Slaughter of the Innocents

BardSkye said:

Are there any historical records of that particular event amongst the Jewish or Roman scholars of the day that detail the reaction of the populace as a whole?

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I've never heard of any historical records that confirm the actual event, let alone speak to how the event was received. Sorry.

Also, note that Bethlehem was a small town. There were probably only a handful of children that met the criteria.

BardSkye said:

I wondered if perhaps the Jewish historians might have noted anything down as they, like the Chinese, kept what seem to be meticulous records.

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Think of it this way--there are things that happen in small towns in rural areas that go unreported today. One hundred years ago, there was even more that went unreported. Look at Rosewood. And that was less than a hundred years ago.

The manner in which the slaughter was carried out could have been real cloak and dagger stuff. Say there were just a handful: even two dozen maybe be overstating the number, particularly if you accept the analysis offered by some:

When the Magi, warned in dreams of the king's true intentions, returned home by a different route to avoid being forced to betray the child, Herod ordered the slaughter of all male children who were two years old and under. That criterion probably actually refers to people under just 12 months old, as the likely Hebrew origin of the phrase would refer to people who haven't started their second year.

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Perhaps entire families were "disappeared." Perhaps the children were just taken on some falsified legal claim. Perhaps it was done in the dead of night. How much of the population, in just Bethlehem alone, actually would have known what transpired?

I'm just speculating, of course.

I would hazard a guess that riots in the streets were not likely, simply because the Romans tended to frown on that sort of thing among their subjects and would take a very heavy hand in putting such unrest down. Cloak and dagger or simply "spot arrests" would have been more likely.

Also, since the event isn't really historically documented, I'd say you've got free rein to shape it to match the needs of your story. Perhaps unrest in more prosperous areas of town combined with resignation in the more blighted areas.

From what I've read, kings of old had the power to do almost anything they wanted without fear of reprisal. (You need go no further back than the Plantagenets to prove that's true.) The edict to kill all male children gives us an idea of who Herod was. I think the average citizen would be too afraid to make a public outcry.

Look in Josephus

BardSkye said:

True enough. I've read various speculations that suggest there probably wouldn't be more than 15-20 children affected. Even so - especially in a small town - putting a dozen or two children to the blade would be likely to rouse the inhabitants in a big way.

I wondered if perhaps the Jewish historians might have noted anything down as they, like the Chinese, kept what seem to be meticulous records.

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Unlike ancient China, Judea was pretty much destroyed by the Romans and that probably wiped out whatever meticulous Judean records there may have been. There is really only one historical source for the Hasmoneans and Herodians: Josephus. He certainly records plenty of atrocities and people in Judea seem to have been far from subjugated since they revolted 3 or 4 times in the first two or three centuries BC/AD and in general there was a lot of fractious unrest. I think Josephus gives a picture of what he thought of all the mayhem, so that's one near-contemporary take on things around 4 AD/BC.

Ancient Revolts and the semi-literate

BardSkye said:

Yes, I'm relying on Josephus for about 80% of my research as he seems to be the only non-biblical source I can find. Christian researchers are many and varied but their interpretations are not what I need as they focus on Jesus. Jesus' birth, in my WIP, might rate a page at best. It's a part of the story but not a big one.

Herod had a good deal of unrest and a few outright revolts to deal with (savagely). A couple are documented, such as a student revolt, and the religious leaders of the time were known to be very unhappy with the whole situation. I'm dealing with the lower classes, the ones without any real power to change things, and the odd foreigner.

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For an idea of how your average guy felt in the upheavals of antiquity, you could look at Egypt (which has lots of every-day texts preserved from this period) or into literature based on discovering everyday life via the Talmud or the documents of the Cairo Genizah (see http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/Taylor-Schechter/ for example). There are (for most of the Mediterranean) also graffiti (for example Social War graffiti at Pompeii) and funereal inscriptions.

Letters from sailors and other Papyrii

BardSkye said:

Now there's a link I can get happily lost in for weeks. I love university research libraries. I'll check out Egyptian contemporary writings as well. Now that you've mentioned it I'm smacking myself up'side the head saying "Why didn't I think of that?"

Many thanks once again.

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Here's some letters from sailors in around 150 AD:

http://www.csun.edu/~hcfll004/paplet1.htm

Here's an intro to some papyrus resources:

http://www.athenapub.com/egypap1.htm

problems with papyrus on the Web:

http://oi.uchicago.edu/OI/DEPT/RA/ABZU/ARCETALK.HTML

A big heap of papyrus online:


http://www.papyrology.ox.ac.uk/POxy/

Thank you!

Couple of links there new to me. I appreciate your sharing them.

We need to ask Jen if she can start a new heading in Resources for Greek/Roman Papyrus resources!

Josephus

BardSkye said:

Yes, I'm relying on Josephus for about 80% of my research as he seems to be the only non-biblical source I can find. Christian researchers are many and varied but their interpretations are not what I need as they focus on Jesus. Jesus' birth, in my WIP, might rate a page at best. It's a part of the story but not a big one.

Herod had a good deal of unrest and a few outright revolts to deal with (savagely). A couple are documented, such as a student revolt, and the religious leaders of the time were known to be very unhappy with the whole situation. I'm dealing with the lower classes, the ones without any real power to change things, and the odd foreigner.

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Bard,

I've read Josephus, too, and he is a good source, although not 100% reliable. There are some incongruities in his writings, too, as he wrote from a specific perspective. I'd still go with him, though, for lack of a better contemporary.

There are some good resources that are through Christian sources that deal with the times of Jesus from an academic viewpoint rather than a religious one. In fact, some of them I got through the Jewish Book Club. Alfred Edersheim's Sketches of Jewish Social Life and Stephen Wylens's The Jews in the Time of Jesus are pretty good resources on the social setting during the first century AD.

For what it's worth...

Historical record

Several here have made the assertion that there are no historical records corroborating the account of Herod having the children of Bethlehem slaughtered. I think this is unfair.

After all, how did we hear about the incident?

Even if you reject the Bible on religious grounds, you still have to accept the books of the Bible as ancient documents. Thus, they qualify as historical records, even if one questions their reliability or accuracy on certain points. Thus, there IS a historical record (namely the Gospel of Matthew) that reports Herod ordering the slaughter of babies in Bethlehem.

Is the Gospel of Matthew accurate? Well, a Christian will answer in the affirmative based on his/her faith and belief in the Bible as the Word of God.

A historian (even a non-Christian one) can still answer in the affirmative (albeit a cautious one), since such an order is entirely consistent with what we know about Herod. He was precisely the kind of man that would order such a thing.

BrianTubbs said:

Several here have made the assertion that there are no historical records corroborating the account of Herod having the children of Bethlehem slaughtered. I think this is unfair.

After all, how did we hear about the incident?

Even if you reject the Bible on religious grounds, you still have to accept the books of the Bible as ancient documents. Thus, they qualify as historical records, even if one questions their reliability or accuracy on certain points. Thus, there IS a historical record (namely the Gospel of Matthew) that reports Herod ordering the slaughter of babies in Bethlehem.

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Of course, the Bible can be regarded as an historical document. The point, however, is that there are no other records that confirm this event. I could be wrong, but I don't think anyone here was saying the Bible was therefore inaccurate or wrong. I know I wasn't.

Bardskye said:

I just find it astonishing that something we, in the modern world, would regard as an atrocity not being mentioned in any of the other records of the time.

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It just may not have been that big of a deal. Also, it's not like every text from the period has survived. Almost nothing has survived, actually. So it's very likely that the incident, if it occured, was recorded elsewhere. We just don't have those records.

Other historical records

When you think about it, who else would have recorded this?

I've actually heard one person say (not here) that Herod's chroniclers were very meticulous and would have therefore recorded this. Really? Do you think Herod would want his killing of innocent children to be part of his legacy?

Likewise, the Romans certainly weren't going to touch this, even if they were aware of it. They had a vested interest in keeping order in Jewish Palestine. The slaughter of innocent children has a tendency to destabilize things.

So, OF COURSE, there were no official, government records of this atrocity.

Who else is going to record it? The only people I can think of who would want to put this incident in a written record would be the victims or followers of Jesus.

We have to remember that there was A LOT OF illiteracy in this time period and in this region. It's unlikely that any of the victims or townspeople would record this affair in writing. There was probably only oral tradition.

And, as several here have already said, Bethlehem was not that big. So, there probably weren't that many people affected, making it easier for a government (in this case, Herodian) cover-up.

The Gospel of Matthew was written sometime in the latter half of the 1st century A.D., well after Herod "the Great" had died. The Gospel writer (and I do believe it was Matthew - though liberal textual critics disagree) probably based the story on oral accounts from surviving Bethlehem citizens. Matthew, being a tax collector, would NOT have been illiterate, and was thus capable of putting this into writing. Moreover, as a tax collector, Matthew probably was a very good researcher. He understood the population of the region better than the average person.

Finally, why would Matthew make this up? It's not a necessary addition to the story. I can see why some people would argue that the virgin birth is made up (I'm not one of those people, but I can see why they'd say that). Having a divine type birth would certainly bolster Jesus' claim to be deity. However, Herod's slaugher of the innocents is not necessary here. Jesus can still be a divinely-conceived, virgin-born child -- and go on to birth the Christian church, die, and be resurrected. All of that can still happen apart from any slaughter of babies in Bethlehem. It's just not a necessary addition. I think Matthew put it in his Gospel because it was true. It really happened.

BrianTubbs said:

I think Matthew put it in his Gospel because it was true. It really happened.

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I agree.

Magi?

BrianTubbs said:

Finally, why would Matthew make this up? It's not a necessary addition to the story. I can see why some people would argue that the virgin birth is made up (I'm not one of those people, but I can see why they'd say that). Having a divine type birth would certainly bolster Jesus' claim to be deity. However, Herod's slaugher of the innocents is not necessary here. Jesus can still be a divinely-conceived, virgin-born child -- and go on to birth the Christian church, die, and be resurrected. All of that can still happen apart from any slaughter of babies in Bethlehem. It's just not a necessary addition. I think Matthew put it in his Gospel because it was true. It really happened.

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The redactor of "Matthew" (who never says he is Matthew), managed to do a lot with the slaughter-story. He uses it to connect up three earlier references ("out of egypt...the lamentation in Jeremiah and a tidbit about "Nazorean"...presumably from the Septuagint (?)) and to echo the birth of Moses (complete with an Egyptian reference) and to bring in some prophetic dreams and to get the Magi on and off the stage without their discrediting themselves.
The connection with the Magi seems the strangest part of the tale. They travel straight to Jerusalem out of the East and are summoned to Herod there. Of course it is pretty odd that Herod would be there around 4BC- 4AD...(see this for example http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09527a.htm ) and in fact, if Herod died in 4 BC as he seems to have and if he worked out the time (v16 in Matthew) correctly then Christ was born in 6 BC, if not earlier...But then the Magi would not have found Herod in Jerusalem until 5 BC. No wonder people were upset....also of course, given the apparent chronological window of 2 years, it is very odd that Herod would confine his infanticidal missions to one town since in 2 years a lot of babies might have been moved (as in fact the target baby had moved...all the way to Egypt and back).
All-in-all the infanticide story seems to be a pretext for bringing in a lot of other material. Its own internal logic doesn't seem to hold up very well. Why, for example, should Herod worry about some local baby when he is busy murdering his own family as needed to stay in power? (And this murderous propensity of Herod's may be the one real fact behind the infanticide part of the story). Why can't Herod send agents to follow the Magi?

Remember...Herod was insane

Replying to Sokal...

First, I don't buy the scenarios of redaction and all that. I believe Matthew, the tax collector and follower of Jesus, wrote the Gospel of Matthew. That is widely affirmed by the early church - an affirmation that has not been satisfactorily overcome by modern textual criticism.

Second, I'm not disputing that Matthew held up the slaughter story for some important symbolic significance. What I'm saying is that it wasn't necessary for him to do so. Take out the slaughter story and you still have a compelling portrait of Jesus as the Son of God. Thus....as significant as the slaughter story was...it was unnecessary from a theological standpoint and too risky to "make up." (There would've been several surviving eyewitnesses from Bethlehem who could have debunked the story, if it were not true. That would have torpedoed the Gospel's credibility from the get-go).

Third, Herod was insane. You're looking for strategic calculation and logical coherence where there was little. We're talking about a man who, toward the end of his life, was so given over to paranoia and insanity that he ordered widespread slaughter to take place upon his death, so there would be mourning. (This was not carried out). According to Josephus, Herod burned a priest and several scholars alive in a rage over some kind of incident related to a fast day. That was just a few months before his death.

The man was crazy. Can you NOT see him ordering the slaughter of babies under 2 years of age in a remote Jewish village?

IMHO, the only reason why anyone would seriously question this account is because of a bias against taking the Bible at face value.

Redaction is a possible "historical fact"

BrianTubbs said:

Replying to Sokal...

First, I don't buy the scenarios of redaction and all that. I believe Matthew, the tax collector and follower of Jesus, wrote the Gospel of Matthew. That is widely affirmed by the early church - an affirmation that has not been satisfactorily overcome by modern textual criticism.

Second, I'm not disputing that Matthew held up the slaughter story for some important symbolic significance. What I'm saying is that it wasn't necessary for him to do so. Take out the slaughter story and you still have a compelling portrait of Jesus as the Son of God. Thus....as significant as the slaughter story was...it was unnecessary from a theological standpoint and too risky to "make up." (There would've been several surviving eyewitnesses from Bethlehem who could have debunked the story, if it were not true. That would have torpedoed the Gospel's credibility from the get-go).

Third, Herod was insane. You're looking for strategic calculation and logical coherence where there was little. We're talking about a man who, toward the end of his life, was so given over to paranoia and insanity that he ordered widespread slaughter to take place upon his death, so there would be mourning. (This was not carried out). According to Josephus, Herod burned a priest and several scholars alive in a rage over some kind of incident related to a fast day. That was just a few months before his death.

The man was crazy. Can you NOT see him ordering the slaughter of babies under 2 years of age in a remote Jewish village?

IMHO, the only reason why anyone would seriously question this account is because of a bias against taking the Bible at face value.

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I seriously question all accounts and Matthew gives a very odd account in weaving together prophetic texts, the Magi and the Slaughter. I'm not saying the readactor is wrong or a bad person or anything. I'm just saying the account has to be taken as an account like any other if you are using it as an historical source.

So, if a person is interested in reconstructing the past, one thing he has to do is look at how the past was reconstructed in the past. The redaction received under the title of "Matthew" is a reconstruction of the past -- one that was written in the past, but still a reconstruction like any other.

One question in looking at Matthew's account is what he is trying to do in comparison to say Luke's (later) account. Significantly Luke, coming along a bit later and writing for a different audience, works harder to get his chronology into a better shape and entirely omits any reference to any slaughter. Instead he concentrates on the close relation of Jesus Christ to the Judean oligarchy in what was supposedly the exact same early first Century. John the Baptist's father, for example, is a priest in the Temple, a very different way of relating to the Judaen oligarchy than simply via Magi who deceive Herod and a Herod who orders executions.
Or to put it another way, Matthew features a Christ modeled on Moses with Herod as a Pharoh and a trip to Egypt to boot while Luke features God working in far more mysterious ways to bring one branch of Pharisees to a new, all-encompassing view of salvation.
Or to put it another way, the birth of Christ for Luke and Matthew (but not for other accounts) has some problematic aspects and they resolve them in very different ways: Matthew via echoes of Exodus and prophetic texts with stock figures such as the "insane Herod" and folkloric motifs such as "deceptive" Magi, while Luke goes for resolution via some much stranger, more metaphysical mechanisms.
Naturally, you can take your pick of what you want to have as your reconstructed history -- the earlier redactors did and you can do the same. I myself find it more interesting to put the redactors back in the picture and ask about them and their motives. We certainly have more evidence of that than we do of the actual nature of the machinations of the Magi and the slaughter in Bethlehem.