Posted on by wrote in General, History, Q & A.

Question:

Can Macrobius be used as evidence for the massacre of the innocents? Macrobius wrote in his work Saturnalia the following: “On hearing that the son of Herod, king of the Jews, [Herod the First] had been slain when Herod ordered that all boys in Syria under the age of two be killed, Augustus said, ‘It’s better to be Herod’s pig than his son’.”

Answer:

Sure.  This is indirect evidence, and not “proof” that Herod did something similar to the children in the area of Bethlehem, but this is clear and strong evidence that this is the sort of thing that Herod would have, without hesitation, done to the Jewish children when he got wind of the idea of a future Jewish king being born in Bethlehem.  This story tells us that the biblical story is very much according to the character of Herod, lending credence to the biblical account, but it is not “evidence” that the biblical story actually happened.  I would not hesitate to use this, but would note that it is only evidence that the story is not nearly as surprising as some critics have claimed.  Some used to claim that the story of the killing of the innocents was a clear fabrication.  Not so.
John Oakes

You May Also Like:

  1. The killing of children by Herod is only recorded in the New Testament. Therefore it is a fabrication. Response?
  2. It has been discovered that there were two different Bethlehems at the time Jesus was born and that he was born in the wrong one, or not in Bethlehem at all. He did not fulfill the OT prophecy and is not the Messiah.
  3. Luke has Jesus’ birth in 6 AD when Quirinius was governor of Syria, while Matthew has it before 4 BC when Herod died. How do you resolve this apparent contradiction?
  4. The story of Putana sent to kill Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita is similar to that of Herod trying to kill Jesus. Could the Bible writers have derived this story from the Bhagavad Gita?

Comments are closed.