Adam’s Apple and the Three Wise Men

Upon first seeing this title many of you are wondering, “What do the two of these things have in common? One takes place in Genesis and the other in the Gospels!” Many of you take these two things mentioned, “Adam’s Apple” and the “Three Wise Men” as fact that you can pick up your Bibles and read in black and white, but what if I told you that neither of these two existed? You have heard of the two subjects so many times from when you were born until now that you don’t even think of questioning their place in the Bible, but the fact of the matter is that neither of these two are mentioned in the Bible!

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth … Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth’” (Gen. 1:1, 26). After God had created man and woman he let them have dominion over all of His creation and they were put in the Garden of Eden.

God only gave Adam and Eve a few commandments, “Then the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it. The Lord God commanded the man, saying, ‘From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die’” (Gen. 2:15-17). Notice the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is mentioned but we are not told what the tree produces. The third chapter of Genesis accounts the fall of mankind and how sin enters the world. Throughout the chapter not a single time is the “fruit” or the “food” of the tree of the knowl- edge of good and evil described! What kind of food did the tree produce? The truth is we have no way of knowing what was on the tree.

The next subject in our discussion is the topic of the “three wise men.” The account of Jesus’ birth is only written in two books, the book of Matthew and the book of Luke. Out of these two there is only one book that mentions the “wise men” or the “magi” as some translations refer to them. In Matthew, Herod sends out these wise men to seek out and find the Savior that the star revealed. Upon finding the star rested over Bethlehem they found Joseph and Mary beside the manger where they had laid Jesus. In Matthew 2:11 we read about how they reacted, “And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh.” Even though they offered three gifts to baby Jesus, this does not mean there were only three. Every time the Matthew refers to the “wise men” or “magi” it is only in a plural sense and no number is assigned to them.

We are told to, “Test all things; hold fast that which is good” (1 Thess. 5:21). We all must be very careful that we do not assume that something is fact just because we have heard it all of our lives. That goes in the secular world, but especially in the realm of religion. Take nothing anyone says as fact unless you test it yourself by reading it in your Bible.

Jeremy Ferguson

Bible Lectureship

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