Chapter Two - Quick Notes and Facts

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  Note that we only guess at three magi because they bring three gifts. Later tradition has given them names (Balthasar, Caspar and Melchior) and ethnicities (one from Europe, one from Asia and one from Africa.)


• A great deal of ink has been spilled trying to connect the ‘star’ with a known astronomical phenonmenon. It could have been any of a number of events, or none of them, and merely a device in the way the author tells the story.


• The gifts are all symbols which tell us of the child’s significance and fate: gold is a gift fit for a king; franckincense for worship of a god; myrrh was a common extract used in preparing the dead. The song, “We Three Kings” has a verse that explains each one.


• There is no mention of this massacre of children in any other contemporary source.


• It seems, in Matthew’s narrative, that they lived in Bethlehem before the birth and then re-settled in Nazareth when they returned from Egypt.