Revelation of the Magi: Magi reduced?

This gets a little detailed and really doesn’t fit on my personal blog, so I will throw my breadcrumb out to the web from here and see if anything returns.

In the English translation of Revelation of the Magi there is a noticeable change in the story at the point where the people of Shir eat the Magi's food. Dr. Brent Landau discusses the very real possibility that the Judas Thomas episode was added in order to bring the Magi closer into the fold of Church tradition.  For example we see in chapter 29 that it becomes necessary for the Magi's experience to be validated through their contact with an apostolic figure and through participation in recognizable Christian worship.

I wondered; if the appended, 3rd person story treats Christ in a different manner than the original, then is it possible the addition also treats the Magi differently?  After all, it is not until the appended story that the Magi are referred to as "nobles" in a more civic sense (rowrboneh) as opposed to being religious leaders or mystics.

Not that "nobles" isn't used at all, but if we start in the original story we see in section 17:2 the word "nobles" (, rowrbonih) is used when the Magi arrive in Jerusalem and their presence disturbs the city (see Matthew 2:1-23) but it is used here to describe Jerusalem's civic leaders, not the Magi: "And its nobles and rulers were disturbed and troubled..."

In Section 21:2 (also in the original story) the word appears again in a different form ().  I'm not sure but I think it means "mighty things",  referring to the mysterious events the Magi heard and saw.

Then we get to the appended story. In section 28:4, the new author uses the word d-rowrboneh () to refer to the generic nobles of the East: "And there was great joy in the entire land of the East, and the nobles, and the poor, and the women and children from the entire land were gathered together in the love of our Lord before those nobles were called Magi (p.81)." This last reference is the very first time the Magi are directly called nobles with a civic or at least a generic connotation.

In the following chapter the Magi become aware of the arrival of Judas Thomas. "And when the nobles had heard that Judas had gone there, as the light that appeared to them had said..." (29:2) Again the Magi are referred to as nobles (, rowrboneh). This is the last instance of the word.  That doesn’t give us much of a sampling of words to compare across the original and the appended stories. So what about the use of the word magi itself?

By my reckoning "magi" (magoshe) appears only seven times. (By the way, there is an interesting footnote regarding the word magi in the dissertation version). The appended Judas Thomas story uses the word only two out of those seven instances. The last instance was added by the eighth-century author who compiled the Chronicle of Zuqnin ("The story about the Magi and their gifts has finished."[32:4]).

So the only time the word Magi us used by the author of the appended story is in the following verse:

"And there was great joy in the entire land of the East, and the nobles, and the poor, and women, and children from the entire land were gathered together in the love of our Lord before those nobles who were called Magi." (28:4). If the author of the appended section considered the Magi to be important religious mystics , then why this awkward wording all of a sudden?  Its almost as if they are being introduced as Magi for the first time.

I simply thought it would be interesting to compare how words were used to describe the Magi across the two sections, the original and the appended.  On the other hand, maybe this isn't significant at all. Perhaps my amateurism is causing me to see something that is not there. I still wonder if- in rectifying the Magi's experience with the Church's tradition- this slight change in terminology was one way for the second author to reduce the religious importance of the Magi.