The significance of dreams and the star in Matthew’s infancy narrative

Abstract

The phenomena of dreams and the star of Bethlehem in Matthew’s birth narrative have intrigued scholars through the ages. Scholarship in this regard went through the stages of identifying the origin of the material and of arguing the historicity of these events. Currently scholarship is moving into a new stage of investigating the meaning of these narratives. Without engaging the arguments developed by the first two stages mentioned, I investigate the significance of these unusual forms of revelation in this article.