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“What does the Bible say about the three wise men?”

The Christmas story as we know it is a composite of information passed on by the writers of two of our four gospels. (Mark and John begin the story of Jesus Christ roughly thirty years in, with John the Baptist.) Matthew’s gospel is where we find the only references in scripture to the wise men.

First things first: the popular formulation in the Christmas carol about them (“three kings of orient”) turns out to be incorrect in as many as three respects. It is certainly wrong in one.

All manner of traditions and assumptions have been added to the Holy Spirit’s version of the story over the years, so it’s understandable we may want to go back to Matthew and see which of these have any factual basis and which are mere fantasy.

We Three Kings of Orient Are ... Not

1/ Three

The number three is a deduction some theologians make from the three different types of gifts these men brought the Lord Jesus: gold, frankincense and myrrh. People like their stories simple. It should be obvious this is not a necessary conclusion. The treasures may have been a collective gift, or some wise men may have contributed treasure of more than one sort. You can find some thoughts about the actual value of their gifts here.

The tradition that the wise men were named Balthazar, Caspar and Melchior comes from a Greek manuscript translated into Latin around AD500. It has no biblical authority. Wikipedia will tell you more if you care.

2/ Kings

Further, these were not kings but magi, a name given by the Babylonians and others to learned men who often advised kings: teachers, priests, physicians, astrologers, prophets and magicians. In scripture, the word appears only in Matthew and Acts. In the latter case, the magos was a sorcerer or false prophet. Magi were often affluent dignitaries but not kings. In view of the fact that this group tracked the path of a celestial body to Israel, odds are the best contextual English translation of magos is “astrologer” or perhaps even “scientist”. They studied the relationship between heavenly bodies and that which they signified on earth.

3/ Orient

Finally, whether they were from the orient depends on how you define that term. “Orient” comes from Latin, and is somewhat imprecise, originally meaning the Near East (the immediate area east of the Mediterranean from Egypt up through Mesopotamia including Israel itself) and later including most of the continent of Asia and even parts of North Africa. That’s an awfully broad region with a lot of options.

The text says they were magi “from the east”. When you read compass directions in scripture, they are usually with reference to the nation of Israel. However, as I discovered last year with verses about the north, we always have to ask the question “North of what exactly?” Sometimes it’s the immediate north (Syria), sometimes the far north (Babylon) and in at least one case perhaps even further north than that. So too with the term “east”. The Greek is anatolē, which simply indicates in the general direction of the rising sun. How far to the east is speculative. Unlike the Hebrew word translated “north”, which gives us some specific examples to consider, NT Greek usage never associates anatolē with any particular geographic locations.

Following a Star

Being astrologers, these learned men saw some significance in an unusual heavenly body that had appeared near where they lived. Something about their studies associated its appearance with the birth of a king, and they felt obliged to travel a significant distance to pay homage to him.

It should be evident they did not follow a literal star. The Greek term aster simply designates a heavenly body more distant than our sun or moon. The Lord Jesus referred to ἐκπίπτοντες ἀστέρες, or “falling stars”. Jude refers to πλανῆται ἀστέρες, or “wandering stars”. Both adjectives imply movement, and both probably meant something more like a comet or meteor than an actual star.

Moreover, unlike ordinary stars that we can chart and locate predictably night after night, this one “appeared” out of nowhere. So then, we are not talking about Sirius or Regulus, but something brighter, closer and orders of magnitude smaller that moved through the heavens. In this respect at least, the scripture is not “unscientific”.

Starting and Stopping

Where the story gets miraculous is in the stopping and starting. Reasonably concerned that following a traveling heavenly body across the night sky might not point them to a sufficiently specific location, the wise men stopped to inquire of King Herod where this child who would be king had been born. It seems they had lost track of the star before arriving at Jerusalem, requiring them to alert Herod and prompting him to fulfill OT prophecy. After consulting the religious authorities to see what the prophets had said about the birthplace of Messiah, Herod pointed them to Bethlehem, whereupon they picked up the traveling “star” again at some point and followed it to the place where the child was, rejoicing at its rediscovery. Finally, the star “came to rest” over the house in which Joseph and Mary were staying, behavior we do not anticipate from our observation of heavenly bodies of any sort.

Such cosmological peculiarities should not trouble Christians. We should hardly expect the constraints of natural laws to apply to a God who spoke the universe (and the laws themselves) into being. The birth of the Lord Jesus was one of a handful of the greatest events in human history. A unique sign from God singling out his incarnate Son is not out of place.

Worship and Trickery

Everybody got his due from the wise men. The Lord Jesus received their worship and their gifts. Having tried to use them for his own evil purposes, Herod was outfoxed by them. The wise men received communication directly from heaven. “Warned in a dream not to return to Herod”, they took another route home.

So then, the Christmas story in general circulation includes almost equal measures of truth, flat-out error and wild speculation, all of which comes from a mere eighteen verses in Matthew.