THE MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS. Myth??

1. No serious historian will doubt of the existence of the man called Jesus. Many in the Christendom believe the gospels are the literal word of God & therefore must be accurate. But much about what we know about this world 2000 years ago,

2. came from accounts written long after the death of Jesus by his devotees & disciples, who depicted a world they could only have imagined, rather than what they knew as facts.

Now my story began in the Roman Empire, which was just getting on the way in this period,

3. but at that time, it was already the biggest empire the world have seen & has ever seen.

Herod died in 4 BC but before any of that, he was the ruthless king during Jesus’s birth, who would stop at nothing to keep his thrown.

4. In the gospel of Matthew, King Herod learns of the new King of the Jews, has been born. Herod called himself ‘king of the Jews,’ but in reality, he rules at Rome’s pleasure & he is permitted to reign as long as he keeps Judea’s wealth, flowing into Roman’s pockets.

5. Herod is a great example of how a local king can work the system & remain in power for a long time.

Herod came to power because he had Mark Anthony as his ‘godfather,’ who was at that point at the peak of his powers in Roman.

6. But after the eventuality that befell Mark Anthony & cleopatra, at the hand of Augustus, Herod managed to stay in power. How did Herod do that? He did it by reworking the system, reworking the corridors of power, killing his enemies, defeating everybody he had to,

7. he was an absolutely brilliant politician, a megalomaniac at its best, & probably a very nasty man. The control of the region of Judea along with the Jewish people was entrusted on Herod by the Romans.

As far as Judea & the Jews were concerned, Herod was the “authoritas.”

8. So any talks of a messiah can bring about upheavals & outright rebellion against Roman occupation.

So someone like Herod would in fact, be afraid of messianic figures, not really because he thought God was really raising up a Saviour for the Israelites,

9. but because he realizes this was the form a political opposition would take, in a place like Isreal. This was especially so in the 1st Century, when there was a kind of rising resentment for the Roman authorities.

10. In the gospel of Matthew, the drastic measures (infanticide) Herod was prepared to take is described, it was to protect his throne.

“The Massacre of the Innocents,” an appalling crime even by the standards of the time, would follow.

11. Herod decreed that every male child in Bethlehem who is up to 2 years must be killed.

In his estimation, “it’s better the innocent should die, than the guilty should escape.”

But is there any historical evidence that King Herod could have committed such an atrocity?

12. Could Herod have been capable of massacring the innocents in their thousands? The answer could be found in Herod’s own disastrous home life. “He failed to decide who amongst his sons was going to succeed him, he ended up killing 3 of them & his favorite wives.”

13. So if Herod was quite capable of killing his family members, he is certainly capable of killing some infant boys in Bethlehem. He was a ruthless tyrant as all kings & rulers were at that time, they had to put down any potential threats to their reign.

14. Now the difficulty in proving “The Massacre of the Innocents,” is that we have no evidence of it elsewhere other than the gospels. And in fact it’s only in the gospel, that of Matthew.

15. And this is quite significant because the Jewish historian ‘Josephus,’ tells us a massive amount about Herod, but he says NOTHING AT ALL about the “The Massacre of the Innocents.”

Whether the massacre truly took place, we may never know.

16. But what we do know for certain, “is that the man called King Herod, radically shaped the world in which Jesus grew up.” With the authoritas bestowed on him by Rome, he launched a colossal citadel all across Judea.

17. One of his palaces ‘Heredium’ dominated the view from Bethlehem. The imposing palace stood as constant reminder of his power over the Jews.

In Jerusalem, he designed & built the vast second temple complex, the epicenter of the Jewish faith in Judea.

18. Its footprint, the ‘Temple Mount,’ remains prominent in Jerusalem today. Some of the best surviving examples of Herod’s reign in Judea during Jesus’s lifetime can be found in the Mediterranean coastal city of Caesarea.

19. Caesarea was one of Herod’s really amazing building projects. He took a tiny fishing village & made it into a huge Graeco-Roman city, he brought in Roman architects, the greatest Roman designs & built all in great fashion, fashionable at the time.

20. Isreal didn’t have a harbor till then, he constructed one. He built a theatre as well, & on top of the hill, he built a huge alter to the goddess Roma - “ the patron god of the Romans,” & to Caesar Augustus.

21. So Caesarea was not a Jewish town but in fact a heavily themed Roman town.

Herod the Great lived a long & extravagant life. But according to the historian ‘Josephus,’ he succumbed to an agonizing illness & died in 4 BC, aged 69.