Magi Who Arrived Late

My last few posts have been addressing various approaches Christians can take to begin making an argument for a traditional Christian view of Jesus' childhood. In this post, I want to focus on the issues surrounding the star of Bethlehem, a subject that gets a lot of media attention every year and a lot of attention in other contexts. I wouldn't recommend starting with the argument I'm going to outline below if you're having a discussion about Christmas issues in general. But if the discussion is about the star and matters that are closely related, then the argument I'm about to summarize would be a good one to begin with.

It's useful to focus on the two issues highlighted in the title of this post. Why does Matthew mention magi rather than some other individual or group? And why do they arrive late (Matthew 2:16)? For a further discussion of those two issues and more evidence for the star material in Matthew's gospel, see here. Combining the two issues I'm focused on, such as I've done in the title of this post, is a good, concise way of articulating some of the reasons we have for believing Matthew's material on the star and related issues. You can expand on the two issues I've brought up here, such as by adding the other ones discussed in my post linked above, but it's often helpful to begin with a smaller number of issues.