[00:00:03] This show is not for sensitive snowflakes. We enjoy the right to offend each other. It's part of this free speech thing that we fought so hard to get. The Kate Dalley Show starts now.
[00:00:14] You know the real miracle of Christmas is that any religious significance remains. Despite the gaudy tinsel wrapping, the meaning of the Christ mass remains somehow intact.
[00:00:25] Though our eager eyes now search the skies for man-made stars, we yet remember best the one which once upon a time stood still over a stable.
[00:00:35] This is the miracle of Christmas. Not that so many profane the day with self-indulgence, but that so many still trudged through the snow to an early service or a midnight mass.
[00:00:44] If after generations of effort we still tend to disparage the day, what do you suppose would happen if we instead renewed it?
[00:00:53] There are no more lengths to which we can go to dilute its significance. Perhaps we should revert to reverence.
[00:00:59] For if this magic day, despite the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, has somehow survived and thrived,
[00:01:06] my goodness, with proper care intending, the love it represents might heal all of our hurts.
[00:01:11] The faith we could not starve to death, properly fed just once each year, might overwhelm the world.
[00:01:18] Anyway, we've tried everything else. The revitalization of Christmas will be as tedious as its erosion was gradual,
[00:01:25] but there's no better time than right now, because it's later than it's ever been.
[00:01:30] Where do we begin? With prayerful thankfulness, I think.
[00:01:35] Merry Christmas, we traditionally say to one another.
[00:01:38] Merry Christmas. Yet that's not the larger meaning of the day. It's his birthday, not ours.
[00:01:49] That's a good one. I love it. I know, I'm dealing with hardly a voice.
[00:01:55] And I want to actually play this interview for you because it was so intriguing to me.
[00:02:02] And Father Dwight Longnecker did such a great job, The Mystery of the Magi.
[00:02:08] And he really talks about the event we're all going to celebrate next week.
[00:02:14] He talks about this in such a fantastic way of really kind of coming back to, can you prove it?
[00:02:22] Can you really prove it?
[00:02:25] And so I love his work. So I, investigator Dave and I interviewed Father Dwight Longnecker, and it was just that fantastic.
[00:02:36] And I hope that you share, this will be turned into a podcast, of course, you're listening live, but it'll be turned into a podcast.
[00:02:42] You can get it at katedalyradio.com. And I'm really hoping that you go there and share it.
[00:02:48] I also want to mention, look, get things ahead right now.
[00:02:53] And people have been emailing me, listeners to the show, and saying, hey, I went to allfamilypharma.com.
[00:02:59] I ordered some things to have on hand.
[00:03:01] I'm so glad you did that because I think that we all should have extra things on hand, ivermectin, maybe some antibiotics, different things to care for your family.
[00:03:12] But I just think it's vital right now. And I wish I was celebrating and feeling like everything's going to be so rosy in 2025, but I'm not.
[00:03:23] I'm not. My gut feeling is, ooh, ouch. There's some stuff coming.
[00:03:26] So go to allfamilypharma.com and put in the code KATE10, okay?
[00:03:32] And this is going to be fantastic.
[00:03:34] So I'm hoping that you'll do that and go ahead and order according to your budget what you can.
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[00:03:45] And they'll ship it to you, and you can get it right in the comfort of your own home, and these are actual real prescriptions.
[00:03:49] So, okay, they're coming from doctors in-house at allfamilypharma.com, and they just have a great way to do this.
[00:03:56] So it's really convenient. You'll get it in a couple of days, okay?
[00:03:59] So here is Dwight Longnecker, Father Longnecker.
[00:04:03] It's a great book, by the way, and you'll love hearing this because he talks about proving the events of the day and why the wise men brought what they did.
[00:04:13] Here we go.
[00:04:15] I'm so curious.
[00:04:16] Well, a couple of years ago, well, several years ago, one of my editors said, could you write an article about the origins of the wise men?
[00:04:23] Where did they come from?
[00:04:24] So I began snooping around, and most people say, well, if they really existed at all.
[00:04:30] And I have to say, most New Testament scholars say, you know, this was a pious fiction.
[00:04:35] This story about mystical wizards who followed a magical star, it's all just too much of a fairy tale to believe.
[00:04:42] Well, even those who do think it's historical say that they came from Persia.
[00:04:48] And so I began digging around and found that the Persia hypothesis was not really tenable.
[00:04:55] And so I began digging even further and found that actually the most ancient records say that they came from Arabia.
[00:05:03] So I then began doing my research and found some astounding information.
[00:05:09] Wow.
[00:05:09] Well, we want to hear it.
[00:05:11] I can't wait.
[00:05:11] And so there's a simple question, you know, the three wise men, facts or fairy tale?
[00:05:16] Well, let's talk about where these wise men came from, because this is your understanding of this context in the Bible.
[00:05:24] It introduces us to Matthew, but I would love to hear about King Arthur and all of us.
[00:05:29] Well, I'd love to get there with you.
[00:05:32] But first, I should say that this story, more than any other story in the New Testament, has accumulated levels of legend and myth like no other story.
[00:05:42] It's true.
[00:05:43] And there's good reasons for that, which I explain in my book.
[00:05:46] But basically, the idea that the wise men were these mystical wizards from a faraway land that followed a magical star across the desert on long caravans.
[00:05:58] Well, that sort of legend developed over 1,500 years of tradition.
[00:06:04] And what I did was I stripped all that away, and I went back to Matthew's Gospel and said, what does Matthew's Gospel say, which is the earliest record of the story?
[00:06:12] And how does that fit in with the politics and the culture and the history and the religion of the time?
[00:06:18] What a fascinating study, because I don't know that most people would do that.
[00:06:22] They wouldn't go from this angle, which I actually really love.
[00:06:25] We three kings of Orient are.
[00:06:28] Tell me about that statement.
[00:06:31] Well, it's a good one.
[00:06:33] I actually wrote an article recently which said, we three kings of Orient aren't.
[00:06:37] In other words, Matthew never says there were three.
[00:06:42] He never says they were kings.
[00:06:44] Interesting.
[00:06:45] And he says they come from the east, which is what Orient means.
[00:06:49] But I went through and dug through and trimmed away all of those accretions and all the legends and myths.
[00:06:57] And said, what does Matthew actually say, and how does that fit with what we know?
[00:07:00] And what I discovered was that the most ancient records refer to the wise men.
[00:07:07] It's coming from Arabia, not Persia.
[00:07:10] And therefore, I said, well, who was in Arabia at that time period?
[00:07:14] And it's really interesting.
[00:07:16] The civilization dominating the Arabian Peninsula during the time of our Lord's birth was the Nabataean civilization.
[00:07:23] Now, the Nabataeans had their capital in the famous city of Petra, which with all the carved tombs in the sandstone and so forth, which is made famous by the Indiana Jones film.
[00:07:34] And the Nabataeans were a trading nation.
[00:07:38] They traded from the eastern port of Yemen across to the western port of Gaza.
[00:07:45] And they imported goods from China and India, spices and silk and other riches from the Far East, which they distributed through the Roman Empire.
[00:07:57] They were very powerful, very, very fabulously wealthy nation.
[00:08:01] And it's my theory that they are the ones who sent a diplomatic envoy to the court of Herod the Great.
[00:08:08] And these are the wise men that Matthew records and tells us about.
[00:08:11] And the gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh were treasures that were well known from that area.
[00:08:17] Yeah, exactly.
[00:08:20] This is one of the indicators which tells us where they came from.
[00:08:23] Just like today in the ancient world, when someone sent a diplomatic envoy, they sent the envoy with the ambassador, whoever it was, with gifts for the president or the prime minister or the king of that nation.
[00:08:36] We still do that today.
[00:08:38] When the president visits somewhere, he goes and takes gifts, which are typical of America.
[00:08:43] And so these kings, well, these wise men who were representatives of the king, took gold, frankincense and myrrh, which were representative gifts of the Arabian peninsula.
[00:08:57] So we know, for instance, that both incense and myrrh were taken from the sap of bushes that only grow in eastern Arabia and northeast Africa, territory controlled by the Nabataeans.
[00:09:10] Also, in the ancient world, the finest and the purest gold came from, you guessed it, the mines in Arabia.
[00:09:18] And so gold, frankincense and myrrh are actually a firm indicators of where these wise men came from.
[00:09:24] And how did these neighboring communities receive each other typically?
[00:09:29] Was this something that they did often?
[00:09:31] Well, this is where I tied in the politics of the day.
[00:09:34] And it's really fascinating.
[00:09:36] Again, the Nabataeans are over there in present-day Jordan, Saudi Arabia.
[00:09:42] And Herod the Great is the puppet king of the Romans in Judea, which is basically the territory occupied by the present-day nation of Israel.
[00:09:51] And they had been at war.
[00:09:54] Herod the Great, in his earlier years, had made war against the Nabataeans.
[00:09:58] The Nabataeans were sending raiding parties, sort of terrorists and bandits, into Herod's territory.
[00:10:05] And they were in conflict.
[00:10:07] But exactly at the point of Jesus' birth, the king of the Nabataeans, called Aratus IV, had every motivation to send a group of diplomats to Herod's court to try to make nice with him and build bridges.
[00:10:23] And so this is my theory, that they were actually diplomatic envoys from the court of the Nabataean king, Aratus IV, to Herod the Great.
[00:10:32] So they were trying to make nice after a history of not getting along.
[00:10:36] Go ahead, Dave.
[00:10:37] Where does the star fit in?
[00:10:39] Ah, the theories about the star, about following the star.
[00:10:43] Well, there's an awful lot of theories about the star developed by astronomers.
[00:10:48] But to summarize, basically the Magi were astrologers.
[00:10:55] Every court in the ancient Middle East had wise men, shamans, diviners of the future, usually astrologers,
[00:11:04] who tried to read the signs and the signals of the heavens to be able to advise their king.
[00:11:09] We know that the Nabataeans were astrologers because in a Nabataean temple in present-day Jordan,
[00:11:16] the archaeologists actually discovered a stone zodiac.
[00:11:21] So we know they were astrologers.
[00:11:23] And most of the astronomers who have written books about the star of Bethlehem say these guys were astrologers.
[00:11:29] They looked at the stars.
[00:11:30] They saw that the star of the planet Jupiter was rising in one of the constellations associated with the Jews.
[00:11:38] And they therefore said there was a new king of the Jews about to be born.
[00:11:41] So that gave them the signal to go on the trip to Herod, who was the king of the Jews, to say,
[00:11:47] where is your new grandson or your great-grandson?
[00:11:50] And he said, what are you talking about?
[00:11:53] What grandson?
[00:11:54] And we know the story from there on out.
[00:11:57] Yeah.
[00:11:57] Wow.
[00:11:58] Fascinating stuff.
[00:11:59] They saw the star.
[00:12:00] They saw the star.
[00:12:01] Yeah.
[00:12:01] And so this is, you know, it's such an amazing story without really ever thinking about the details of this story
[00:12:10] and where exactly it took place and where they were from.
[00:12:13] And there's so much to this that provides historical context of our world at that time.
[00:12:20] So true.
[00:12:21] All right.
[00:12:22] So I'm going to come right back and we'll discuss.
[00:12:26] I'll come right back.
[00:12:27] I have more from Father Dwight Longnecker, who wrote that book, Mystery of the Magi.
[00:12:33] And such a great, just a great accounting, I think, as we go into this holiday season.
[00:12:40] I know I'm going to try to get my voice back, too.
[00:12:42] Be right back on The Kate Daly Show.
[00:12:44] katedalyradio.com.
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[00:16:28] This is the Kate Daly Show.
[00:16:33] We three kings of Orient are.
[00:16:38] Bearing gifts we travel so far.
[00:16:43] Field and fountain, moor and mountain following yonder star.
[00:16:51] You just love the songs.
[00:16:53] Yeah.
[00:16:54] Welcome back.
[00:16:55] You're listening to the Kate Daly Show.
[00:16:57] Make sure and go to patriot.tv.
[00:17:00] So instead of .com, it's patriot.tv.
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[00:17:49] So I'm sharing the Father Longnecker interview with you.
[00:17:54] I don't have much of a voice, as you can tell.
[00:17:57] And I also asked him in this interview.
[00:18:00] And I was alongside me was Investigator Dave.
[00:18:04] If you remember him down, you know, in this interview with me.
[00:18:06] And was it hard to find all of this information?
[00:18:10] I mean, how did he go about this?
[00:18:12] And there's so much here to go over.
[00:18:15] But you've got to listen to this.
[00:18:17] It's very, very cool.
[00:18:17] Here's Father Dwight Longnecker's answer to this.
[00:18:21] And the gift is the Magi book.
[00:18:23] Here we go.
[00:18:24] Well, this is what was amazing.
[00:18:27] As I was doing this research, I said, surely somebody has already written this book.
[00:18:32] Right.
[00:18:32] And nobody has.
[00:18:34] And here's why.
[00:18:35] There's a couple of reasons.
[00:18:36] First of all, the biblical scholars dismissed the story as a fairy tale.
[00:18:42] And I have to give them a little bit of credit because, to tell you the truth, the idea of mystical wizards like Gandalf and Dumbledore who followed a magical star across the night sky, it does sound pretty much like a fairy tale.
[00:18:56] So the biblical scholars never looked into the history because they were dismissed as a fairy tale.
[00:19:02] And those who did think that it was historical said that the wise men came from Persia because there was actually an ancient cast of shaman and wise men called Magi who were from Persia.
[00:19:17] But when I began to look into it, that theory didn't really hold up.
[00:19:21] And so I began to look elsewhere.
[00:19:23] And that's also a reason why nobody else looked at the history because they said, we already know they came from Persia.
[00:19:30] Well, my evidence shows that they probably did not and that they came from Arabia instead.
[00:19:36] Yeah.
[00:19:36] I love the piece you wrote for The Daily Caller that talked a lot about the political minefield of the day and how much it relates to history.
[00:19:45] And in this, you were talking about Bethlehem as in a Palestinian territory.
[00:19:49] And like the Israelis, like Donald Trump wanted a wall.
[00:19:52] And the difference was they went ahead and built it.
[00:19:54] And then you talk also about that the time of Jesus' birth, the political situation in the area was very tumultuous and all over the world.
[00:20:03] So, Father Longnecker, the book is Mystery of the Magi.
[00:20:08] And I really wanted to talk about the gifts.
[00:20:10] Were these typical, these three gifts, gold, frankincense, and myrrh?
[00:20:13] Would a group bring those particular three gifts to a neighboring government, to a neighboring city to show good faith?
[00:20:22] Were they above and beyond the extravagant kinds of gifts?
[00:20:25] What's the meaning behind them?
[00:20:28] Well, you know, the meaning is that it helps us to identify where the wise men came from.
[00:20:34] In the ancient world, as it is in today, when a president or a king or monarch goes to pay a diplomatic visit to another country,
[00:20:46] they very often bring gifts which are typical or representative of their country.
[00:20:51] So if President Trump, for instance, goes and visits Vladimir Putin and learns that he likes motorcycles,
[00:20:58] he'll take a Harley-Davidson motorcycle, which is typical of America.
[00:21:02] So we have documentary evidence that this happened, likewise, all through the ancient world.
[00:21:09] So if someone from Africa was presenting gifts to a conquering king, they would present ebony and ivory and all the typical niches from their country.
[00:21:20] So gold, frankincense, and myrrh indicates where the wise men came from.
[00:21:24] Why?
[00:21:25] Because first of all, Arabia was famous in the ancient world for its gold mines.
[00:21:30] The purest gold anywhere came from the gold mines of Arabia.
[00:21:35] Secondly, incense and myrrh was taken from the sap, which comes from bushes and little trees,
[00:21:42] which only grow in eastern Arabia and northeastern Africa.
[00:21:46] And therefore, these were the cash crops, if you'd like, of Arabia.
[00:21:50] Gold's like that.
[00:21:52] Right back on The Kate Daly Show, katedalyradio.com for more of this interview with Father Longnecker.
[00:22:18] This is The Kate Daly Show.
[00:22:29] Welcome back.
[00:22:30] You're listening to The Kate Daly Show today.
[00:22:32] And here we are, what, I mean, less than a week out to Christmas.
[00:22:37] And Chris Ann Hall will join me in a few weeks.
[00:22:41] She actually had something at the very, very last minute today that she had to attend to.
[00:22:46] So Greg Manorino was nice enough to come on in the last hour.
[00:22:50] And I have this interview with Father Longnecker.
[00:22:53] And Investigator Dave, who used to come on the show all the time, interviewed, him and I interviewed Father Longnecker.
[00:23:00] And it was so fun to kind of hear this history.
[00:23:02] And I thought if I did this now, you could be sharing this for Christmas with your families.
[00:23:08] And so, you know, instead of politics over the table, you can talk about this.
[00:23:14] And oddly enough, when I did this interview, President Trump was our president.
[00:23:19] And so it's kind of funny because I'm talking about President Trump in this interview.
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[00:24:18] So here's a little bit more on Father Longnecker on the gifts.
[00:24:23] Why the gifts?
[00:24:24] Why did they bring gold, frankincense and myrrh?
[00:24:27] And he went about trying to prove that these wise men was a real story.
[00:24:32] And I love his homework in this.
[00:24:34] Here we go.
[00:24:35] First of all, Arabia was famous in the ancient world for its gold mines.
[00:24:40] The purest gold anywhere came from the gold mines of Arabia.
[00:24:44] Secondly, incense and myrrh was taken from the sap, which comes from bushes and little trees, which only grow in eastern Arabia and northeastern Africa.
[00:24:56] And therefore, these were the cash crops, if you like, of Arabia, gold, frankincense and myrrh.
[00:25:01] Therefore, it's very, very, very understandable that diplomats from that country, when they're coming on a diplomatic mission to Herod the Great, would bring gifts which are representative of their country.
[00:25:12] In this case, gold, frankincense and myrrh.
[00:25:14] Why three?
[00:25:17] Well, because it didn't matter if there were three, but these were the three which were typical of their country.
[00:25:23] Gold, frankincense and myrrh were their crop cash crops.
[00:25:26] Remember, their territory is a desert.
[00:25:30] They can't grow very much.
[00:25:32] And so they're a trading nation, and they're making a fabulous amount of money trading their goods between the Far East, India and China and Asia, and the Far West, which is the Roman Empire.
[00:25:46] So they're trading with their trade routes across the Arabian Empire with camel caravans, bringing the goods back and forth east and west, and also north and south between Egypt and Asia Minor and Mesopotamia.
[00:26:00] And that's where they're making most of their money.
[00:26:03] But the three cash crops they are proud of, which they do produce in their own country, are gold, frankincense and myrrh.
[00:26:12] So interesting to me.
[00:26:13] And so they were coming from a Palestinian area about 300 miles away, right?
[00:26:21] Yeah, they're coming from the ancient city of Petra, which is famous for, you know, in the Indiana Jones film, the last scene of the final film of Indiana Jones is filmed in Petra.
[00:26:33] And Petra is a wonderful ancient site to visit with all the carved tombs and hillside and so forth.
[00:26:40] This was the city, the capital city of the Nabataean Empire.
[00:26:44] And it is from there that the wise men made their journey to Jerusalem.
[00:26:49] A relatively short journey, probably only about no more than a week to make their way to Jerusalem.
[00:26:57] And they probably rode on Arabian horses rather than camels.
[00:27:01] Yeah.
[00:27:02] In fact, one of your reviewers was talking about the events of Paul in Arabia and how everything so ties in.
[00:27:10] Any thoughts on that?
[00:27:12] Yeah.
[00:27:13] Well, at that point I get into speculation because there's an intriguing little detail in St. Paul's official to the Galatians where he says, I spent three years in Arabia after he's converted in Damascus.
[00:27:28] Now, Damascus was a city that had been under the control of the Nabataeans.
[00:27:33] And so there's this intriguing link where Paul goes to Damascus, if you remember.
[00:27:39] That's where he's converted on the road to Damascus.
[00:27:41] He then encounters the Christian church in Damascus.
[00:27:45] He then goes and spends three years in Arabia.
[00:27:48] And theologians and Bible scholars say, why did he do that?
[00:27:51] What was in Arabia that was so important?
[00:27:55] And I speculate at that point and say, well, maybe he went and met up with the Magi or disciples of the Magi who helped him to understand the true nature of our Lord's arrival.
[00:28:07] Wow.
[00:28:08] In fact, they didn't travel on camels.
[00:28:10] I found some evidence about horses.
[00:28:14] Well, Arabian horses are famous, right?
[00:28:16] And it was the Nabataeans just at this time period who began to breed Arabian horses, which they used to sell to the Romans for their cavalry and also for military and transportation purposes.
[00:28:29] So if these Nabataeans went on a fairly short journey along established routes and established roads with stopping places, they didn't need camels.
[00:28:38] They would have rode horses, especially as they were the more luxury form of transportation.
[00:28:43] And these were diplomats from the royal court.
[00:28:46] They probably may have had camels as pack animals to bear their gifts and then to bear their burdens.
[00:28:55] But they probably would have arrived in Jerusalem not only on their own, but with a retinue of slaves and with servants and with a military escort.
[00:29:06] Just like a diplomatic mission would go to a foreign country today with flags waving and security people in place.
[00:29:14] But the Nabataean magi would have also arrived in Jerusalem with quite a fanfare.
[00:29:20] Yeah.
[00:29:21] They bring these gifts to Herod and these gifts are for the Christ child.
[00:29:27] What took place?
[00:29:30] Well, the thing is, they probably they knew they were looking for the Messiah as well as the kingdom of the Jews.
[00:29:37] Herod wasn't aware of all of this, obviously, because he then calls his wise men and says, where is this this this king supposed to be born?
[00:29:44] They say in Bethlehem of Judea.
[00:29:46] He says, OK, wise men will go and search for him and let me know.
[00:29:50] And I would I would like to go and worship him also.
[00:29:52] Of course, he's been a fox.
[00:29:54] He wants to eliminate this threat to his throne.
[00:29:57] Yes.
[00:29:58] And but but the wise men are coming on diplomatic mission, but also aware that a Messiah is looked for and a Messiah has been prophesied.
[00:30:09] So it's kind of a double mission that they were looking for the Messiah, but also on this diplomatic mission.
[00:30:16] And go ahead.
[00:30:18] Well, they returned on a roundabout way, right?
[00:30:21] They did.
[00:30:22] So they must have been suspicious.
[00:30:24] Again, I speculate what that would have been.
[00:30:28] I believe that they would have gone north of the Dead Sea and then on the other side of the Jordan turned north to go up to Damascus.
[00:30:37] And there is actually a tradition at the Marsaba Monastery, which is just east of Bethlehem on the road that runs north of the Dead Sea.
[00:30:51] There's the monastery was built there.
[00:30:53] And it was based on the tradition that in one of those caves is the place where the wise men rested on their journey away from Bethlehem.
[00:31:01] Wow.
[00:31:01] Well, my thinking is they didn't go back to Herod and say, hey, we found him.
[00:31:06] He's over there in Bethlehem.
[00:31:08] And so they must have been suspicious that Herod was up to no good.
[00:31:13] Yes.
[00:31:14] Also, Herod, they would have been worried about their own king, Aretas IV, in Nabatea, in Petra, because they would have known Herod and Aretas IV were in cahoots.
[00:31:25] And therefore, they would have probably gone north to Damascus to escape not only Herod, but their own king, who Herod would have probably said to Aretas IV, hey, watch out for these guys.
[00:31:36] They're on the most wanted list.
[00:31:37] You need to pick them up.
[00:31:39] You know, it's interesting when people start to research government.
[00:31:45] And that interview is with Father Longnecker, by the way.
[00:31:48] The book is Mystery of the Magi.
[00:31:50] There's always been distrust for the government.
[00:31:53] I mean, honestly, that's why I always laugh when people think I should trust everything they say.
[00:31:59] And I'm like, we have a whole history of government not working in your favor.
[00:32:03] Be right back on The Kate Daly Show.
[00:32:08] Southwest Oral Surgical Arts, or SWOSA, is home to many.
[00:32:20] This is The Kate Daly Show.
[00:32:38] Welcome back.
[00:32:39] You're listening to The Kate Daly Show.
[00:32:40] And I cannot believe, like, after this weekend, it's pretty much Christmas.
[00:32:46] I mean, it's crazy.
[00:32:47] This whole year, I don't even know where it went, to tell you the truth.
[00:32:51] I'm playing an interview of Father Longnecker, Dwight Longnecker's book, his interview with investigator Dave and I.
[00:33:01] And it was done a few years back.
[00:33:03] And what's so great about it is it's talking about the history, because he dove in to prove the king's story, the We Three Kings.
[00:33:14] And it's so fascinating.
[00:33:14] Isn't it fascinating to kind of learn about the political nature of the time and everything else?
[00:33:20] So let's talk about the star.
[00:33:24] I think this is really fascinating.
[00:33:26] A little bit more about following the star.
[00:33:29] Here we go.
[00:33:29] From Father Longnecker.
[00:33:31] So it's complicated.
[00:33:35] I bet.
[00:33:37] The simple version is this, that the magi were most certainly astrologers.
[00:33:44] Every ancient king and monarch and ruler in the ancient world would have had shaman and wise men and diviners and magicians and usually astrologers who would read the signs in the heavens and try to predict the future in order to give advice to the king.
[00:33:59] I mean, rulers today also have wise men, you know, people who give them wisdom and advice on how to rule.
[00:34:08] And it was no different in the ancient world.
[00:34:10] But these wise men were astrologers.
[00:34:12] And so the astronomers nowadays who look at all this say they most likely perceived that a planet, Jupiter, and they didn't make a distinction between planets and stars, that a planet called Jupiter, the royal planet, was rising in one of the constellations associated with the house of Israel.
[00:34:35] Maybe Aries or Pisces or maybe Leo.
[00:34:39] And Leo was rising, I'm sorry, Jupiter was rising in that constellation.
[00:34:44] And as astrologers, they said, oh, a new king is arising among the Jews.
[00:34:48] And therefore, they would have gone to their king and said, look, a new king has been born in the king of the Jews.
[00:34:55] And he would have said this is the perfect time to go and pay this diplomatic visit to congratulate Harry the Great on the birth of a new king.
[00:35:04] So this is what the astronomers believe that the star of Bethlehem probably was.
[00:35:10] The idea that it led them step by step across the desert.
[00:35:14] Matthew never says that.
[00:35:15] This is part of the myth and the legend which accumulated in the centuries in between.
[00:35:21] Hmm.
[00:35:21] You know, it's interesting.
[00:35:22] You wrote that to try and see the Christ child as is the prince of peace and that somehow the infant in the Bethlehem major may still hold the key to the peace in the Middle East.
[00:35:32] And I look at all the tumultuous actions that have taken place.
[00:35:36] You know, you look around the world and the Middle East has always had this tumultuous sort of that piece of property.
[00:35:42] That piece of land has always kind of been at the front of that.
[00:35:46] And it is kind of amazing that this took place in that region, isn't it?
[00:35:51] It is.
[00:35:52] And just as in ancient times and even today, Jerusalem in the Middle Ages, they said Jerusalem is the navel of the world.
[00:36:01] And Jerusalem is the center of the world.
[00:36:04] And in many ways, it's true.
[00:36:06] And that little piece of real estate is actually still a very strategic piece of real estate.
[00:36:13] Yeah.
[00:36:13] When they went, was their faith so high that they risked their lives going into Herod's territory to get these gifts to the Christ child?
[00:36:24] Well, I think it wasn't so much a matter of religious faith.
[00:36:28] We look back on that and we read that into it, but I think there was also a political and economic dimension.
[00:36:34] And that is that very briefly, and it's quite complicated, but very briefly, Aratus IV in the Nabataean kingdom, which is present-day Jordan,
[00:36:44] and Herod the Great in Israel, which is the present-day, in Judea, with the present-day Israel,
[00:36:50] had both fallen out with Caesar Augustus, who was, of course, the emperor.
[00:36:54] They were puppet kings under Caesar Augustus.
[00:36:58] Herod the Great gets back in his good books before Aratus does.
[00:37:01] Aratus, therefore, has every motivation, just at the time of Jesus' birth, to get back into Herod's good books
[00:37:09] in order to make nice with Caesar Augustus in Rome.
[00:37:15] The other detail is economic.
[00:37:19] Aratus IV, in the other side of the Jordan, needs to get his goods across Judean territory, which belongs to Herod,
[00:37:27] to the port of Gaza on the Mediterranean.
[00:37:30] And to do that, he has to pass through Herod's checkpoints and through Herod's territory.
[00:37:35] And if Herod is not playing nice, he's not going to let Aratus IV through with his train caravans.
[00:37:42] So there was an economic and a political motivation for Aratus, right at the time of Jesus' birth,
[00:37:48] to send a diplomatic retinue to Jerusalem with gifts to Herod the Great, saying,
[00:37:55] come on now, let's be friends.
[00:37:56] And so there was a political element.
[00:37:58] But also, in the ancient world, religion and politics were completely merged.
[00:38:04] You can't separate them as we do today.
[00:38:06] That is so true.
[00:38:06] Therefore, the wise men would also have been looking for the Messiah, which they knew that the prophecies from Isaiah
[00:38:12] and from the Jewish Old Testament, and they would have been looking for Messiah as well.
[00:38:16] And Herod's son had married from that community, a daughter from that community, right?
[00:38:21] And his mother was from that community.
[00:38:23] So there was reasons to kind of reconcile because there were so many ties there.
[00:38:27] And I also wanted to talk, right?
[00:38:29] Is that right?
[00:38:31] Yes.
[00:38:31] In fact, the Nabataeans were Herod's neighbors immediately to the east.
[00:38:37] And therefore, they had a tumultuous relationship.
[00:38:40] Herod made war against them.
[00:38:42] They were sending bandits and terrorists into his territory.
[00:38:45] And yet his mother was a Nabataean princess.
[00:38:48] And his son would go on to marry the daughter of Aratus IV.
[00:38:52] And so, as usual, in the politics of the time, just as there are today, there are treaties made and broken.
[00:38:59] There are wars established and peace made.
[00:39:02] And it was the same between Herod and the Nabataeans.
[00:39:06] And you had a question about how much they brought.
[00:39:08] I did.
[00:39:09] That and, of course, the shepherds.
[00:39:11] But let's talk about how much first.
[00:39:12] Because, you know...
[00:39:14] This wasn't something they pulled out of the pocket?
[00:39:15] Yeah.
[00:39:15] This is nothing they reach in their pocket and hand them a few gold coins.
[00:39:19] Right.
[00:39:19] These are ambassadors from...
[00:39:21] There is actually documentary evidence of the ancient kings right back centuries before Jesus' birth
[00:39:27] presenting huge amounts of riches to the other king that they wanted to impress
[00:39:33] or a king that they wanted to dissuade from invading their territory.
[00:39:36] And so they would give huge gifts of gold, frankincense, myrrh, camels, ebony, ivory, slaves, silk, spices,
[00:39:45] all sorts of wonderful things from the ancient world.
[00:39:48] And so we usually see pictures of the three kings giving baby Jesus a little casket full of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
[00:39:56] It's more likely that they would have come with camels loading with sacks of this stuff.
[00:40:01] Yeah.
[00:40:02] Yeah, it makes more sense.
[00:40:03] The next question is, what did Joseph do with it all?
[00:40:06] And that needs some more speculation.
[00:40:08] Yeah, I think he...
[00:40:10] I just think all this is so fascinating.
[00:40:13] And he wrote a great book, Father Dwight Longnecker, Mystery of the Magi.
[00:40:17] Might be something you need to pick up.
[00:40:19] And I love his detail.
[00:40:21] Frankincense is very healing and so is myrrh.
[00:40:24] There are so many properties about it that you can use right now for all kinds of things,
[00:40:30] from arthritis to anti-cancer.
[00:40:33] There's a reason.
[00:40:34] There's a reason that they brought those as well.
[00:40:39] Not just being native to the land, but also for health benefits too.
[00:40:43] Very sought after at the time.
[00:40:46] KateDallyRadio.com for the podcast.
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[00:41:04] Go to Patriot.TV forward slash Kate.
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[00:42:05] Thanks, you guys.
[00:42:06] Bye.