Portal:Saints/Selected article/December 2007
The Massacre of the Innocents is an episode of infanticide by Herod the Great, attested to in the Gospel of Matthew 2:16–18, but not mentioned in the other gospels nor in most of the early apocrypha.
Matthew relates that King Herod ordered the execution of all young male children in the village of Bethlehem, so as to avoid the loss of his throne to a newborn "King of the Jews" whose birth had been related to him by the Magi.
Many scholars portray this and other nativity stories as creative hagiography rather than history. Others, however, conclude that it really happened.
According to Matthew, when the Magi (popularly known as the "Three Wise Men") sought out the birth of Jesus, they first visited Herod the Great to ask if he knew the correct location. On hearing the Magi ask for He that is born King of the Jews, Herod, the Roman client king in Judea, feeling that his throne was in jeopardy, asked the Magi to find the child and return to tell him so that he may worship him, with the hidden intention of killing the identified child immediately. When the Magi, warned in dreams of the king's true intentions, returned home by a different route to avoid being forced to betray the child, Herod ordered the slaughter of all male children who were two years old and under.[1] Fortunately for them, according to Matthew, Joseph, Mary and Jesus had fled to Egypt after they had been warned by an angel.
- ^ That criterion probably actually refers to people under just 12 months old, as the likely Hebrew origin of the phrase would refer to people who haven't started their second year.