Welcome to the second of three parts of a Christmas Quiz I prepared and used at a recent church service. All ages were present, so some questions were aimed at the children (though several adults raised their hands, perhaps young at heart).

If you have not read and engaged with part 1 of this series, I’d strongly urge you to do so before moving on to this quiz. You’ll find it at: https://occasionallywise.com/2025/12/27/christmas-quiz-part-1/ As well as tackling the first quiz, you’ll understand better the three sections in each of the quizzes – 1) the quiz; 2) the answers; 3) a personal reflection.

I hope you do well with Quiz 2. And that you don’t disbelieve the story near the end of my bizarre and dangerous journey… There is a point to it. From both the quiz and reflection I trust you will learn, enjoy, and feel challenged!

Part 1  The wise men who visited Jesus

Q1  The wise men came from the east to find Jesus. No-one knows for sure, but where did they travel from?

1. Europe, perhaps Italy or Greece
2. Ancient Persia, perhaps countries like Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan
3. North Africa, perhaps Egypt or Mauretania

Q2  How did the wise men travel to visit Jesus?

1. Taxi
2. Plane
3. Camel
4. Walked

Q3  How long would the journey have taken for the wise men to visit Jesus?

1. 5 days
2. 50 days
3. 500 days

Q4  What were the names of the wise men?

1. Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar
2. Matt, Tommy, Alex
3. We don’t know

Q5  We don’t know how many wise men there were, but we do know they brought three gifts: gold, frankincense and myrrh. Each gift had a special significance. But only one of the gifts below is described correctly, which means two gifts have wrong descriptions. Which gift has the right description?

1. Gold – used in worship of God
2. Frankincense – a gift for a king
3. Myrrh – an embalming oil used after death

Q6  Why did the wise men take a different route home?

1. They wanted to do some sightseeing
2. They took a wrong turning – went west instead of east
3. They didn’t want to be forced to tell Herod where Jesus was
4. King Herod’s soldiers were searching for them because they had failed to obey his order to return to him after visiting Jesus

Part 2  Answers to Quiz 2 questions

Question 1 mentions that the Bible says the wise men came from the east (Matthew 2: 1), but asks us to be more specific about where they were from. The best answer here is ancient Persia, most likely from modern day Iran. They would have travelled on trade routes which extended from Europe all the way to China. The alternative answers are obviously wrong – since they came from the east their homes were neither to the west nor the south.

Question 2 – asking how the wise men travelled – was really for the children, all of whom knew which answers were silly: there were no taxis or planes back then.So the choice is that either they rode on camels or they walked. Keep in mind that the question asked how the wise men travelled. I point that out because the wealth of the magi makes it near certain that they rode on camels. But their servants will have walked.

Question 3 is about how many days it would have taken for the wise men to reach Jesus. The options in the question were 5 days / 50 days / 500 days. In this case, calculation and guesswork are both required.

First, we have to guess more exactly where the wise men started from. Persia covered a vast amount of the ancient world, in ancient times that was from countries in modern-day eastern Europe right across to parts of India and south to Egypt. It was smaller by the time Jesus was born but still large. Estimates, then, of how far the wise men and their servants travelled range from 500 to 1200 miles (805 km to 1931 km). I believe 1000 miles (1609 km) is a reasonable estimate.

Second, several factors will have affected how fast the wise men travelled:

• Because their attendants will not have been provided with camels, progress will have been at walking pace
• Even if they stuck to trade routes, the terrain would often be difficult
• The weather would rarely be ideal; dust storms, for example, would halt all progress
• People and camels would need rest stops
• They couldn’t carry everything necessary for the whole journey, so they would stop occasionally to buy fresh supplies
• They went to Jerusalem and later moved on to Bethlehem – we have to allow time in both locations
• We know they returned home by a different route, almost certainly one less-travelled, so probably less direct and with more difficult terrain

Accounting for all these factors, they are unlikely to have covered more than 20 miles per day. Based on the assumption of a 1000 mile journey, we can make this calculation: 1000 miles ÷ 20 miles per day = 50 days. Add in stops in Jerusalem and Bethlehem, and taking a ‘minor road’ home, the total journey out and back would be around 120 days, close to 4 months.

So, from the options on offer in the question, the nearest and therefore best answer for how long it took for the wise men to reach Jesus (just the outward journey) is 50 days.

Question 4 asks about the names of the wise men, offering a couple of options or the response ‘We don’t know’. When I asked this question in church, some voted for ‘Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar’, no-one for ‘Matt, Tommy, and Alex’, and most for ‘We don’t know’. The correct answer is ‘We don’t know’.

The Bible never tells us the names of the wise men. It’s unlikely Mary, Joseph or anyone around them asked them. For one thing they came from Persia. For another they spoke a different language. For yet another, they were eminent people, scholars of philosophy, medicine and the natural world, possibly advisors to Persian kings. You don’t probe people like that for personal information.

But, since those times, nothing has stopped people inventing names for them. The ancient names I included first appeared in an 8th century chronicle known as the Excerpta latina barbari asBithisarea, Melichior, and Gathaspa, though that religious chronicle is a Latin translation from a lost Greek manuscript written some 200 years earlier. So, at best, those names were created hundreds of years after the wise men visited Jesus. Wikipedia summarises some other options:

“Within Eastern Christianity, the Magi have varied names. Among Syrian Christians, they are Larvandad, Gushnasaph, and Hormisdas, which are approximations of typical Zoroastrian names, in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, they are Hor, Karsudan, and Basanater, while Armenian Catholics have Kagpha, Badadakharida and Badadilma.”

People seem fond of attributing names to mysterious people. But all names associated with the wise men of Jesus’ time are inventions. You may have wondered why the names of ‘Matt, Tommy and Alex’ were an option? Well, they were wise men. Matt Busby, Tommy Docherty, and Alex Ferguson were all very successful managers of the English football team Manchester United.[1]

Question 5 is slightly complicated. It lists the wise men’s gifts and the significance of those gifts. But two of the gifts have the wrong significance. Only one of the three is correct. But which one?

The first two are mixed up. Gold was not used in worship, nor was frankincense a gift for royalty. I should have written that gold was a gift for a king because then – as now – gold was precious and expensive, chosen by the wise men as a gift for Jesus in recognition that he was King of the Jews (and, indeed, of all people). Frankincense is a sweet, fragrant resin whose aroma is used in worship.[2] It was also expensive, but a worthy and appropriate gift for one who should be worshipped.

The only correct description of a wise man’s gift, then, was the third – that myrrh is an embalming oil used after death. Myrrh is a yellow, fragrant, sap-like resin that oozes from cuts in the bark of certain trees. Many hold it to offer medicinal benefits – and it can be an ingredient in ‘natural’ toothpastes – but scientists and doctors generally urge caution and want further studies about medical use of myrrh. In Jesus’ time, though, myrrh had antiseptic, preservative, and aromatic properties which is why it was used to embalm a dead body.

But embalming oil is a strange gift to be brought to the infant Jesus. Unless, as many think, this is the first hint that the baby born to Mary had a destiny related to his death. In our day we imagine that a young child will achieve great things during a long lifetime. But Jesus would not have a long lifetime. He would accomplish God’s will by accepting death in his early thirties. This child had a unique purpose, and the gift of myrrh foretold it would be fulfilled by laying down his life.

Question 6 is both humorous and serious in asking why the wise men took a different route for their journey home. We can discard the first two options – these wise men weren’t interested in sightseeing nor would students of the stars get confused and go west instead of east.

Options ‘3’ and ‘4’ are probably both true. The Bible provides only brief information about why the wise men’s plans changed: “And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.” (Matthew 2:12)

The nearest correct answer is probably number ‘3’, that they didn’t want Herod to know where Jesus was. Why? Because he might kill him. When the wise men met Herod before, he told them to search out the child and then report his location to him “so that I too may go and worship him”. (Matthew 2:8) The wise men weren’t fooled. From all they knew about Herod, he was never going to worship Jesus. If this baby was King of the Jews, he was Herod’s rival and thus a target for assassination. To return to Herod’s palace would have meant imprisonment and torture for the wise men until they revealed Jesus’ whereabouts. So they made sure that could not happen.

The option ‘4’ answer – that failure to report to Herod meant they were now being hunted – will also be true. When they didn’t return to tell where Jesus was, we know Herod was “furious” (Matthew 2: 16) and this king was notorious for his cruelty towards those who displeased him. When I wrote before about Herod’s edict to kill all the boys aged under two around Bethlehem, I explained just how cruel Herod could be:

 The horrific truth about King Herod is that these deaths in Bethlehem were not the greatest evil of his reign. All his life he’d done terrible things. Early in his rule he’d killed off half the Jewish Sanhedrin (the ruling court for the Jews). Later he’d had 300 of his court officers put to death. He also murdered his mother-in-law, his wife, and three of his sons. Finally, when he lay dying, he gave orders that one member of each family in Israel was to be killed. Why? To guarantee the nation would be mourning at the time he died. (Thankfully, with Herod dead, that last order was never carried out.) Herod has been described as “a man of ruthless cruelty…”. He certainly was. (From: https://occasionallywise.com/2025/01/25/doubly-wise-men/)

The wise men had outwitted and frustrated Herod, so his kill-squads would be hunting for them. Had they not taken another route, they would never have got home.

Part 3  Reflection

The wise men are usually portrayed as lovable and loyal men who made a long journey to give gifts to baby Jesus, which is probably why giving gifts made its way into Christmas celebrations. It’s all very lovely.

What is little recognised is the immense faith, cost and risk involved for those wise men to find Jesus. Here is my summary:

• Their guidance to travel came from seeing a star in the sky. It takes great faith to launch out on a long journey based just on that.
• They knew they would find only a baby, not a new ruler already established in a palace. But still they went because they believed this baby was like no other: the child God had placed on earth to rule over all people.
• They ventured into unknown countryside. They would never have travelled so far west before. They couldn’t know how long the journey would take or the hazards they’d face. But they set off anyway.
• The expedition would have been at great expense. They needed camels, servants, tents and other supplies. And the presents they carried were very costly, but they were presents worthy of putting before a new king.
• Groups like theirs were often the target of thieves who attacked camel trains moving slowly along the main routes. The wise men and their attendants were in constant danger of being robbed and killed.
• Having found Jesus, they refused Herod’s command to reveal Jesus’ location – that decision could have cost them everything.

Despite all that, the wise men risked their lives and their riches in order to bow before Jesus and present their gifts. All those who profess to follow Jesus, including me, need to ask what we are willing to give up to worship and serve Jesus.

As General Director of a large mission agency, I visited many poor or damaged communities. One of those was high up a mountain on a small island on the west edge of Indonesia, not long after the major tsunami hit the area in 2004. I was told that the residents of the village we would visit were deeply impoverished – $1 a day workers. There was a small church in that village, and my role was to encourage and help where possible.

Along with a colleague and a few locals, we rented a ‘bus’, which was no more than the size of a VW camper van. The early travel into the foothills of the mountain was not especially difficult, but before long we moved from a made-up road to an earth track. It quickly became steeper and steeper, and muddier and muddier. On left and right were deep valleys. A small slide sideways and we’d be gone. Then, looking ahead, I thought our journey could not continue because the track had collapsed down into a valley. Our driver was undaunted. He found a marginally navigable path down into the valley, across a small river, and then back up to rejoin the main track beyond the collapsed section. We did that several times.

Then we really came to a halt. A complete halt. Our ‘bus’ had broken down. The engine had stopped and refused to restart. We clambered out to be met by a wall of heat. The Equator runs right through Indonesia, and daytime heat, even part-way up a mountain, is severe. It was impossibly hot to stay in our broken down bus behind glass, but it was little better outside since there was almost no shelter. There was no choice really, so for nearly three hours we waited at the side of the road in baking sun for another ‘bus’ to rescue us. Finally another camper van style vehicle arrived, we climbed in and went on our way twisting and sliding, always within inches of disaster.

The people of the village and surroundings had been told we’d arrive during the afternoon. Now it was late afternoon and we were only part way up the mountain. We would not get to the village until mid evening, hours after dark. They would all have gone home. But they hadn’t. As we finally pulled in it was obvious no-one had left. Everyone had waited for us.

I was met by the pastor, a young man no more than 20 years old. He was overjoyed that we had come to his village and to his church. The fact that we’d made that tortuous journey clearly mattered to him and his people. After we had eaten some food, the pastor asked if I would like to see where he lived and studied. Of course I would. He pulled back a curtain behind the church platform to reveal a small area with a blanket on the floor as his bed, and what looked like a school desk as the place where he worked. There may have been a box in which he kept his few clothes. He had no other possessions and no other home. His pay? Almost nothing, though the congregation provided his meals. The pastor was thankful for the privilege of serving his church. I was thankful they had a young man such as him as their pastor.

It was now very late, but everyone gathered for the church service. The pastor told me I would preach and afterwards cast out demons from three women. I was used to preaching but casting out demons was not in my normal church ‘order of service’. Nevertheless I nodded, and the service began. I preached with an interpreter, sticking to short sentences and avoiding references to events or situations beyond the understanding of these people. It seemed to go well. Towards the end of the service, the three women were brought to me, and with some difficulty I spoke words over each of them to set them free from the work of the devil. That apparently went well too. The women had been helped.

The village, of course, had no street lights so we stepped out into total darkness, and climbed into our bus for the return journey. Then we faced our latest and greatest problem. The headlights on the bus would not work. Nothing the driver did could make those lights shine. I resigned myself to spending the night somewhere in the village. But our driver was determined to get his bus and passengers down the mountain. His young assistant, aged about 15, was given a hand torch (a flashlight) and told to sit on the roof of the bus and light our path. That was crazy. The lad would almost certainly be thrown off the roof as we swung from side to side going down the bumpy and twisty road, and I was sure the light from his torch would not show us more than a few yards ahead. But off we set. The assistant’s torch was as feeble as I predicted, but by going very slowly the driver kept us on the track. Despite many hair-raising moments we crawled down that mountain safely.

Next morning I thought through the events of the day before. Gradually those thoughts did not centre on my risk, or my discomfort, or my potential demise. The tortuous journey was the event of just one day, one tiny part of my life. That was as nothing in hardship compared to what the 20-year-old pastor experienced as night after night he slept on a blanket on the floor, and day after day ministered to desperately poor villagers. He had accepted God’s call to serve in a remote village – no health care, no backup, no pay, no normal accommodation. There was no way he was comfortable. But he did not expect to be. His life was dedicated to worshipping and following Jesus no matter how great the cost. Jesus had given his life for him, and now he was giving his life for Jesus. That young man deeply challenged me.

The wise men risked everything to find Jesus. For those of us who, in any sense, have found Jesus, how much risk, hardship and sacrifice are we accepting to serve the one who came to be our king and our saviour?

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[1] And they were all Scottish!

[2] Frankincense is still used today in worship but also in aromatherapy, skincare, and other traditional forms of medicine. It is considered by some but not all to have qualities to manage conditions like inflammation.