Posted on 02/02/2014 7:38:17 PM PST by ZULU
King Herod is remembered as the evil King who brutally massacred the children of Bethlehem, trying to kill the newborn Jesus and his name has been reviled ever since. But is the story true?
To call this series defective and illogical is not correct. Satanic and anti-Judaeo-Christian is better.
Nevermind the inconsistency of the approach to David and Herod. There are numerous sources in history which indicate that Herod was every bit ruthless enough to commit such an act. Josephus failure to mention this means nothing. And the veracity of Josephus himself has been questioned many times by many people.
I thin this channel and this series are just another example of recent efforts by certain academics to destroy the Judaeo-Christian bedrock of America and demean western civilization and culture.
Josephus was a Roman sycophant when he did much of his writing, IIRC.
Remember, the wise men took a different route home to avoid Herod.
It was prophesied in the OT
Jeremiah 31:15
Bingo. He sold out. And his views on Herod, a ruler who lived BEFORE him are not reliable - not only because of his personal opinions, but also due to lack of publicly available information at that time. We may know about what went on at any given time in the Roman Empire than any individual citizen did - at least on an imperial policy basis.
I don’t watch the History Channel anymore. They’ve always presented those ‘Mysteries of the Bible’ shows as a way to debunk the Bible. Also, every documentary is done in the same format these days. They show some re-enactment footage. Then various talking heads are shown putting in their 2 cents worth. No new facts are really presented. I am a history buff and read lots of history, and I think most of the History Channel documentaries have about as much info as the dust jacket flaps of the books I read.
Right and they were from the east - Magi from Babylon. The idea of one them being black or even the number is absurd and without Biblical support. Yet that is presented in the video.
Its amazing that the same people who told us David, Moses, Solomon and Christ never even existed a few decades ago are now re-interpreting what we believe about them.
David was in many ways a brutal king. All ancient kings were. They did not have either the technology or management theory to administrate their kingdoms in any other way. What we call brutality they would call a legal system. Imposing 21 century morality on government 2900 years ago is duplicitous.
Events such as Herod killing the children of a village would also not raise Roman eyebrows. The Roman army would at times use little boys in conquered areas as target practice for their javelins(Pilum). The Romans sort of invented the Police State
Yes. Herod the 'Great' was a pretty brutal SOB by the time of his death. It is said that, knowing that he was hated by one and all, he had over one hundred members of the leading families (I believe this was in Hebron) imprisoned when he was nearing his death with the instructions that they should be killed when he died so that there would be mourning (and not just celebrations) when he died. Fortunately his minions did not follow his instructions. I presume they just had a 'ding-dong the witch is dead' hoe-down.
Slaughtering innocent infants certainly would've fit Herod's M.O.
“David was in many ways a brutal king. All ancient kings were. “
The Bible presents David as a flawed human as we all are, but still a man who worshiped the one true God. He did not act like a Pagan King.
Besides, as I point out, the same people who told us a short time ago these personalities were figments of Biblical fantasy are now explaining them for us.
I agree with what you say about using contemporary standards to judge people of another age.
The Romans, while brutal enough, lived in a brutal world and they did create a society in which people were bound by laws, judges and courts and not the personal whims of a king - at least as long as you didn’t cross Caesar personally.
Herod’s father, Herod Agrippa, was a friend of Augustus and so Judea and the Herodian Dynasty were given special treatment by Rome. Jews did not have to worship Caesar, graven images including the legionary standards,were covered in Jerusalem, Jews were not conscripted into the Roman army, and the taxes imposed by Rome on Judea were less onerous than those imposed by the Temple hierarchy. Rome also kept away those troubling Parthians and other invaders. But no one likes a foreign overlord and that included Judeans, regardless of how mild the Romans were.
I never heard any stories about Romans using captured boys for target practice with Pila. Aside from Judea, the Romans made an effort to incorporate conquered people into their government and military, and eventually citizenship was expanded to all residents of the Empire. As an aside, Jews composed a large percentage of the population of the Empire with large numbers of residents in all Roman cities. Despite the revolts that occurred in Judea, there were no acts of persecution against resident Jews at the time throughout the Empire, many of whom, like Paul, were Roman Citizens.
Totally agree. Look at the Spartan Krypteia.
Good analysis. I totally agree. Such an act would have been unlikely by David.
We have to remember that Bethlehem had perhaps 300-400 residents at that time. As Herod had all boys under two years of age killed, the ‘masacre of the innocents’ may have only involved 20 little boys. In Roman (and much of ancient) history, that was a number of dead that was not even worthy of note, especially as they were children, not people of note.
Josephus was the David Gergen of his time.
How do you positively know this to tell us to "remember" the occasion?
The “King Herod” of our day is killing not only male babies but females also. And it is before they are even born!
The slaughter of the innocents really happened. I believe this King Herod (The Great, or The Butcher), who was an Idumean appointed puppet king of the Romans, not of the line of David, or even Judah, was aware of this coming king, via his religious advisors, to be a possible threat to his cozy position. The boys in Bethlehem were mere statistics in this paranoid creep’s rampage of killing those he felt were a threat to his kingship.
That, and the Bible says it happened, so it’s truth. Just like it says one day “every tongue will confess, and every knee shall bow...”
The 3 kings is a western construct -- Eastern Orthodox and the Assyrian Church have numerous people and don't call them kings
Also, you are 100% correct that "Magi" or Zoroastrian priests would have come from the Parthian empire. They were most likely Iranis..
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