{"id":15974,"date":"2017-12-14T20:37:52","date_gmt":"2017-12-15T01:37:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/?p=15974"},"modified":"2017-12-14T20:37:52","modified_gmt":"2017-12-15T01:37:52","slug":"mystery-of-the-magi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/2017\/12\/mystery-of-the-magi\/","title":{"rendered":"Mystery of the Magi"},"content":{"rendered":"

At first I wasn\u2019t much interested in Fr. Dwight Longenecker\u2019s new book Mystery of the Magi: The Quest to Identify the Three Wise Men<\/a>. I thought I already pretty well knew the subject. I knew about the mythic accumulations that have built up on the story.<\/p>\n

Still after seeing some reviews I was intrigued. So I made this one of my Audible picks this month.<\/p>\n

While again I knew some of the basic outline regarding what we didn\u2019t know about these men of indeterminate number, I didn\u2019t realize how much we could know about them. In many ways this book is almost like a detective novel. Shifting the facts to see our way forward.<\/p>\n

I liked just about everything regarding the presentation of this information. For one it is totally engaging and it takes a deep dive into the information we have from the Gospel of Matthew and uses the tools of history to give us a fuller context. I liked that he allows for multiple interpretations of the information. That while he lays a solid case for where these Magi came from, he is presenting a case and wants to know more himself. This book really lets you see the Magi in a new light and to have a much better historical context.<\/p>\n

There was also some coverage regarding various theories regarding the Star of Bethlehem and it does a good job of covering in summary form some of these theories. The only weakness I found in this was a dependence of Herod the Great dying in 4 BC which has been commonly held. This dating is important in regards to various theories based on astronomy. Jimmy Akin has a good article regarding this dating<\/a> which puts he death a couple years later.<\/p>\n

Thoroughly enjoyable read.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At first I wasn\u2019t much interested in Fr. Dwight Longenecker\u2019s new book Mystery of the Magi: The Quest to Identify the Three Wise Men. I thought I already pretty well…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15974"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15974\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15975,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15974\/revisions\/15975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}