Raymond Arroyo’s The Wise Men Who Found Christmas reimagines the Magi as Nabataean mathematicians and stargazers from Petra, not Far Eastern kings, citing first-century texts like Clement of Rome. Their gifts—frankincense, gold, myrrh—were Nabataean exclusives, and their mission, rooted in temple priesthood lineage, aimed to anoint the Messiah. Arroyo’s research, spanning theologians and astronomers, reveals early Christian traditions listing far more than three Magi (up to 60 in Coptic texts), framing their journey as a high-stakes quest. Contrasting modern left-leaning children’s books, he argues faith-based stories like his—despite publishing resistance—tap into enduring spiritual curiosity, with Epiphany (January 6th) marking the Magi’s pivotal discovery. [Automatically generated summary]
So if you have some last-minute Christmas shopping to do, you might want to check out the Wise Men Who Found Christmas, a children's book about the wise men who came to visit Jesus.
It's by Raymond Arroyo.
You've probably seen Raymond on Fox News talking to Laura Ingram.
He's a New York Times best-selling author and award-winning international broadcaster, host and managing editor of The World Over Live on EWTN.
Excellent channel.
Raymond, it's great to talk to you.
How are you doing?
Andrew, a pleasure to be with you.
Merry Christmas.
Thank you for having me.
Oh, it's a pleasure.
Merry Christmas to you as well.
This is a really interesting book, The Wise Men Who Found Christmas, especially because when I go into bookstores and look at the children's section, mostly they have a very, very left-wing tilt.
And this is not a right-wing, this is not a political book, but it's a very religious book.
Did you write this with a purpose?
I mean, when you sit down to write this, were you just telling a story or did you have a purpose in mind?
Well, Andrew, you know, my first purpose always is to entertain my readers.
And, you know, though I know it is children's literature, I think of this as a family read.
And the reason we decided to make it a picture book is because these wise men, we encounter them and have encountered them firstly as children and in a family.
And I thought, you know, I wanted to write a fun story about the wise men sort of telling a fable that perhaps had fallen out of favor or had been forgotten.
So I went looking and what I discovered is everything we think we know about these wise men turns out to be legendary.
I mean, you know the song, We Three Kings of Orientar.
Well, they weren't.
They weren't three.
They weren't kings and they weren't from the Far East.
They were from the East, though, the immediate east of Judea, which would be modern day Petra, the kingdom of Nabataea.
So once I established that, and this is first century sources, Clement of Rome, Justin Martyr, they all say the wise men came from Arabia.
So once you figure that out, you dig into, well, where were they and who were these Magi?
Turns out they were not kings.
They were mathematicians, stargazers, theologians serving a king, like Daniel in the Old Testament, sort of, who was serving a king interpreting dreams.
So once you get there, I found a far more interesting adventure than I ever imagined.
And the reason they go on this journey, Andrew, really made me want to create this story and lay this story out in a family platform.
And the picture book was the best way for it.
It is one of the things I noticed about it.
It has a kind of a, it's obviously for younger kids.
It's a picture book, but it has a very adventury feel to it, which is not the way we usually think of the Magi.
We usually think of them as majestically moving over the horizon following the star.
But this is more like they're basically on a racing to the scene and racing away from the scene to avoid getting killed.
Did you do that on purpose?
You bet.
No, no.
Look, it ends up playing like a buddy movie.
You know, it's these guys who are trying to figure out, okay, where do we go next?
And there's high stakes.
Going to Herod was no pastoral visit.
You know, this wasn't, we think of these guys as kind of a tired old group of kings.
They do a royal gift drop and then they vanish from the scene.
Well, why does a gospel begin with this story if it isn't something more than that?
So that was my primary question.
And Andrew, I consulted with theologians, first century historians, astrologers, astronomers.
I mean, I dug pretty deep, archaeologists, about where this place was, what it meant, what about those three gifts.
And the answers I found were so compelling, I decided the best way to do it is to tell it as an adventure story, but there's much more.
And we built a Fox Nation documentary that's kind of a companion to the book, if you want to go deeper.
And my author's note at the back points to a lot of new information.
Those three gifts, just to tell you, frankincense, gold, myrrh, they could only have come from this kingdom of Nabataea.
Frankincense and gold, of course, the Solomon's mines, the gold mines of Midian, the same place.
both were controlled by the kingdom of Nabataea.
And frankincense and myrrh, I did not realize, it is derived from tree sap and only trees that grew in southern Arabia at the time.
So they cornered the market on these three goods and their king sent the Magi to pay tribute to what whom he imagined was a new king in Judea.
That's why they go to Herod first and don't go directly to the kid, because they think this is Herod's offspring, a new king of Judea, a new king of the Jews.
That's why they go to him.
And the gifts are to pay tribute, and it's from their native land.
Huh.
You know, talking to Raymond Arroyo about his new children's book, The Wise Men Who Found Christmas.
Raymond, you may now be the only person on earth who knows where myrrh comes from or even what myrrh is.
So congratulations.
This is not the first time you've done this, though.
You've written other children's books, The Spider Who Saved Christmas, The Thief Who Stole Heaven.
It does seem that you're trying to fill a gap, maybe, of interesting children's books about Christianity.
Is that fair to say?
Well, I think, look, I wanted to tell interesting stories, and I found that I stumbled on the spider who saved Christmas.
That is actually a legend, a very old one from the first century, mostly Eastern European, and it explains why we decorate trees with tinsel, Andrew.
And I'm always obsessed with where do things come from?
These traditions, these things we assume or do.
Why do we do them?
When I was in Ukraine, long before the war, years and years ago, all of their trees are decked out in tinsel, and they have spider ornaments in the branches.
And I couldn't figure out why.
Years later, I stumbled across this legend, which explains it.
And it's really a sweet story of how this little spider saves the holy family as they're running to Egypt.
But it's not trying to ply Christianity or jam Christianity on people.
I think these stories, this story is the foundational bed upon which every story we've ever told or will ever tell rests in the Western world, certainly.
So I think it's important to kind of give families a new way in to these stories that frankly have grown very tired and gotten a little dusty in the way we tell them.
The wise men are another good example.
I think we come away with cultural lies about these wise men that are reinforced every year.
And I wanted to shake off some of those myths and draw people closer to the historic reality that actually confirms the gospel account, Andrew.
You know, the gospel talks about three gifts, not three wise men.
There were probably 12.
The Syrian and Armenian church talk about 12 wise men in the first century.
The Coptic church in the first century writes about 60 wise men.
So if you notice in the first spread of my book or the second spread, there are 12 wise men on the Petra rooftop who spy the star, but three lead players we kind of need to focus on.
Interesting, really interesting.
You know, you've done, you've been a New York Times bestseller.
You've brought out a lot of books for younger people.
Sure.
Do you find that the publishing world has become more hostile to people with a religious point of view or a conservative point of view?
Or do you still find there's room for it to move?
Andrew, I think the audience, let me tell you this.
I'll share a couple of things with you.
First of all, the best-selling section at Barnes ⁇ Noble is the religion section.
That gets the most traffic and the most buyers, which is, I'll bet people would be shocked to learn.
Secondly, there is a reluctance, I think, a discomfort, maybe an ignorance about faith and matters of faith.
But the fact is, we're wired for God.
We're wired to be, you know, for something eternal.
Like those wise men, you know, we should keep our gaze high.
We want to know more.
And that's what they were doing.
They were searching.
They were seeking for a sign, for something more that would confirm these prophecies they had spent their lives meditating on, reviewing, and reading every day.
So in some ways, I don't think we've changed a whole lot.
People still want more.
They know there must be more than this life we're living and a reason for all of this.
And so the audience is still there, but I do think there's maybe an underserved audience that publishing hasn't quite grasped yet.
And look, my books would demonstrate that.
The Spider Who Saved Christmas, I went to, I think, three or four publishers whom I regularly publish with.
They didn't get it.
They thought no one would buy a book about spiders and Christmas and nativity.
Wise Men and First Temple Priesthood00:02:29
They were wrong.
It was seven weeks on the New York Times list and it sold incredibly well this year.
So there's a need for it.
There's a hunger for it in the audience.
And Andrew, if you have a second, I have to tell you, because this will blow your mind.
It certainly blew mine.
Who these wise men may actually be.
We've heard they were Persians, okay?
Maybe the Persian priest.
I do think they were part of some Persian, some priestly caste, either Persian or as Margaret Barker, who's a first century scholar believes, they may be descendants of the first temple priesthood in Jerusalem, okay, living in exile in Arabia.
That's where they went.
So they would have, because you have to ask yourself, who would risk their lives to go find a Jewish Messiah?
Who would be meditating on the Jewish prophecies of a Messiah?
These first temple priests, the descendants of them living in Arabia, are good candidates.
And I was stunned to find after I wrote the book, Philo of Alexandria, first century historian, says there are three markings of the first temple priesthood.
The order of Melchizedek, which some Catholics might be familiar with, they mention that every Sunday at Mass.
Gold was in the vestments of the first temple priests.
They burned incense in the temple.
But the most important thing is myrrh oil.
Myrrh oil was a medicinal, but it was also kept in the Holy of Holies, only in the first temple, Andrew.
And I love this.
It was used for one purpose, to ordain and anoint new members of the royal priesthood and kings.
So they may very well have been on a religious mission, not to do a gift drop-by, but to welcome the Messiah into their fraternity of this first temple priesthood and restore the first temple.
And it's an incredible kind of religious motivation that I think has gone really unexposed for too long.
That's a great story, Raymond.
And I'm going to stop making myrrh jokes from now on.
There you go.
No more myrrh jokes.
Raymond Arroyo, the book is The Wise Men Who Found Christmas.
Great Christmas gift.
We'll get it after Christmas if you want.
It's going to be relevant year-round.
Raymond, thanks for coming on.
I really appreciate it.
Andrew, it's my pleasure.
Merry Christmas.
And, you know, January 6th is the original epiphany.