2012 xmas quiz answers
What Happened to the Three Kings?
No kings and possibly no sheep in Bethlehem on the first Christmas Day? It really spoils the creche scene we're used to! But wait. All is not lost. (And no, you can't have a second creche for only $19.95 no matter who you phone. There are no operators standing by…)
Back to the Three Kings. The Apostles who wrote the Christmas story can be excused for a few differences here and there. They got the story decades later. Papyrus was in short supply for those who weren't all that wealthy, so again, the Apostles can't be blamed if they fashioned a number of bits of stories into the one beautiful story we have now. Theologians are still arguing the details, but we can be fairly sure that the three kings were actually three members of a sacred caste which provided priests for Persia and inhabited Medes, which is roughly the area of Persia, now known as Iran. Given the distance, it is likely the three priests didn't arrive to see Jesus for many months and perhaps as much as a year after Jesus birth was born.
The first question I asked in the last column was which is the only month theologians have not declared to be the month Jesus was NOT born. The answer is July. Snow has never fallen in P.A. in July either.