Christ means “anointed one” and is a reference to the Messiah, whom the Jews were waiting for, as evidenced by how many people asked “Could he be the Messiah?” when Jesus started doing signs and preaching the kingdom. I did not mean “looking for” in the sense that the Magi were “looking for” the baby in Bethlehem, I meant “looking for” as in anticipating and hoping to identify.
All your text shows is that Herod was familiar with the idea that the Jews were waiting for a Messiah. Which makes a lot of sense because the Messiah was conceived to be an oppositional political figure who would overthrow the government, and the Jews were an occupied people. It was definitely something those in power would want to keep an eye on.
Yes, we all know that. It’s the people who paint Christmas card art who do not.
That’s a concordist literal interpretation, but sure, some people take away that meaning. The whole point of this article was to address whether a “miracle” was really what happened or whether the description could have applied to a natural phenomenon.
That their astrologocal studies may have been influenced by Daniel during the Exile is an interesting idea, but simply looking for “The King of the Jews” and believing the child worthy of worship does not entail familiarity with Judaism or Jewish prophesy like you are insisting it does.
Nobody is arguing with this, but how you get the conclusion “therefore they feared God and knew the Scriptures” from the given “they were educated and wealthy” is not via logic.