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“When Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem” (Matt. 2:1).“Wise men” is a common translation in English Bibles, but it doesn’t give us a good idea who they were.The Greek word used here is magoi—the plural of magos. These terms may be more familiar from their Latin equivalents: In St. Jerome’s Vulgate, we read that magi came from the east, and an individual member of the group would thus be a magus.Who Were the Magi?Or …

One of the most mysterious figures haunting the Christian imagination is the Antichrist. Innumerable works, both fiction and non-fiction, have been devoted to him. The concept is so compelling that even non-Christians use it. Muslims believe that at the Second Coming of Christ he will do battle with the Antichrist (Arabic, al-Dajjal).But amid all the speculation about the Antichrist—much of it wild and fanciful—what do we really know about the figure?Very little.Four Mentions in Scr …

Many in the Protestant community discount books not found in their version of the Old Testament on the ground that there were “400 silent years” between Malachi and the ministry of Jesus.This claim is bolstered by the assertion that there were no prophets in this period. The implication is that, without the divine inspiration given to prophets, books of Scripture couldn’t be written.There are several problems with this assertion. One is that it isn’t clear that all the books in the Protestant Ol …

We recently sat down with Catholic Answers Senior Apologist Jimmy Akin, to talk about why the Bible is a Catholic book. Q. Our Protestant friends often speak of “the word of God” as if it was limited to just the Bible. Is that true? Jimmy: No. The Bible speaks of the “word of God” as being several different things. It certainly includes the Bible, but it also includes the word of God communicated to people orally—in the form of Tradition, as when the apostles preached the word to …

Scholars frequently discuss a concept known as the canon of Scripture.This is based on the Greek word kanôn, which means a rule or measuring rod. It came to mean an authoritative standard, and so the canon of Scripture is the collection of writings that are divinely authoritative.The Pentateuch was the first authoritative collection of books. These books tell how the people of Israel came to be, as well as God’s law for Israel, so they became the core books of Scripture for his people, and thus …