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Preview
What you get in the Casual English Bible’s Matthew Leaders Guide & Atlas are:
- Tips for teaching Matthew in a Bible Study
- 275 Discussion questions WITH answers
- Atlas of 40 hi res maps that track the stories in Matthew
- 127 pages of resources, for immediate download as PDFs
Sample maps in the Matthew Leaders Guide & Atlas
Wise men follow a star
It’s unclear exactly what they saw. One theory is that they saw a conjunction of planets that appeared like stars. In 7-6 BC the planets of Jupiter and Saturn came close together and appeared beside the constellation of Pisces. If the magi were stargazers, as many theorize, they interpreted the meaning of what they saw in the sky.
1. Jupiter, the largest of the planets, represented kings, which suggested a king had been born.
2. Saturn represented the Jews because they worshiped on the day that honored the god Saturn: Saturday.
3. “Pisces” means “fish,” and it represented the lands around the Mediterranean Sea, where Israel is located.
So the sages did the math: king plus Jews plus Jewish homeland. They figured a king of the Jews had been born. They went to the Jewish capital of Jerusalem to introduce themselves and pay their respects.
Escape to Egypt
“Joseph had a dream. In that dream, an angel of the Lord told him, ‘Get up and get out of here. Take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you it’s safe to come back. Herod is going to look for this child and try to kill him.’ Joseph got up. He left town, heading to Egypt under the cover of darkness. He took the child with him, along with the boy’s mother. They stayed in Egypt until Herod died. This fulfilled something the Lord said through a prophet: ‘I told my son to leave Egypt'” (Matthew 2:13-15).
In addition to Matthew Leaders Guide & Atlas
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