# National Geographic December 2008



## Eoghan (Jul 20, 2010)

I was reading this yesterday at the barbers and found it in a charity shop today. The Cover article is about Herod the Great. On p42 the statement is made that "Herod is best known for slaughtering every male infant in Bethlehem in an attempt to kill Jesu. He is almost certainly innocent of this crime." I searched in vain for the details in the text but didn't find it before I had my haircut. Today having bought the mag I found the full text on p40.

The statement seems to be based on the fact that there is no corroborating evidence. Is there no other evidence?

Looking at Herods murder of three of his own sons, wife and mother-in-law (amongst others). I can't see the murder of babies that were not his own giving him sleepless nights!


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## py3ak (Jul 20, 2010)

Edersheim addresses the matter:



> As always in the history of Christ, so here also, glory and suffering appear in juxtaposition. It could not be, that these Magi should become the innocent instruments of Herod's murderous designs; nor yet that the Infant-Saviour should fall a victim to the tyrant. Warned of God in a dream, the 'wise men' returned 'into their own country another way;' and, warned by the angel of the Lord in a dream, the Holy Family sought temporary shelter in Egypt. Baffled in the hope of attaining his object through the Magi, the reckless tyrant sought to secure it by an indiscriminate slaughter of all the children in Bethlehem and its immediate neighborhood, from two years and under. True, considering the population of Bethlehem, their number could only have been small, probably twenty at most.65 But the deed was none the less atrocious; and these infants may justly be regarded as the 'protomartyrs,' the first witnesses, of Christ, 'the blossom of martyrdom' ('flores martyrum,' as Prudentius calls them). The slaughter was entirely in accordance with the character and former measures of Herod.66 Nor do we wonder, that it remained unrecorded by Josephus, since on other occasions also he has omitted events which to us seem important.67 The murder of a few infants in an insignificant village might appear scarcely worth notice in a reign stained by so much bloodshed. Besides, he had, perhaps, a special motive for this silence. Josephus always carefully suppresses, so far as possible, all that refers to the Christ68 - probably not only in accordance with his own religious views, but because mention of a Christ might have been dangerous, certainly would have been inconvenient, in a work written by an intense self-seeker, mainly for readers in Rome.
> 
> 65. So Archdeacon Farrar rightly computes it.
> 66. An illustrative instance of the ruthless destruction of whole families on suspicion that his crown was in danger, occurs in Ant. xv. 8. 4. But the suggestion that Bagoas had suffered at the hands of Herod for Messianic predictions is entirely an invention of Keim. (Schenkel, Bibel Lex., vol. iii. p. 37. Comp. Ant. xvii. 2. 4.)
> ...



The verdict of "almost certainly innocent" is simply based on the presupposition that the Gospels present unreliable history: a presupposition which cannot be rationally defended.


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## Jack K (Jul 20, 2010)

I suspect that if the account of the slaughter came from any ancient historical source other than the Bible, it would immediately be accepted by most historians. The assumption that the Bible account is not to be trusted because it has a religious point to prove is postmodern silliness.


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