Question:
Answer:
Matthew doesn’t say that the wise men, or Magi, were present at Jesus’ birth. He says only that “in the days of Herod the king” the Magi came to Jerusalem, not Bethlehem (see Matt. 2:1). Matthew does tell us that after the Magi failed to return to Herod after visiting Jesus, Herod ordered all of Bethlehem’s male children under the age of two to be killed.
If the Magi had gone the six miles from Jerusalem to visit the newborn Jesus in Bethlehem and had failed to return after a few days, why would Herod need to kill toddlers? This implies that much more time had passed between Jesus’ birth and the Magi failing to return to Herod, thus motivating Herod’s plan to kill any child that could be the young king, who, by the time of the issuance of his brutal decree, might have been two years old.
The Evangelist also never says there were three Magi. That’s a pious tradition that developed based on the three gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh that the Magi brought Jesus. Since the seventh century, the Western Church has recognized these three Magi by the names Gaspar, Melchior, and Balthasar.