Every nativity set tells the same story. Three kings, crowns on, kneel at the manger. Camels wait outside. The shepherds are on the other side, the star is overhead, and everyone arrived on the same night. The carol even counts them: We Three Kings.
So here is a question. How many wise men does the Bible say there were?
Then read Matthew 2 again. Slowly.
What Matthew says
The wise men appear in one Gospel, Matthew, and in one chapter. This is how they arrive.
In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, magi from the east came to Jerusalem, asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star in the east and have come to pay him homage.”
Matthew 2:1-2
Magi. Plural. Matthew never says how many. He never says they were kings. He never puts a camel in the story. He says a group of people who studied the sky came a long way, asking a question.
Two could have carried the gifts. So could twelve.
Where “three” came from
What Matthew does count is the presents.
Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
Matthew 2:11
Three gifts. Somewhere in the centuries of retelling, three gifts became three givers. The number rode in on the presents.
Where the crowns and camels came from
The Old Testament has pictures of foreign kings bringing gold to Jerusalem, and readers have set them beside Matthew's visitors for a very long time.
May the kings of Tarshish and of the isles render him tribute; may the kings of Sheba and Seba bring gifts. May all kings fall down before him, all nations give him service.
Psalm 72:10-11
A multitude of camels shall cover you, the young camels of Midian and Ephah; all those from Sheba shall come. They shall bring gold and frankincense and shall proclaim the praise of the Lord.
Isaiah 60:6
Kings bowing. Gold and frankincense arriving. Camels. Read those alongside Matthew for enough centuries and the magi pick up crowns and a caravan. The Christmas picture is a group portrait painted from several books at once.
Later tradition finished the job and gave them names: Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar. The Gospel gives none of it.
They never saw the manger
Look at where the magi find the baby.
On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they knelt down and paid him homage.
Matthew 2:11
A house. Matthew has no manger, no census journey, and no shepherds. In his telling the family is simply in Bethlehem, at home, until they have to flee to Egypt.
The manger belongs to Luke. So do the shepherds. Luke has no star and no magi. No Gospel contains both visits, and no verse anywhere puts shepherds and wise men in the same room. The nativity scene that gathers everyone together is a merger. It has a real history of its own: it took off after Francis of Assisi staged a living one in 1223. But it is not a scene either Gospel stages.
They may not have seen a newborn
One more detail, and it is the one most people have read past a hundred times. After the magi leave, Herod gives an order.
When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the magi, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the magi.
Matthew 2:16
Two years old or under, timed to when the star first appeared. Readers ancient and modern have taken that as a clue that the magi arrived well after the birth, and found a toddler in a house rather than a baby in a manger. Matthew doesn't say so outright. He gives you Herod's arithmetic and lets you do the rest.
What the text keeps
Strip away what tradition added and Matthew's own scene is quieter and stranger. An unnumbered company of stargazers from somewhere east. A long walk. A detour through a frightened king's palace. A house in a small town. Gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Then a dream, and a different road home.
None of this makes the nativity set wrong to own. It makes it a tradition, with a history you can trace. The Gospel counts the presents and lets the visitors go uncounted.
For further exploration
Three things to examine, with the verse open:
- Count the wise men in Matthew 2. Then count the gifts. What does the number 3 apply to?
- Find the manger in Matthew. There isn't one. Then find the magi in Luke. Find which Gospel each piece of the nativity set came from.
- Read Herod's order in Matthew 2:16. Ask why he chose two years, and what that suggests about when the visit happened.
It doesn't have to change the meaning. The point is to read what is on the page, and to notice how much of the picture came from somewhere else.
Sources
- Matthew 2:1-16; Luke 2:8-16; Psalm 72:10-11; Isaiah 60:6 (NRSVue)
- The New Oxford Annotated Bible, notes on Matthew 2
- Raymond E. Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament, on the infancy narratives