[joesbucks]

Would have been so much easier had the scriptures explained things in the needed detail instead of all this interpretation stuff.

[lupie]

Would have been so much easier had the scriptures explained things in the needed detail instead of all this interpretation stuff.

So, are you saying that God didn't quite give us His Word to YOUR satisfaction? Are you saying that His Word is not enough to show us who He is, and who we are, and why we need Him? If so, that says a lot.

[bigbob]

Probably did before some monk with autocorrect got hold of it.

[NFHale]

I always though they was Moe, Larry, and Curly...

[Campion]

Like most literature, Scripture assumes a certain amount of cultural familiarity with the era and milieu in which it was written. To Matthew's original readers in AD 40 or 45, "Magi from the East" may have been a fairly self-explanatory or even commonplace concept.

That's why you have be careful of applying Scripture passages to modern situations uncritically. For example, people try to use Jeremiah 10:3-4 as some sort of Biblical condemnation of Christmas trees. But nobody in Jeremiah's immediate audience would have ever heard of or seen a Christmas tree; much less would they recognize that passage has having anything to do with them. A good rule of exegesis is that, if your interpretation of a passage would have been complete nonsense to the original readers of passage, the people to whom it was actually written, your interpretation is the wrong one.