Did the three wise men start Christmas?

Answer 1

Did the three wise men go and see Jesus? Yes

St Matthew 2:11

"And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh.

In fact, The Bible doesn't refer to "Three Wise Men"; only "Wise Men" - so it only says more than one wise man visited Jesus: St Matthew 2:1 Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem,

Answer 2

John Shelby Spong (Born of a Woman: A Bishop Rethinks the Birth of Jesus) says that among people he knows in New Testament circles, the universal assumption is that the wise men were not actual people. In other words, it is perhaps better to think of the story of the three wise men as simply a parable.

Answer 3

There is no historical reference to the wise men, nor are they mentioned by Luke's Gospel, so we must rely solely on Matthew's Gospel for information about the wise men, but this Gospel does not say when the wise men began their journey or when they arrived in Bethlehem. Matthew 2:1 is somewhat ambiguous, but could mean that they arrived in Jerusalem around the time that Jesus was born, so they would have left Babylon some time earlier.

Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury and leader of the world's Anglicans, has described the story of the three wise men as nothing but a "legend" and says there is little evidence that they existed. John Shelby Spong (Born of a Woman: A Bishop Rethinks the Birth of Jesus) calls Matthew's story of the magi, or wise men, Christian midrash and says that among people he knows in New Testament circles, the universal assumption is that the magi (wise men) were not actual people. If there were no wise men, or magi, then we can not say when they began their journey.