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What happened to the Wise Men?

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Tom Sawyer

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In the Bible, the three wise men pop in on Jesus, leave some gifts and then, as far as I know, just wander off and are never heard from again.

Are there actually any Christian references regarding what happened to them after that or what they got up to?
 
Different traditions tell different stories, but there's nothing canonical. The bible also doesn't specify how many there were, just that there were three gifts given.
 
rednoise said:
Different traditions tell different stories, but there's nothing canonical. The bible also doesn't specify how many there were, just that there were three gifts given.
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So 18 of you brought frankincense and 12 myrhh. At least one of you brought a useful gift.
 
I think they read the press coverage in Matthew and asked to be taken out. They were in town looking for tail/their camel had a flat tire/they were there to sell Medical Mutual to Joseph....accounts vary. Since when does a star stand over ONE HOUSE and lead you there? I mean, I expect my Bible to make sense!!! Come on, Matthew.
 
The story is obviously a symbolic invention. How wise do are you to bring gold, frankincense and myrrh to a newborn freezing to death in a stable? I'm more interested in how long the kid stayed there. Must have been a while, until he could walk or something like that. He looks pretty well along in some of those pictures. Newborns don't look like that, not for quite a while, months anyway.
 
Bad fiction stock characters: They show up with no explanation or back story, perform a plot-necessary function, in this case informing Herod that the child had been born, and then disappear without a trace.

There are a lot of bad fiction stock characters in the Bible.

It does leave plenty of room for imagination though. Wasn't there some European royal house that claimed descent from Balthazar?
 
Most of the details of Jesus's birth and early child hood suffer from this. A holy child is born to a virgin, wise men give gifts, it is a holy day!

But nothing else is written about the kid until he is 20ish?
 
Oh there was plenty, it just was left out of the Canon because Jesus as a boy was kind of a dick.
 
Any of you ever read the book "Lamb" by Christopher Moore? It's about Jesus' childhood. Freakin' hysterical. Completely heretical. But very funny. "Peter, you are as dumb as a rock. But upon this rock, I will build my church."
 
"Don't worry too much about the myrrh next time!"

Tom Sawyer said:
Are there actually any Christian references regarding what happened to them after that or what they got up to?
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Yes, Wikipedia (which is at least as reliable as the Bible) has an article about their adventures in church tradition.

EricK said:
So 18 of you brought frankincense and 12 myrhh. At least one of you brought a useful gift.
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[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzqoTuholfg[/YOUTUBE]
 
joedad said:
The story is obviously a symbolic invention. How wise do are you to bring gold, frankincense and myrrh to a newborn freezing to death in a stable? I'm more interested in how long the kid stayed there. Must have been a while, until he could walk or something like that. He looks pretty well along in some of those pictures. Newborns don't look like that, not for quite a while, months anyway.
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Matthew doesn't have anything about a stable. That's only in Luke.
 
I prefer to think it was a Motel 6 with a rust-colored shag carpet and cigarette burns all over the nightstand. A much-stained comforter. A Gideon Bible (of just the O.T., to keep it real) that had never been opened (to keep it exactly real.) I'd take a stable over that.
 
I like how the Wise Men, after they have visited Baby Jesus, are heading back to tell Herod exactly where they found him. (Dunn dunn dunnnnnnn!)

But on the way, they have a dream (All of them? The exact same dream? Seriously?) that Herod is up to no good, so they go back home by a different route and are never heard from again.

So....how did Matthew know about this dream?

"Eyewitnesses" indeed.
 
James Brown said:
I like how the Wise Men, after they have visited Baby Jesus, are heading back to tell Herod exactly where they found him. (Dunn dunn dunnnnnnn!)

But on the way, they have a dream (All of them? The exact same dream? Seriously?) that Herod is up to no good, so they go back home by a different route and are never heard from again.

So....how did Matthew know about this dream?

"Eyewitnesses" indeed.
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Duh. He dreamed it.

That being said, I have to give a big fuck you to the Wise Men. They come to see this kid who's so damned important but then when they learn that this guy with a big army is going to want to go after him, they just amble off instead of trying to warn the kid's parents or anything.

Wankers. :mad:
 
My understanding was that they were Zoroastrians, from the areas of what are now Jordan or Syria. Zoroastrians were very keen on astronomy, and more so on astrology. They were very rich, since they controlled the silk route and other trade routes east, and their religious beliefs were very similar to the Jews of the time.

Petra was literally a hidden city, so them heading off and never being seen again is entirely plausible.

Whether they were a real event or stock characters is another matter. They act in a fairly typical fashion.
 
Togo said:
Whether they were a real event or stock characters is another matter. They act in a fairly typical fashion.
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They make one pilgrimage, then go home, fingers crossed in the hopes that the Jesus character outlives the looming doom they foresee?

Don't get me wrong, i like that they're IN the Books, they just act disinterested in the fate of someone so important to them earlier in the episode.
 
Ya, it would be like Dumbledore going through all the trouble to hide Harry Potter until he's old enough to go to Hogwarts and then say "Well, they're teaching him how to be a wizard, so I'm sure that the whole Voldemort thing will just work itself out and I can hit the beach".

It doesn't make much sense for them to just wander off.
 
Tom Sawyer said:
Ya, it would be like Dumbledore going through all the trouble to hide Harry Potter until he's old enough to go to Hogwarts and then say "Well, they're teaching him how to be a wizard, so I'm sure that the whole Voldemort thing will just work itself out and I can hit the beach".

It doesn't make much sense for them to just wander off.
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Yeah. You didn't know young Jesus, did you?
 
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