THE QUESTION

How did they know?

The wise men have become so familiar in the Christmas story that it is easy to overlook how strange their arrival really is.

They came from the East looking for a king.

Not a king already on a throne, but a child.

They had been waiting for something. They recognised its significance. They undertook a long journey. And when they found the child, they brought gifts fit for royalty.

What did they know? Where had that knowledge come from? And how had it survived long enough for them to act upon it?

Those questions led me backwards — beyond Bethlehem, beyond Herod, through the centuries between the Testaments, and eventually to Daniel in Babylon.

History could take me only so far. The rest became a story.

THE STORY

Across five centuries, kingdoms rise and fall.

The count continues.

Babylon falls to Persia. Persia gives way to Greece. Alexander's empire fractures. Judea passes through conquest, persecution and revolt. Rome arrives. Herod builds.

Through it all, something entrusted to Daniel is carried forward.

The Keepers follows the men and women charged with preserving his writings, interpreting what they can, and passing what they cannot yet understand to those who come after them.

Each generation knows only part of the story.

Until, centuries later, the story reaches a group of Magi looking west — and wondering whether the time Daniel foresaw has finally come.