Christ's Reject

Here's a thought that I've not seen mentioned before. Skeptics often say that the slaughter of the innocents should be documented, but how big would bethlehem have been? If the population was around 1500, would there be more than 30 males under 2? I'd imagine greater atrocities have gone unmentioned.

I was speaking to my minister about my skeptical thoughts, and I was quite taken aback at some of the replies I got. In an attempt to be unbiased I'm going to read an academical modern apologetics book that he's going to lend me. I was glad to hear he considers josh mcdowell on the same level as ken ham regarding reliability.

Codec

It also says in the surrounding vicinity, but I don't think thats really the point.

I've often wondered about this bit. I'm not 100% sure of my facts here - so jump in with corrections., Herod was King, but under the Roman Empire, so he had to report to Rome. Now how solid a power base do you need to have to do an overtly cruel practise like the above. You have to have substantial military else you risk an uprising. People aren't going to stand idley by watching their children being slaughtered unless they are forced to. Even in those times, such acts would have spread by word of mouth very quickly.

A vassal King needs to be even more sure of himself doing such an act. Stirring up possible rebelion and unrest is a good way to get yourself replaced. Having unrest and an uprising is the last thing the Romans would want, it uses up too many soldiers and time. The Romans were pretty efficient in their conquests, they didn't go looking for trouble afterwards, in fact the reverse.

Only 30 years later, the next Herod had to appeal to the Roman governor to have one person put to death, claiming he didn't have the authority himself. Maybe the rules had changed, or perhaps they valued lives of children less.

Berthold

There is a thread about basic questions on this forum.

If there is anything about Jesus that has a historic nucleus, it's the years of his preaching. Most skeptic scholars agree that the reports about his childhood are purely mythical.

Christ's Reject

I understand that most critical scholars hold this view, but there's an underlying bias there. What I'm saying is that the slaughter of the innocents seems to have been blown out of proportion by skeptics, and I feel that just writing off a valid question is slightly ignorant.

Have you any skeptical resources at an academic level? I recently lost my faith and would currently consider myself agnostic, but there's alot more depth to the whole debate of Christ's existance than I previously thought. Apologetics seems to have moved on over the last century, and until I'm satisfied that I've done the right thing I'll probably keep asking trivial questions! I'll also add that I have read up on skepticism, and that I've been reading this messageboard without posting for a while.

steamer

Hmm, slaughter of the innocents sounds like a bad thing so I guess it wouldn't be the story about how those silly Egyptions forgot to write down all their children that the villian Yahweh slaughtered. Of course the Egyptions were very forgetful to write anything down. They even managed not to notice that they'd been underwater for 40 days and nights and that never made it into their history books either. I guess when you look at the evidence its really better to assume that a magic man in the sky actually did all the stuff the bible says instead of just admitting that the stuff didn't really happen.

Berthold

I liked the book "The Jesus Mythos" by Peter de Rosa.

Much has been going on since then, as you can see on this forum. Personally, I'm not overly interested in the question if Jesus lived at all. Well, I was raised as an infidel.

Sarpedon

Also, keep in mind how much higher the birth rate, and lower the life expectency was those days. There would be proportionally more children and fewer aged people than there would be nowadays in the same population.

Ecrasez L'infame

There's a very bloody re-enactment of the slaughter of the innocents over at

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=146182

Posts 11 to 40 or so are the relevant bits.

And while I was trying to find that, I stumbled across

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/archive/index.php/t-109721.html

Regards

Robert

Christ's Reject

hmmm, It seems that less stones have been left unturned than I previously thought. There was me thinking I was being fresh and clever! I'll try searching the forum in future.

Hi by the way, I'm CR!

Steven Carr

And the name of the book is...?