₦airaland Forum

Some bible skeptics have it that king Herods killing of infants in the book of mattew was made up (did not occur), because Josephus a jewish historian did not acknowledge such an account in his writings/annals. Hence have questioned the accuracy of the scriptures.

Well there is actually a non-christain quote acknowledging the existence of such event. The first non-Christian reference to the massacre is recorded four centuries later by Macrobius (c. 395-423), who writes in his Saturnalia:

"When he [emperor Augustus] heard that among the boys in Syria under two years old whom Herod, king of the Jews, had ordered killed, his own son was also killed, he said: it is better to be Herod's pig, than his son.”

Although all historians doubt the occurence of such an event, they all seem to agree on Herods capability to do such, his brutality and tyrannic rule during his later years. Antiquities of the Jews (c. 94 AD), reports many of Herod's misdeeds, including murdering three of his own sons. as well as his mother-in-law (Antiquities 15:247-251; LCL 8:117-119)and his second wife (Antiquities 15:222-236; LCL 8:107-113).


Cc; coolusername

paulGrundy:
Some bible skeptics have it that king Herods killing of infants in the book of mattew was made up (did not occur), because Josephus a jewish historian did not acknowledge such an account in his writings/annals. Hence have questioned the accuracy of the scriptures.

Well there is actually a non-christain quote acknowledging the existence of such event.

Although all historians doubt the occurence of such an event, they all seem to agree on Herods capability to do such, his brutality and tyrannic rule during his later years. Antiquities of the Jews (c. 94 AD), reports many of Herod's misdeeds, including murdering three of his own sons. as well as his mother-in-law (Antiquities 15:247-251; LCL 8:117-119)and his second wife (Antiquities 15:222-236; LCL 8:107-113).


Cc; coolusername

When Jesus was born, according to the bible,
Matthew 2:3 says, " When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him." So if all of Jerusalem, knew of the birth of the messiah, why aren't there jewish texts that support the story? This is to completely ignoring the fact that if that verse is correct that the Pharisees won't have had any reason to reject him.

That's just the strange inconsistent story that people call the truth for you.

CoolUsername:
When Jesus was born, according to the bible,
Matthew 2:3 says, " When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him." So if all of Jerusalem, knew of the birth of the messiah, why aren't there jewish texts that support the story? This is to completely ignoring the fact that if that verse is correct that the Pharisees won't have had any reason to reject him.

That's just the strange inconsistent story that people call the truth for you.

obviously from the verse, it didn't say that all of Jerusalem knew of the birth of the messiah.

CoolUsername:
When Jesus was born, according to the bible,
Matthew 2:3 says, " When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him." So if all of Jerusalem, knew of the birth of the messiah, why aren't there jewish texts that support the story? This is to completely ignoring the fact that if that verse is correct that the Pharisees won't have had any reason to reject him.

That's just the strange inconsistent story that people call the truth for you.

You have to understand something, only a fraction of historical writings produced by ancient historians have actually survived to the present time. 
Insisting that any single-sourced account of a particular ancient event be written off as fiction is especially troublesome when the only challenge made to the historicity of the account is of recent construct. Specifically, with respect to Matthew’s account of the “Massacre of the Innocents”, not only is there no record that anyone with access to first hand knowledge challenged the reliability of the account, but even as late as ≈ 430 A.D. Macrobius (a pagan writer in Rome) treated the “Massacre of the Innocents” as a true historical event (check the opening post, I modified it to include his quote).

zzzzy:
obviously from the verse, it didn't say that all of Jerusalem knew of the birth of the messiah.

It did, as a matter of fact, it implied that they were worried.

paulGrundy:
It did, as a matter of fact, it implied that they were worried.

their king was worried and that was why.