DID YOU KNOW?
The answer
Matthew 2:11 says the magi entered "the house" and saw the child with Mary his mother. Matthew has no manger and no census journey — in his telling the family is simply in Bethlehem, at home, until the flight to Egypt.
Why it’s interesting
Herod's order against boys "two years old and under," timed to the star's first appearance, is why readers ancient and modern have pictured the magi greeting a toddler in a house rather than a newborn in a manger. The kneeling kings of the crèche belong to a merged scene the text never stages.
Scholarly consensus
You can know the Bible.
Not just the stories, but the history, authorship, and scholarship behind it.