yet some episodes have remained among the best known in Christian tradition. Almost all are concentrated in the Gospel of Matthew, which uses the dream as the means by which God guides the protagonists in moments of danger. The Acts of the Apostles, on the other hand, prefers to speak of night visions, drawing closer to the language of the prophets and showing how the first Christian community regarded dream experience as a possible place of revelation.

The four dreams of Joseph

In the first two chapters of his Gospel, Matthew relates that Joseph, betrothed to Mary, received a message in a dream four times. In the first, an angel urges him not to be afraid to take Mary into his home, since she is with child by the Holy Spirit. The character, who bears the same name as the great dreamer of Genesis, seems deliberately to recall that figure.

In the second dream the angel orders him to flee to Egypt with the child and his mother, to save him from Herod. In the third, after the king's death, he announces that it is possible to return to the land of Israel. In the fourth, finally, Joseph is warned to avoid Judaea, ruled by Archelaus, and settles in Nazareth, in Galilee. In no case does the dream need an interpreter: the message is clear and Joseph obeys at once.

The warning to the Magi

The Magi who came from the East, too, after worshipping the child in Bethlehem, are warned in a dream not to return to Herod and go back to their country by another road. The detail is significant, because the Magi were probably imagined as Persian or Babylonian sages, experts in stars and signs, that is, in precisely those divinatory arts that the Bible viewed with suspicion.

The episode enjoyed great success in medieval art. A famous capital in Autun Cathedral, in Burgundy, carved in the twelfth century and attributed to the sculptor Gislebertus, shows the three Magi asleep under a single blanket, while an angel touches the hand of one of them and points to the star. The scene, simple and tender, is among the best loved in French Romanesque sculpture.

The dream of Pilate's wife

Another dream appears in the Passion narrative. While Pilate sits in judgement, his wife sends word to him to have nothing to do with that righteous man, because that day she has suffered much in a dream because of him (Matthew 27:19). The Gospel says nothing more, but later tradition gave the woman a name, Claudia Procula, and in some Eastern Churches she is venerated as a saint.

In the Acts of the Apostles Peter, on the day of Pentecost, quotes the prophet Joel: the young will see visions and the old will dream dreams. Later Paul sees at night a man of Macedonia begging him to come over to Macedonia, and from that vision springs the first Christian mission in Europe. It is a decisive passage in Luke's narrative.

For the Fathers of the Church these episodes confirmed that God could use sleep to speak to human beings. At the same time, authors such as Gregory the Great urged caution, distinguishing dreams that come from God from those born of hunger, of a full stomach or of illusions, a distinction that would accompany Christian reflection for centuries.