Steven Avery

It should be pointed out that James Kiefer changed his view on this after checking the Latin text

http://elvis.rowan.edu/~kilroy/CHRIS...rary/gen02.htm
REPLY: Here I owe my previous readers an apology. In previous editions of this article, I argued that there was a reference to the Massacre at Bethlehem in the ASSUMPTION OF MOSES, an apocalyptic work generally dated around 10 AD. I was relying on an English translation. Responding to a letter by a scholarly reader who questioned the accuracy of the translation I was using, I hunted down the Latin version (the only one surviving), and satisfied myself that my critic was right--there is no reason to suppose that the author is talking about the Massacre. I accordingly grant the critic's point: I know of no non-Christian writer who refers to the Massacre.

From what I have seen on this thread, I think he may be going to far in the other direction, (might be good to write him and point him to this thread). The issue is quite interesting. However, either way, good thread.

On a quick check I did not find anybody else who was making the Assumption/Massacre connection.

Shalom,
Steven Avery
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic

Seeker2000

Thanks, praxeus! When I re-read this thread yesterday, I didn't re-read the website I got this from.

Do you know the exact words from the Latin version? If not and if you are going to write him, maybe you could ask him for the Latin text?

I must say I really respect that James Kiefer acknowledged this and changed his website. I still don't agree with his conclusion though, which is the following:

I really think it is farfetched to think that such an event would have been that likely, having a ten percent chance. Of course it's difficult to express such estimations in exact numbers, but I would consider this very unlikely at least. Even with Matthew's testimony I still consider it very unlikely.

He goes on to say that the Matthew account indeed looks like a myth, but that other events that are historical do so as well. I think some of his examples for such events are not very convincing though, like this one:

This example sounds rather constructed and artificial to me. Many names have a religious meaning or a connection to one of the many saints that exist. Also, while Churchill and Saint George sound like references to Christianity, the Elysian Fields are part of Greek mythology. I don't even know if the name Roosevelt really has it's origin there. Also, the name Roosevelt is of Dutch origin, not of German (although there is a relationship between those two languages). I also doubt that Hitler has the same root as the word "heathen". Does anyone know where the name Hitler comes from?

jakejonesiv

The gospel compilers frequently took events in Josephus as a starting point to spin their fanciful tales.

However, if you contend that they also leveraged some early verion of the Assumption of Moses, then I will go along with that too.

Jake

Seeker2000

Yes, it might have been an inspiration for the author of Matthew (as well as even the Assumption might have been an inspiration for him, should he have known that text, which is not clear), but who knows for sure why he wrote it? After such a long time we can only speculate. And because in Josephus' Wars there is no mention of a specific massacre of the infants, but only of the murder of many people, including many different groups of people, one of them infants, this is very speculative IMO.

Steven Avery

Most welcome.
On Latin I tend to defer to Roger, Andrew, Stephen et al, the researchers par excellence. I had a little trouble finding a contact addy on the first pass, and got distracted with puter problems.

I agree that James handled it well, and will defer on the whole 10% massacre and probability analysis. Unusual things happen all the time, as we well know, and probabilistic post facto analysis is fraught with peril, whether done from a Christian or skeptic or whatever angle. To me Matthew's testimony fits the situation well, and most other research is peripheral.

Kiefer is showing how common the unusual is... how difficult it is to try to spin theories of a manufactured history based on seeming analogies and similarities and unusual confluences. He is making a good point about historicity, and it also applies to a lot of the skeptic/mythicist alternate theories spun here. It is easy to come to a hasty and ill-found conclusion by parsing a name or location or comparing with some other event or writing that is really not directly related.

With so many possibile similarities, you can come up with something. Have you watched the threads here ?

Shalom,
Steven Avery
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic

jakejonesiv

We will have to disagree on this one. There is absolutely no record of the "slaughter of the innocents" outside of Matt. 2:16-18.

In Wars 1:18, 2, it is the same Herod specifically stated to show no mercy to infants. That is as close to a match you are going to find in any "history".

Now, you are saying, the match is not close enough. One can always say that. But it is a much closer match than the free association "prophecy" (Jer. 31:15) that Matthew attributes it to in 2:18.

So the methods of Matthew become clear. He has already associated the birth of baby Jesus with Herod. He finds an account in Joesphus where this same Herod is associated with the slaughter of children. A little free association with the OT (Hey, here is something about somebodies children being killed, close enough!), an invented prophecy, and Shazam, a new epsiode is invented for the Life of Christ.

Jake

mikem

Josephus in "Antiquities" books 14 to 17, has a great deal to say about Herod's career, and has a great deal of material about Herod's latter days. Josephus aim in these books is to paint Herod as a tyrant. It seems highly unlikely that Josephus would have overlooked something as iniquitious as the slaughter of innocent children in and around Bethlehem. IMO, this story was created by Matthew. Matthew portrays Jesus as the new Moses, ("out of Egypt I have called my son"), and so has the Holy Family sojourn in Egypt to escape Herod's clutches. The slaughter of the innocents would be a Matthean fiction based on Pharoah's order to the midwives to kill all the Israelite new born males (see Exodus 1:15 to 22).

Matthew's portrait of Herod is based on known facts about the man, but the slaughter of the innocents is a fiction.