In the Nativity Story, the Bible never says there were 3 wise men.
Everyone knows the Nativity Story depicting the birth of Jesus Christ and the three wise men. Yes? Well apparently not. What we all have come to know as three wise men from the east who rode on camels and followed a star to Bethlehem with gifts for the newborn Christ in a manger might not be the whole truth.
As far as is known, the Gospel of Mathew is the only book in the bible which includes the mention of any wise men, or Magi. The Gospel of Luke mentions only shepherds visiting the baby Jesus whilst the others do not mention any wise men. The exact quote from Mathew 2:1 is:
Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem.
So although there were wise men throughout the passage, there’s never a correlation between this and the number 3. The assumption I think that there were three men was because there were three gifts of gold frankincense and myrrh but this doesn’t mean that there had to have only been three wise men to carry these.
Furthermore some of you will know that the wise men’s names were Gaspar, Melchior and Balthasar however none of these names have been mentioned either. Also there is nothing in the bible to say that they rode camels or indeed any animal to Bethlehem. Further reading also shows that the wise men did not visit the manger of Jesus but instead had arrived “into the house” and saw “a young child with Mary”. The Bible only mentions that it were the Shepherds who’d visited Jesus in the manger. Again throughout the Bible, there’s no mentions that these wise men were “Three Kings” as is commonly taught and preached. So as far as we can tell there could have been 10 wise men walking on foot to the house of Jesus and laying three gifts for him.
For the record this is in no uncertain way aimed at disproving the story of the Nativity play or meant to paint any negativity. It’s just a factual article that came by one of my RSS readers and on further looking into, I found was quite interesting and worth posting under Oh my God, Seriously? (OMGS).
EDIT (16/07/2010): Recently received word from a good friend that the mention of the wise men as “kings” is indeed referred to in Isaiah 60:3:
Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.
Thanks for the correction!
