Cross Word Books

Gold, Frankincense, Myrrh, And A Whole Lot Of Geopolitics

• Michele McAloon • Season 4 • Episode 152

Share episode

Send us a text

Forget the tinsel and crowns—let’s meet the Magi where history lives. We sit down with Fr. Dwight Longenecker, author of The Mystery of the Magi, to rethink the famous journey to Bethlehem through the lenses of archaeology, geopolitics, and Scripture. Instead of mystical monarchs following a neon star, we explore a compelling alternative: Nabataean court advisors—astrologers and diplomats—from Petra, navigating trade routes, Roman power, and Herod’s volatile court.

We dig into why Matthew includes the Magi while Luke doesn’t, and how reading the Bible with historical context can strip away later legends without losing wonder. Fr. Longenecker maps the power players of the era—Rome, Herod the Great, and the Nabataeans—and explains how Aretas IV’s shaky throne and dependence on Roman goodwill could have sparked a diplomatic mission to Judea. The gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh move from pure symbolism to economic fingerprints of Arabian trade, pointing to a real origin and a recognizable protocol of royal homage.

And the star? We weigh leading theories: supernatural sign, astrological reading, or rare astronomical event. Rather than a celestial spotlight dragging caravans across dunes, Matthew suggests discerning signs that prompt a journey to Jerusalem and then to Bethlehem. Along the way, we call out Gnostic embellishments—like the “burning baby in the sky”—and return to a leaner, stronger account where faith and reason meet. If you care about biblical history, Epiphany, or how ancient trade networks intersected with theology, this conversation brings the Nativity’s most enigmatic visitors into crisp focus.

If the reframe sparks your curiosity, follow the show, share this episode with a friend who loves history, and leave a review with your take on who the Magi really were.

Michele McAloon:

Welcome to Crossword, where cultural clues lead to the truth of the word. And my name is Michele McAloon, and I'm hoping everybody had a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year who celebrate the Gregorian calendar. For those who the Eastern Orthodox who celebrate on the Julian calendar, Christmas is yet to come, and Christmas comes on what we call Epiphany or January 6th, Three Kings Day. So for the Eastern Orthodox, that is their celebration of Christmas. So I thought it very much appropriate to educate ourselves once again on who the Three Kings really were and what Epiphany, which is January 6th, is really about. This is an older interview I had with a man named Father Dwight Longenecker, and he has written a book from Rugby History on the Three Kings. I hope you enjoy this interview. I will have new interviews coming out. I have some great books and great authors for the new year. God bless. Thank you. Today we are speaking with Father Dwight Longenecker, author of The Mystery of the Magi, The Quest to Identify the Three Wise Men published by Regnory History. Father Longenecker was brought up in an evangelical home in Pennsylvania. After graduating from the fundamentalist Bob Jones University with a degree in Spanish and English, he studied theology at Oxford University and was eventually even ordained as an Anglican priest, where he served as a curate, a school chaplain in Cambridge, and a county parson on the Isle of Wight. Realizing that he and the Anglican Church, and that is a familiar path that I've been down to, were on Divergent Paths in 1995. He and his family were received into the Catholic Church for 10 years. He continued to live in England, but then in 2006, the door opened to return to the USA and be ordained as a Catholic priest. He now serves as pastor of Our Lady at the Rosary Church in Greenville, South Carolina. And we are so very thankful to have him here to speak with us today about the Three Kings. Welcome, Father Longenecker.

Father Dwight Longenecker:

Thank you.

Michele McAloon:

Thank you. Thank you for taking time out of your very busy schedule during this Advent season. So let's start with the very beginning. Fact or fiction, the three kings. And what we are talking specifically is about the story that comes from the second chapter of the Gospel of St. Matthew.

Father Dwight Longenecker:

An awful lot of Bible scholars nowadays would like to say that the story of the Magi, as you mentioned, the three kings, is really just a beautiful fairy tale which was invented by the early church long after the birth of Jesus. And you can understand why. It has a lot of fairy tale elements. Mystical kings from a faraway land in the East who f follow a magical star on a long and romantic journey across the desert to come and worship this little beautiful little baby and present him rich gifts of gold frankincense and myrrh. It's a wonderful story, but it's been the story that Matthew tells us in his gospel is actually very simple and does not have a lot of the sort of attachments and some of the embroidery that's been added over the centuries.

Michele McAloon:

One of the best parts of your book, actually, in being in sleuthing through the story and trying to find it, separate the fact from the fiction is you actually give a very good instruction on how to read the Bible. So taking this story, the gift of the magi, the three kings, how does it show us how we should read the Bible?

Father Dwight Longenecker:

Well, one of the things we have to understand is that the Bible has been read by Christians for the last 2,000 years. For a lot of that time, for the first 1,500 years, basically, they were reading it in a comparative state of ignorance about the conditions in the early church, the conditions in Israel, the conditions of Judaism at the time of our Lord's life and birth, life, ministry, death, and resurrection. And so they naturally were reading the Bible through their own cultural historical situation. Therefore, they read into the stories an awful lot of detail which aren't actually in the stories, but which helped them to make sense of the stories. So, for instance, if the Bible mentions shepherds, people in Europe in the Middle Ages would understand that in terms of their shepherds, simple farmers living on the hillside. But of course, the job of being a shepherd in the ancient Middle East was a very different matter. It was a very different world, it was a very different kind of job which they were doing. Even the breeds of sheep were different. And so, because of 2,000 years of reading the Bible through the cultural lens of the people lived in, a lot of these traditions and understandings have been filtered down and come to us as part of the tradition. We are in a situation now in the 21st century of having more information about the ancient world that Jesus lived in than ever before because of archaeology, forensics, historical research, we now understand more about the politics, the culture, and the time of Jesus than they did all through the Middle Ages.

Michele McAloon:

Okay, let me ask you a question. This story happens in the Gospel of Matthew. Why is it important to the story that we understand who Matthew is, who the man or the man, or maybe even the amalgamation of people who were Matthew, if that's even correct for me to say, who that was and why that is important to this story?

Father Dwight Longenecker:

It's important because we can understand who Matthew is. We can understand what his particular context is, what position he's writing from. So it's interesting, for instance, that Matthew records the visit of the Magi to the Christ child, but Saint Luke, the other gospel writer who tells us about the birth of Jesus, does not. And this is because Matthew is writing from Judea very soon after the actual events of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. And therefore, he's dealing with particular issues and particular questions which the early Christians in Judea would have been concerned about. And the Magi story is an important part of that.

Michele McAloon:

Okay, one of the big actors in this story is actually the Middle East. And you give such a great description of the Middle East, and you call it the sixth-paragraph tour of the Middle East. Can you summarize that really quickly? Because that is really key to understanding this story. Because, like the incarnate Jesus Christ, it happens at a specific time, a specific place in human history.

Father Dwight Longenecker:

Right. In the Middle East, basically, the nation of Israel or Palestine, as it was then, is right in the middle of the upheavals of various very major civilizations. You have the civilization basically of Babylon or Persia, which is to the east, present-day Iran and Iraq. And then you have the great civilization of Egypt, which is there in North Africa. And then you have the competing civilizations of first Greece and now and in the time of Jesus' birth, the Roman Empire. And these four great sort of civilizations are jockeying for power. And Jerusalem, the land of Israel, is right in the middle geographically of all these areas. One of the other major players, which a lot of people underestimate, which I bring out in the book, is the nation of the Nabataeans. The Nabataeans are a civilization which are occupying basically the Arabian Peninsula, sections of Northeast Africa and Yemen, the area of present-day Yemen, and they are a major trading power, major economic power because they're controlling this geographical area. And so they are basically very wealthy traders. They're not a very important political and military power, but they're controlling a huge chunk of the economy of the ancient Middle East because they're controlling the trade routes from Yemen, the ports in Yemen, which were receiving ships coming across the Indian Ocean from India and China, and putting their goods onto camel caravans that were going across the Arabian desert to the Mediterranean port of Gaza, from which they unloaded their goods onto ships which went out to the rest of the Roman Empire. You can consider them to be like a major shipping company today or a major trucking company today. They may not have had political power and military power, but they had huge economic power.

Michele McAloon:

You know, I've studied some Bible archaeology, and I have to tell you, I am ashamed to say I have never heard of the Nebataeans. The Nebataeans were kind of centered around what we know in modern Jordan as Petra. That's the Indiana Jones, the church that's carved into the rock. And so this was a group of people that were actually, as you write in the book, they were nomadic, but they became very mixed with the Babylonian, the Babylonians, and eventually even the Jewish population. Can you explain how that melting pot actually blends into this story?

Father Dwight Longenecker:

Yeah, the Nabataeans emerge in the sort of second or third centuries BC as an identifiable group, and they're made up of three different groups that, as you just mentioned, the nomadic tribes of the Arabian desert, people like the Edomites and the Midianites, who were descended, they claimed descent from Father Abraham. The important power of the Babylonians or the Persians, which are, again, present-day Iran and Iraq, just to the north of the Arabian Peninsula. And then after Jerusalem is conquered by the Babylonians in the 8th century BC, a lot of the Jews flee not only to Babylon, but they also flee to the cities of Arabia. And they bring their entrepreneurial spirit and they bring their knowledge to sort of bring together the Babylonian influence, the Arabian tribes, and the Jewish immigrants, and the Nabataeans emerge from this as this economic superpower.

Michele McAloon:

First thing, what are the Magi? And why do you think it's a mistake to actually uh I not the mistake, but maybe the three wise men or the three kings were something more than the magi in the traditional sense of the word.

Father Dwight Longenecker:

Yeah. The may the magi as it's pronounced.

Michele McAloon:

I'm sorry, Magi. I'm sorry.

Father Dwight Longenecker:

Yeah. The Magi were, and I go into the history of the Magi in the book. The Magi were originally rooted in what is present-day Iran and Iraq, and they were originally just like witch doctors or shaman in the early primitive tribes that emerged from Iran and Iraq. And they eventually got great power in the kingdom of Babylon as it emerged. In the book of Daniel, in the Old Testament, for instance, it mentions the Magi and the wise men, and they were soothsayers, dreamtellers, astrologers, men of occult lore and occult wisdom, and they became counselors to the king in Babylon, and they generally were known around the ancient Middle East as these wise men, as I as I say, astrologers, fortune tellers, people who were in touch with the gods and shamans and witch doctors who assumed great power because they could tell the king what was going to happen, they could foretell the future, they could interpret dreams and so forth. Well, as history developed, the magi emigrate from the Babylonian Empire for various complicated reasons, and they begin to settle elsewhere in the ancient Middle East. So by the time Matthew is writing, in the beginning of the Christian era, most kings around the ancient Middle East would have had what they called magi, but this time it's become a general term for any wise counselor to the king. And so all of the uh monarchs of the ancient Middle East would have had their magi, their counselors.

Michele McAloon:

You brought something up that too about prophecy. And a lot of naysayers, a lot of biblical scholars, secular biblical scholars will say, Well, wait a second, all the story of Matthew is is he is just writing a story that's kind of edited to an earlier version uh from the prophet of Isaiah. Where does prophecy play in this story?

Father Dwight Longenecker:

Well, prophecy has to be understood in under various different terms. One form of prophecy is which people are really interested in, are prophets who foretell the future. Okay, people like Nostradamus and other prophets who foretell the future. And some biblical interpreters are very enthusiastic about tracing prophecies in the Old Testament that are fulfilled in the life of Christ. And certainly prophecies are fulfilled in the life of Christ, but the role of the prophets in the Old Testament was much more that of, like John the Baptist, fiery preachers who told the king what's what and proclaimed the word of the Lord to those who were in rebellion against him. That was the role of the prophets. Now, some of the prophets' prophecies do are fulfilled in the life of Jesus, and Matthew echoes some of those prophecies which are fulfilled in the birth and the life of Jesus. But it's wrong to understand Matthew as simply cherry-picking prophecies that he wants to show are being fulfilled. Instead, he is showing that the life of Jesus in the gospel is a fulfillment of the whole Old Testament, not just particular prophecies which he cherry picks from Isaiah or Jeremiah or the other prophets.

Michele McAloon:

We can't ever get away from the politics. At the time of Jesus' birth, what was the politics between Rome? And I know that I mean asking you more of a complicated question, but how this is actually pertinent to the story, between Rome, Herod, the Nabataeans, what was going on? What was this ferment that was happening?

Father Dwight Longenecker:

That's a good question, and it's actually very important because just like politics tends to take predominance over religion in our world, politics then was, of course, very important as well. Basically, you've got Caesar Augustus, who's the first Roman emperor in Rome, and he appoints Herod the Great as his puppet king in Judea. And Herod is actually part Jewish and part Nabataean. Interestingly, his mother was a Nabataean princess, and during some of the turmoil in the political world during the Roman Civil Wars, during Herod's boyhood and early youth, he was actually brought up in the capital of the Nabataeans at Petra. Jordan, of course, is the, or the Nabataeans are the immediate neighbors to Herod just to the east. And so the Nabataeans are dependent on Herod the Great, who controls the strip of land between their territory and the ports that they need to get to at Gaza on the Mediterranean. Now, Caesar Augustus had just before the time of Jesus' birth, had just given to Herod that chunk of land, including Gaza, the important port to which the Nabataeans needed to get to in order to ship their goods out to the rest of the Roman Empire. So if you look at it in those terms, the Nabataeans needed to stay in the good side of King Herod. Herod was notorious as a cruel, bloodthirsty, paranoid tyrant, and they wanted to stay in his good books, especially good friends with the Roman Emperor. At the same time, the new king in Nabatae, Aretus IV, was very shaky. He had a very shaky claim to the throne of Nabatae and was reliant on Caesar Augustus to validate his claim to his own throne, because he would be another puppet king, puppet king of the Nabataeans.

Michele McAloon:

In your book, you assert that the Nabataeans, the three, or we don't even really know how many, I think I think that number was never established, but that uh the the people who went to eventually go visit Christ in Bethlehem were actually basically maybe could have been diplomats coming from Nabataean to Herod to try to appease Herod to a certain degree.

Father Dwight Longenecker:

Yes, my theory is that these Magi were Magi in the court of Aretus IV, the Nabataean king. We know that the Nabataean religion was involved with stargazing, they were involved in astrology, and we know have archaeological evidence that the Nabataean religion was actually that of stargazers. So the Magi, my theory is that these magi were the Magi at the court of Aretus IV, and they advised him of the birth of a newborn king of the Jews, which they had ascertained from studying the astrological signs. And he says to them, Well, why don't you take some gifts to King Herod, who's the king of the Jews, because obviously he must have had a newborn son or grandson. And so he sends these magi on a diplomatic mission to present these gifts to King Herod. And we know from the ancient world that it was a commonplace practice for one king to present gifts to another king, gifts of homage, especially special personal times like a wedding or the birth of a new heir or something like that.

Michele McAloon:

That brings up two questions here. Let's talk about what astrological phenomena do scientists believe happen? You talk about Jupiter, talk about, but there's been some pretty extensive studies into trying to figure out exactly was there an astrological, astronomical, excuse me, astronomical event that happened around what four, five, six BC. Or yeah.

Father Dwight Longenecker:

Yes. In fact, this question, what was the star of Bethlehem, seems to be obsessed people much more than who were the wise men, which is what my book goes into. I do give a chapter to the to the star itself, but I don't go into great detail because actually it's a very complicated question. And there's a whole load of different books with different theories by different astronomers about what the star of Bethlehem could have been. Again, because of modern technology, we have the means through computer technology to study the stars and the placement of the stars in the ancient world as nobody ever did before. So therefore, there's many more theories about what the star could have been. Basically, there's three options. One is the star was a supernatural sign which God put in the heavens to guide the wise men.

Speaker 2:

Okay.

Father Dwight Longenecker:

Second is the wise men were actually astrologers, and they were studying the movement of the stars and the movement of the planets in relationship with the stars in order to ascertain the future. Now we know that in the ancient world astrology was very commonplace, and most kings had astrologers within their court to try to help them to foretell the future. And the third option is that it was an astronomical sign, a natural sign, which was unusual in the heavens, and that the astronomers saw this sign and it somehow or other led them to Bethlehem. I'm actually of the opinion that it was the second of these three, and that the wise men were astrologers, and they saw particular alignments of the planets and the stars, which helped them to determine and discern that a newborn king was born to the Jews.

Michele McAloon:

I think in this past year there was some kind of like big supernova. And I remember reading that they believe it the one of the last times it happened was around that this time period. I don't know if there's anything to that. It was something that hit the East Coast. I think it was a the perfect alignment of a solar eclipse.

Father Dwight Longenecker:

There are various different theories. All of them, in my opinion, have something going for them, and all of them have something going against them. So it's up to anyone who's interested in this sort of thing to read up on it. But there's l a good number of books and good number of articles about what that could have been. Could it have been a supernova? Was it a comet? Was it a particular alignment of stars and the and planets which gave astrologers the sign? There's various different theories about that.

Michele McAloon:

Let's talk about the frankincense, incense, and myrrh. Frankin wait, gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Tell us a little bit about the history of these gifts and why these gifts are actually significant to the story. You sort of almost answered the question, but these actual material gifts are extremely important and were important to these societies as you write.

Father Dwight Longenecker:

I think they're vitally important for trying to understand who the wise men were and where they came from. And to do this, we have to understand a little bit more about the tradition in the ancient world of kings giving uh gifts of homage to other kings. In the ancient world, we have lots of evidence to say that basically one king or emperor uh would give gifts to another king uh which were gifts of homage. So, for instance, if uh King George was going to invade King Thomas's territory, King Thomas to avoid his invasion, would uh preempt the invasion by giving him rich gifts. Or uh after King George did invade, he would demand of King Thomas that King Thomas gave him rich gifts of homage, rich gifts showing that he was uh subjugated by by the invasion. So these gifts would take place very commonly and most usually uh the gif kings would give rich gifts which were typical of their country or their territory. So we find, for instance, uh the rulers in uh Africa giving gifts of slaves, giving gifts of ebony, giving gifts of ivory, giving gifts from which were natural, and rich gifts from their particular territory. We find in the ancient world, for instance, that the Arabian tribes would very often give gifts of camels to other kings, because camels were one of the things which they bred and which was one of the things which was typical of their territory. Now, gold in the ancient world, the richest and the finest gold was actually mined in the area of uh southwest Arabian Peninsula. You might remember the stories of the mines of King Solomon. These mines of gold were actually known in the ancient world, and so Arabia was known for having the finest gold in the ancient world. Also, frankincense and myrrh uh are taken from the sap from bushes which only grow in the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa, northeastern Africa. So this is the area controlled by the Nabataeans, therefore, gold, frankincense, and myrrh are rich gifts typical of the Nabataean territory. They controlled the trade in gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Therefore, when they gave the gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, they're indicative of where the magi actually came from. They came from Arabia.

Michele McAloon:

I love this story because I ultimately believe, and I think this is along with the magisterium, that uh God speaks to us through our reason, through our human reason. So our human machinations as you talk about it, that we see things in the Bible through our uh our humanity, through our ability to reason. And how you lay this story out and how you lay the history out, uh it is it's it follows such a great order and with such great plausibility that it speaks to our reason. In researching this story, has it changed your faith at all?

Father Dwight Longenecker:

In a way, it has. It's strengthened my belief that the gospel accounts are rooted in history, and that over the years uh we have embroidered the stories and added an awful lot to the stories from our own understanding and our own culture, which are not actually part of the scripture, but that Matthew's account and Luke's account can be relied on as being rooted in histor real historical events.

Michele McAloon:

One of the things that's very interesting in your book, too, you talk about the distortion of the story due to Gnosticism. And Gnosticism is kind of magic, it's only certain people have uh uh access to information, and the story became distorted because of that. And we still have Gnosticism today as a heresy that is running rampant. It's the cult, the new age. It's really interesting that it was operative and still operative today in our understanding of reality, right?

Father Dwight Longenecker:

It is, and an awful lot of the things which we have assume about the Magi and about the Christmas story aren't actually in the gospel account. So, for instance, the idea that the wise men followed a magical star step by step across the desert sands, uh that's a wonderful part of the story, but it's not actually in Matthew's gospel. This invaded the story, was added to the story by Gnostic writers in the second and third century. And some of the stories they told were absolutely fabulous and uh bizarre. So one of the stories says that the wise men from a faraway eastern land uh followed a magical burning baby that was burning in the heavens, and this baby provided miracles for them step by step as they went across the desert on their very long journey. And that's where the idea of the magical star that that led them step by step across the desert comes from. It doesn't come from Matthew's gospel. He says the wise men said they saw his star in the east rising in the east, uh, and then they set off for Jerusalem. It doesn't say that they followed the star step by step to Jerusalem.

Michele McAloon:

And the numbers like the three wise men, and there's a lot that goes into that, but a lot of that has been was made up through the centuries, kind of you liken it to the Santa Claus figure. It's so uh different from the original Saint Nicholas that came from southern Italy so uh and Turkey. So Father Longenacker, I really want to thank you for taking time out of a very, very busy Advent schedule. I would really, really encourage the my listeners to get this book. It is a it's a fabulous read. And it's not a hard read, it's very accessible, but it really brings light into the scriptures and it brings light to this wonderful story that actually can be perceived as the truth. What is the truth is much better than the actual story. We've been speaking with Father Dwight Longenecker, author of Mystery of the Magi. Magi. So how do I say that, Father?

Father Dwight Longenecker:

Magi.

Michele McAloon:

Magi, okay. The quest to identify the three wise men published by the fabulous Regneri History. And we would like to wish you a blessed advent father and a very Merry Christmas.

Father Dwight Longenecker:

Thank you for the time. Thank you very much for good questions. For good questions.

Michele McAloon:

Good. Thank you. Thank you for good answers. You've been listening to Crossword or Cultural Clues, lead to the truth of the word. My name is Michelle Maxwell, your host. You can listen to my program and other great Catholic radio programming on archangelradio.com. Like Father Luminecker, I am a Twitter bird, and you can find me at Michelle Max1.