Neglected Evidence For The Magi Account

I've been addressing several lines of evidence for the account in different contexts over the years, and I want to put them together in one place. Some of the posts I'll be linking below address other topics as well, so you may have to search within a post to find the relevant information.

- It's important to know who wrote the account and to have more information about him and the circumstances in which he wrote, such as when he authored the gospel. Here's a collection of articles we've written about those issues.

- We have good evidence for the historical genre of the gospel and the magi account in particular.

- The inclusion of magi in the account is significant for a few reasons. Magi had a highly negative reputation at the time, Matthew could have used an alternative group with a better reputation instead, and one such group had a close relationship with Abraham, a figure Matthew and the early Christians in general thought highly of. George van Kooten explains:

"The magi are still called 'magi,' [in Matthew] which is remarkable for two reasons. Firstly, the framing of the Bethlehem narrative within the context of Matthew's depiction of Jesus as 'the son of Abraham' [Matthew 1:1] would have made it very easy for Matthew to have styled the magi as Chaldeans, who were primarily known as astronomers and would also have better fitted Abraham's original background amongst the Chaldeans. Secondly, as we have seen, the magi were receiving bad press in the Flavian era as magicians. The fact that Matthew did not use the term 'Chaldeans' seems to suggest that he received earlier, specific information about magi and consciously decided to maintain it." (in Peter Barthel and George van Kooten, edd., The Star Of Bethlehem And The Magi [Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2015], 622)

Most of what's been said of Matthew here is applicable to other early Christians as well, including ones who lived earlier than when Matthew wrote.

- Critics often suggest that Matthew fabricated the magi account based on one or more passages in the Old Testament, but his scripture citations make that kind of scenario very unlikely.

- None of the Old Testament passages critics cite as a source that motivated the fabrication of the magi account and no combination of such passages is sufficient to explain what Matthew wrote.

- We have corroboration of the Slaughter of the Innocents from non-Christian sources.

- The two years reference in Matthew 2:16 is unlikely to have been made up and is inconsistent with popular skeptical arguments about the magi account. Read the comments section of the thread as well, since there's a lot of material there.