Is There Historical Data of Herod Killing Young Male Babies

Narrative from chapter ii of Matthew

"Holy Innocents" redirects here. For churches defended to this group, see Holy Innocents Church.

Holy Innocents
The Virgin and Kid Surrounded past the Holy Innocents painted by Peter Paul Rubens at the Museum of Louvre-Lens, circa 1618.
Showtime Martyrs
Born	Diverse, presumably shut to the birth of Jesus Bethlehem, Judea
Died	c. 7–2 BC Bethlehem, Judea (martyred past King Herod the Great)
Venerated in	Cosmic Church Eastern Orthodoxy Oriental Orthodoxy Lutheran Church building Anglican Church
Canonized	Pre-Congregation
Banquet	27 Dec (West Syrians) 28 December (Catholic Church building, Lutheran Church building, Anglican Communion) 29 Dec (Eastern Orthodoxy) x January (East Syrians)
Attributes	Martyr'due south palm Crown of martyrdom
Patronage	Foundlings Babies Children's choirs[i]

The Massacre of the Innocents is the incident in the nativity narrative of the Gospel of Matthew (2:16–eighteen) in which Herod the Groovy, king of Judea, orders the execution of all male children ii years old and nether in the vicinity of Bethlehem. The Catholic Church regards them equally the first Christian martyrs, and their feast – Holy Innocents' Day (or the Feast of the Holy Innocents) – is celebrated on 28 December.^[2] A majority of Herod biographers, and "probably a majority of biblical scholars," hold the upshot to be myth, legend, or folklore.^[iii]

Biblical narrative [edit]

The Magi visit Jerusalem to seek guidance as to where the king of the Jews has been born; King Herod directs them to Bethlehem and asks them to return to him and report, just they are warned in a dream and do non do and then. The massacre is reported in Gospel of Matthew:

When Herod realized that he had been outwitted past the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi.

This is followed by a reference to and quotation from the Book of Jeremiah (Jeremiah 31:xv): "Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled: A vocalisation is heard in Ramah, weeping and nifty mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more." (Matthew 2:17-eighteen). The relevance of this to the massacre is not immediately credible, as Jeremiah'southward side by side verses go along to speak of hope and restoration.^[4]

History and theology [edit]

The story of the massacre is establish in no gospel other than Matthew, nor in the surviving works of Nicolaus of Damascus (who was a personal friend of Herod the Great) and the historian Josephus makes no mention of it in his Antiquities of the Jews, despite recording many of Herod's misdeeds including the murder of 3 of his own sons.^[ii] A majority of Herod biographers, and "probably a bulk of biblical scholars," appropriately concur the event to be myth, legend or folklore inspired by Herod'due south reputation.^{[iii] [5]}

The author appears to have modelled the episode on the biblical story of Pharaoh's attempt to kill the Israelite children in the Book of Exodus, as told in an expanded version that current in the 1st century.^[6] In that expanded story, Pharaoh kills the Hebrew children after his scribes warn him of the impending birth of the threat to his crown (i.e., Moses), but Moses' father and mother are warned in a dream that the child'southward life is in danger and deed to save him.^[7] Subsequently in life, later Moses has to flee, like Jesus, he returns when those who sought his death are themselves dead.^[7] The story of the massacre of the innocents thus plays a function in Matthew'southward wider nativity story, in which the proclamation of the coming of the Messiah (his birth) is followed by his rejection by the Jews (Herod and his scribes and the people of Jerusalem) and his later acceptance past the gentiles (the Magi).^[8]

Against this majority opinion some argue for the historicity of the outcome. R. T. France, while acknowledging that the massacre is "perhaps the aspect [of Matthew'due south infancy narrative] almost oft rejected as legendary" ^[ix] and that the story is like to that of Moses, believes that it would non have arisen without historical basis.^[x] Everett Ferguson argues that the story makes sense in the context of Herod's reign of terror in the last few years of his dominion,^[11] and the number of infants in Bethlehem that would accept been killed – no more than than a dozen or so – may have been too insignificant to be recorded past Josephus, who could non exist enlightened of every incident far in the past when he wrote information technology.^[12]

Numbers [edit]

Byzantine liturgy estimated fourteen,000 Holy Innocents, while an early Syrian list of saints put the number at 64,000. Coptic sources raised this to 144,000 and placed the event on 29 December.^[13] The Catholic Encyclopedia (1907–12) suggested that probably only between half dozen and xx children were killed in the town, with a dozen or and so more in the surrounding areas.^[a]

In Christian fine art [edit]

Medieval liturgical drama recounted Biblical events, including Herod's slaughter of the innocents. The Pageant of the Shearmen and Tailors, performed in Coventry, England, included a haunting vocal most the episode, now known equally the Coventry Carol. The Ordo Rachelis tradition of four plays includes the Flying into Egypt, Herod's succession by Archelaus, the render from Egypt, as well every bit the Massacre all centred on Rachel weeping in fulfillment of Jeremiah's prophecy. These events were also in i of the medieval N-Town Plays.^{[ citation needed ]}

The "Coventry Carol" is a Christmas carol dating from the 16th century. The carol was performed in Coventry in England as office of a mystery play called The Pageant of the Shearmen and Tailors. The play depicts the Christmas story from affiliate two in the Gospel of Matthew. The carol refers to the Massacre of the Innocents, in which Herod ordered all male infants two years old and under in Bethlehem to be killed.^[14] The lyrics of this haunting carol represent a mother's lament for her doomed child. It is the simply carol that has survived from this play. The author is unknown. The oldest known text was written down by Robert Croo in 1534, and the oldest known printing of the melody dates from 1591.^[15] The carol is traditionally sung a cappella.

The 17th Century Dutch Christmas song O Kerstnacht, schoner dan de dagen, while showtime with a reference to Christmas Night, is virtually the Massacre of the Innocents. The Dutch progressive rock band Focus recorded in 1974 the start two verses of the song for their album Hamburger Concerto.

The theme of the "Massacre of the Innocents" has provided artists of many nationalities with opportunities to compose complicated depictions of massed bodies in violent activity. It was an culling to the Flight into Egypt in cycles of the Life of the Virgin. It decreased in popularity in Gothic art, just revived in the larger works of the Renaissance, when artists took inspiration for their "Massacres" from Roman reliefs of the battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs to the extent that they showed the figures heroically nude.^[16] The horrific discipline matter of the Massacre of the Innocents besides provided a comparison of aboriginal brutalities with the brutalities of the early modern period, during the menses of religious wars that followed the Reformation – Bruegel's versions show the soldiers carrying banners with the Habsburg double-headed hawkeye (ofttimes used at the time for Ancient Roman soldiers).^{[ citation needed ]}

The 1590 version by Cornelis van Haarlem also seems to reflect the violence of the Dutch Revolt. Guido Reni'south early (1611) Massacre of the Innocents, in an unusual vertical format, is at Bologna.^[17] The Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens painted the theme more than once. One version, now in Munich, was engraved and reproduced as a painting every bit far away as colonial Peru.^[18] Another, his grand Massacre of the Innocents is at present at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, Ontario. The French painter Nicolas Poussin painted The Massacre of the Innocents (1634) at the height of the Thirty Years' War.^{[ citation needed ]}

The Childermass, later on a traditional name for the Feast of the Holy Innocents, is the opening novel of Wyndham Lewis'south trilogy The Human Age. In the novel The Fall (La Chute) by Albert Camus, the incident is argued by the chief graphic symbol to exist the reason why Jesus chose to permit himself exist crucified—every bit he escaped the punishment intended for him while many others died, he felt responsible and died in guilt. A similar interpretation is given in José Saramago's controversial The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, but in that location attributed to Joseph, Jesus' stepfather, rather than to Jesus himself. As depicted past Saramago, Joseph knew of Herod's intention to massacre the children of Bethlehem, but failed to warn the townspeople and chose simply to save his ain child. Guilt-ridden ever afterwards, Joseph finally expiates his sin by letting himself be crucified (an outcome not narrated in the New Testament).^{[ citation needed ]}

The song "Long Fashion Effectually The Sea", from the 1999 Christmas EP past the indie-stone band Low, tells the story from the perspective of the magi during their journeying from Herod to the newborn Jesus, and the warning from the angel not to render.

The Massacre is the opening plot used in the 2006 picture show The Nascence Story (2016).^{[ citation needed ]} It is likewise dramatized in season i of the television miniseries Jesus of Nazareth (1977).

The Cornish poet Charles Causley used the subject for his poem The Innocents' Vocal, which as a folk vocal has been performed past Bear witness of Hands with music by Johnny Coppin (on their album Witness); by Keith Kendrick and Sylvia Needham; and by Keith Kendrick and Lynne Heraud (as Herod on their Anthology Stars in my Crown).^{[ citation needed ]}

Paintings [edit]

• Massacre of the Innocents by the Bruegels. Several versions of The Massacre of the Innocents were painted past Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1565–67) and his son Pieter Brueghel the Younger (into the 17th century).
• Massacre of the Innocents by Guido Reni, created in 1611 for the Basilica of San Domenico in Bologna, but now in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in that metropolis
• Two versions by Peter Paul Rubens, painted in 1611–1612 and 1636–1638
• Massacre of the Innocents by Matteo di Giovanni

Music [edit]

• Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Caedes sanctorum innocentium, H.411, Oratorio for soloists, chorus, two violins and continuo (1683–85)

Feast day [edit]

The celebration of the massacre of the Holy Innocents, traditionally regarded as the first Christian martyrs, if unknowingly so,^{[19] [b]} first appears every bit a feast of the Western church in the Leonine Sacramentary, dating from about 485. The earliest commemorations were connected with the Banquet of the Epiphany, half-dozen January: Prudentius mentions the Innocents in his hymn on the Epiphany. Leo in his homilies on the Epiphany speaks of the Innocents. Fulgentius of Ruspe (6th century) gives a homily De Epiphania, deque Innocentum nece et muneribus magorum ("On Epiphany, and on the murder of the Innocents and the gifts of the Magi").^[c]

Today, the engagement of Holy Innocents' 24-hour interval, also called the Feast of the Holy Innocents or Childermas or Children'due south Mass, varies. Information technology is 27 December for Westward Syrians (Syriac Orthodox Church building, Syro-Malankara Catholic Church, and Maronite Church building) and 10 January for East Syrians (Chaldeans and Syro-Malabar Cosmic Church building), while 28 December is the date in the Church of England (Festival),^[xx] the Lutheran Church building and the Roman Rite of the Cosmic Church. In these latter Western Christian denominations, Childermas is the fourth 24-hour interval of Christmastide.^[21] The Eastern Orthodox Church building celebrates the banquet on 29 Dec.^[22]

From the time of Charlemagne, Sicarius of Bethlehem was venerated at Brantôme, Dordogne equally one of the purported victims of the Massacre.^[23]

In the Roman Rite, the 1960 Code of Rubrics prescribed the use of the red vestments for martyrs in place of the violet vestments previously prescribed on the feast of the Holy Innocents. The feast continued to outrank the Sunday within the Octave of Christmas until the 1969 motu proprio Mysterii Paschalis replaced this Sun with the banquet of the Holy Family unit.

In the Middle Ages, peculiarly north of the Alps, the day was a festival of inversion involving part reversal betwixt children and adults such as teachers and priests, with male child bishops presiding over some church building services.^[24] Bonnie Blackburn and Leofranc Holford-Strevens suggest that this was a Christianized version of the Roman almanac feast of the Saturnalia (when even slaves played "masters" for a twenty-four hour period). In some regions, such as medieval England and French republic, information technology was said to be an unlucky day, when no new project should exist started.^[25]

In that location was a medieval custom of refraining where possible from work on the day of the week on which the feast of "Innocents Mean solar day" had fallen for the whole of the following yr until the next Innocents 24-hour interval. Philippe de Commynes, the minister of King Louis Xi of France tells in his memoirs how the rex observed this custom, and describes the trepidation he felt when he had to inform the rex of an emergency on the mean solar day.^[26]

In Espana, Hispanic America, and the Philippines,^[27] Dec 28 is even so a day for pranks, equivalent to Apr Fool's Twenty-four hours in many countries. Pranks (bromas) are too known as inocentadas and their victims are called inocentes; alternatively, the pranksters are the "inocentes" and the victims should not be aroused at them, since they could not have committed any sin. Ane of the more famous of these traditions is the annual "Els Enfarinats" festival of Ibi in Alacant, where the inocentadas dress up in full armed services dress and incite a flour fight.^[28]

In Trinidad and Tobago, Roman Catholic children have their toys blessed at a Mass.^[29]

Gallery [edit]

• 

  Giotto, Massacre of the Innocents

• 

• 

• 

• 

See also [edit]

• Chapel of the Milk Grotto
• Coventry Carol
• Flying into Egypt
• Jesus and Messianic prophecy § Jeremiah 31:xv
• Star of Bethlehem

Notes [edit]

1. ^ Holweck 1910 states "The Greek Liturgy asserts that Herod killed xiv,000 boys (ton hagion id chiliadon Nepion), the Syrians speak of 64,000, many medieval authors of 144,000, according to Apocalypse 14:3. Writers who take the historicity of the episode reduce the number considerably, since Bethlehem was a rather small town. Joseph Knabenbauer brings information technology downward to fifteen or twenty (Evang. S. Matt., I, 104), August Bisping to ten or twelve (Evang. South. Matt.), Lorenz Kellner to about six (Christus und seine Apostel, Freiburg, 1908)".
2. ^ Irenaeus (Adv. Haer. iii.16.4) and Cyprian (Epistle 56)
3. ^ Prudentius, Leo, and Fulgentius are noted in Smith & Cheetham 1875, pp. 839ff.

References [edit]

Citations [edit]

1. ^ "Patron Saints A-Z". catholic.org.
2. ^ ^{a b} Clarke 2003, p. 22.
3. ^ ^{a b} Maier 1998, p. 170-171.
4. ^ Clarke 2003, p. 23.
5. ^ Magness 2021, p. 126.
6. ^ Lincoln 2013, p. 44.
7. ^ ^{a b} Brownish 1978, p. 11.
8. ^ Brownish 1978, p. 13.
9. ^ France 2007, p. 82.
10. ^ France 2007, p. 82-83.
11. ^ Ferguson 2003, p. 390.
12. ^ Maier 1998, p. 179, 186.
13. ^ Mina 1907, pp. 300-.
14. ^ "The Coventry Carol". The version from Bramley and Stainer (1878)
15. ^ Studwell 1995, p. xv.
16. ^ "Getty Collection". Getty.edu. 2009-05-07. Archived from the original on 2005-12-05. Retrieved 2012-06-xv .
17. ^ "Reni'south painting at the Web Gallery of Art". Wga.hu. Retrieved 2012-06-fifteen .
18. ^ The Massacre of the Innocents in Cuzco Cathedral is clearly influenced by Rubens. Meet CODART Courant, Dec 2003, 12. (2.five MB pdf download)
19. ^ Smith & Cheetham 1875, pp. 839-.
20. ^ "The Calendar". The Church of England . Retrieved 2021-04-10 .
21. ^ "Day 4: Dec 28, Feast of the Holy Innocents". Cosmic Civilisation. Retrieved 27 December 2015.
22. ^ troparia, All; saints, kontakia · All lives of. "Lives of the Saints". world wide web.oca.org.
23. ^ Wasyliw 2008, p. 46.
24. ^ Holweck 1910.
25. ^ Blackburn & Holford-Strevens 1999, pp. 537–538.
26. ^ de Commynes 1972, pp. 253–254.
27. ^ B. A., Seattle Pacific University. "It'south No Joke: Dec. 28 Is for Pranks in Castilian-Speaking Countries". ThoughtCo . Retrieved 2021-03-30 .
28. ^ BBC News report of the 2010 festival.
29. ^ ""Feast of Holy Innocents", Trinity and Tobago Newsday, December 30, 2103". Newsday.co.tt. 2013-12-30. Retrieved 2018-04-16 .

Sources [edit]

• Blackburn, Bonnie J.; Holford-Strevens, Leofranc (1999). The Oxford Companion to the Yr. Oxford University Printing. ISBN978-0-19-214231-3.
• Brown, Raymond Edward (1978). An Adult Christ at Christmas: Essays on the Three Biblical Christmas Stories. Liturgical Press. ISBN978-0-8146-0997-two.
• Clarke, Howard (2003). The Gospel of Matthew and Its Readers: A Historical Introduction to the Outset Gospel. Indiana University Press. ISBN0-253-11061-0.
• de Commynes, Philippe (1972). Memoirs: The Reign of Louis XI, 1461-83. Penguin Books. ISBN978-0-14-044264-9.
• Ferguson, Everett (2003). Backgrounds of Early Christianity. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. ISBN978-0-8028-2221-v.
• France, R. T. (2007). The Gospel of Matthew. Eerdmans. ISBN978-0-8028-2501-8.
• Grant, Michael (1971). Herod the Swell. American Heritage Printing. ISBN978-0-07-024073-5.
• Harrington, Daniel (1991). The Gospel of Matthew. Liturgical Printing. ISBN978-0-8146-5803-ane.
• Holweck, Frederick George (1910). "Holy Innocents". In Herbermann, Charles (ed.). Cosmic Encyclopedia. Vol. 7. New York: Robert Appleton Visitor.
• James (2019). The Protoevangelium of James: Greek and English language Texts. Translated by Walker, Alexander. Dalcassian.
• Lincoln, Andrew (2013). Born of a Virgin?: Reconceiving Jesus in the Bible, Tradition, and Theology. Eerdmans. ISBN978-0-8028-6925-8.
• Magness, Jodi (2021). Masada: From Jewish Revolt to Mod Myth. Princeton University Press. p. 126. ISBN978-0-691-21677-5.
• Maier, Paul L. (1998). "Herod and the Infants of Bethlehem". In Summers, Ray; Vardaman, Jerry (eds.). Chronos, Kairos, Christos 2: Chronological, Birth, and Religious Studies in Memory of Ray Summers. Mercer Academy Printing. ISBN978-0-86554-582-3.
• Mindel, Nissan. "Nimrod and Abraham – The Two Rivals – Jewish History". Chabad.org. Kehot Publication Society. Archived from the original on 2018-05-29.
• Mina, évêque de Pchati (1907). "Histoire d'Isaac, patriarche Jacobite d'Alexandrie de 686 à 689". Patrologia orientalis. Vol. 11. Translated by Porcher, E. Paris Firmin-Didot.
• Smith, William; Cheetham, Samuel (1875). A dictionary of Christian antiquities: Comprising the History, Institutions, and Antiquities of the Christian Church, from the Time of the Apostles to the Age of Charlemagne. Vol. 11. J. Murray.
• Studwell, William Emmett (1995). The Christmas Carol Reader. Haworth. ISBN978-ane-56023-872-0.
• Vermes, Geza (2006). The Nativity: History and Legend. Penguin United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland. ISBN978-0-14-191261-v.
• Wasyliw, Patricia Healy (2008). Martyrdom, Murder, and Magic: Child Saints and Their Cults in Medieval Europe. Peter Lang. ISBN978-0-8204-2764-v.

payneveteady.blogspot.com

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_the_Innocents

Share this post