What Does the Magi Story Really Tell Us About Jesus?

Curiously Kaitlyn

Phil Vischer

Religion & Spirituality

5 • 759 Ratings

🗓️ 2 December 2025

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We all know the wise men from our nativity sets, but what's actually going on in this story? Who were the wise men, and why did Matthew include them in his accounting of the birth of Christ?
This well-known but undeniably odd part of the nativity story is loaded with meaning that can reorient how we enter Advent. Kaitlyn and Producer Mike follow kids' simple questions about stars, gifts, and travel timelines into the deeper layers of Matthew's Gospel, where foreign astrologers, of all people, become some of the first to recognize Jesus as king.

0:00 - Theme Song

2:05 - What's Up With the Star?

9:00 - How Many Wise Men?

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17:00 - Why's this in the Bible?

27:00 - Balaam and the Magi

37:37 - End Credits

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Curiously Caitlin, where we try to make theology make sense.
0:06.5	I don't know.
0:10.0	That doesn't make any sense.
0:15.1	Welcome back to Curiously, Caitlin. I am here again with producer Mike. Mike, how are you?
0:23.8	I'm doing great. Caitlin, it's the Christmas season. Almost. We're getting there.
0:29.5	It's post- Thanksgiving. We're an advent. We're an advent. I will say, I will say, I have not always been a stickler about this, but I am generally a like wait until after Thanksgiving to like put up a Christmas tree, listen to Christmas music.
0:44.1	And this year it was like I was ready.
0:46.2	I was ready before.
0:47.1	I still didn't, you know, because I wanted to keep Thanksgiving.
0:51.0	But wow, just the day after Thanksgiving coming back to this area and it's
0:56.3	like tons of snow. It just feels Christmassy. It does. It's exciting. Our tree is up. The music
1:02.5	has been played all weekend. I love it. We are ready. And so we are now then for the next,
1:08.7	I don't know, four weeks or so. We're going to do Christmas-related, advent-related kid questions.
1:13.7	It's going to be so fun.
1:14.8	And so here is our first one to kick this series off.
1:19.9	How did the star appear?
1:22.3	How many wise men were there?
1:24.5	How many, how much time did it take for the wise men to get to the manger?
1:32.0	Okay. I love this. So kind of three questions in one. A lot of questions. Yeah. I think it was the same
1:37.9	kid. So spoiler, not spoiler alert, I don't know, behind the scenes. This was a kid in my small group that I'm a part of. We have a lot of
1:45.4	little kids and I was asking them what their questions were. And this little girl, she had a lot
1:50.5	of questions about the wise men. I love that. So the star, how did the star appear? How many
	...

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