My professor told us the Holy Innocents weren’t real?

[SnowRose]

A word of encouragement (bear with me)
It is perfectly possible to apply academical rigour, to study parallell truths and still have faith. One of the keys for me was the pre-biblical mesopotamian ark stories. These were stories told maybe for millennia, in different forms. And yet, whatever the exact historical truth, the spiritual truth remains, even if he’s called Ziusudra, not Noah.

Just do not be afraid of learning, with the ember of faith in your chest.

 

[Kaninchen]

Arguments from silence are not very compelling especially where there is very little source material from the time.

Gardens of belief can become incredibly weedy without a level of tending, however.

While the absence of evidence doesn’t mean that stories like this are untrue, there’s no reason for anybody else to believe a word of it.

 

[HarryStotle]

HarryStotle:

Arguments from silence are not very compelling especially where there is very little source material from the time.

Gardens of belief can become incredibly weedy without a level of tending, however.

While the absence of evidence doesn’t mean that stories like this are untrue, there’s no reason for anybody else to believe a word of it.

I have to go get my weed whacker, but the “tending” will have to wait because I first have a tree to fell.

 

[ascetic]

Meanwhile, whether belief is reasonable/unreasonable might depend on whether there’s a reasonable alternative explanation - I think there is one but I’m Jewish and would be expected to think so, wouldn’t I?

Logically speaking, the existence another reasonable belief does not disprove another reasonable one. That’s what the process of deduction is for.

Are you sure you “…don’t really want to argue about things that Christians take as a matter of faith…” as you say? I’m comfortable with other beliefs that contradict mine. This sounds like something you’d support. Didn’t you say in another post: “I’ve made my point; you’ve made yours. We’ll just have to differ”?

 

[Kaninchen]

I’ve spent more than 11 years on CAF and I’m a bit past debate.

 

[0Scarlett_nidiyilii]

Sadly, there are people out there who think it’s funny to wreck another person’s faith…

 

[Gabrielle]

This is a very good point!

 

[Gabrielle]

I like this Thank you!

 

[Gabrielle]

This is true

 

[Dan_Defender]

The massacre of the innocents did happen. Jesus is the new Moses, and a similar event happened when Moses was a baby.

 

[mrsdizzyd]

Sadly, there are people out there who think it’s funny to wreck another person’s faith…

Very true.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

The massacre of the innocents did happen. Jesus is the new Moses, and a similar event happened when Moses was a baby.

See also the thread I started today in Sacred Scripture about how people claim Moses was a “myth”

 

[BlackFriar]

The Vatican isn’t really inclined to have feast days commemorating deaths of martyrs that didn’t really happen, though.

Yes they did.
We have many ancient saints, esp martyrs, who used to have feast days and their feastday is the only thing we really know for sure about them! The oral tradition has been lost or got confused and joined with someone else’s as their personal cult disappeared or got merged with other cultures.

It happens all the time in secular history, why should the Church be immune.
Hence St Christopher, the Gospel of John (actually three different “Johns”) Mary Magdalene the prostitute to name just a few ancient examples. And we love to invent likely histories of even the saints we do honour over the ages if they are short on facts. Like St Longinus (the guard who put the lance through Jesus on the cross, who allegedly helped Nicodemus carry Jesus to his tomb).
And Mary was some sort of highly educated consecrated virgin in the temple before the Holy Spirit had other plans. And on and on it goes. But no proof. And likely invented, but over time the favourite stories tend to be seen as fact by those who were never actually there and who can deny. Does it really matter if it happened or not? Its still edifying.

We see this sort of thing in the OT as well where the histories of different tribes merge in confused fashion when they unite into a single group. Genesis is a prime example. There are two completely different creation stories inter-sliced like alternate layers of an archaeological site as the documentary hypothesis has fairly well demonstrated.

 

[EricF]

It could be something as simple as the professor being full of agenda driven poop.

 

[Erikaspirit16]

Your professor is right. But so what?

Massacre of the Innocents: No, there’s no other historical record of it happening outside the Gospels. Could it have happened? Sure. Is it necessary to believe the story? No. As someone else pointed out, a similar thing happened in the story about Moses. The writers of the Gospels were very keen to find parallels between the OT and Jesus. Did they sometimes make stuff up or twist the truth? Yes. Take the Last Supper. Compare the stories in the synoptic Gospels and John. John puts the Last Supper on a different day than the others. Why? For symbolic reasons. For John, there was a greater truth–the story of the Last Supper, etc. didn’t depend on what day a certain meal occurred on. That was beside the point. John was concerned about a greater, theological point. You can’t read the Bible as if it were an objective history book written in 2018. The authors of the time had their own standards–as Dei Verbum and the Catechism point out.

The census? Again, there are no historical records to support the story. Did it happen? Who knows. But again, the point of the infancy narrative is not to prove the the Romans had a census of Judea in such and such a year. That was an irrelevant detail.

In many Bible stories you’ve got a choice: take the story literally (which leads to a lot of twisting facts and logic into pretzels) or take it allegorically or anagogically (i.e., saying something about Jesus or about salvation in general). In this case, you could argue (without any basis in fact) that maybe Herod only killed a few infants, and his crime went relatively unnoticed, etc. etc. Or you could say to yourself “What is the real point of the story here? Is it that Jesus is a 2nd Moses in a sense, and therefore this re-telling of the story about Moses and applying it to Jesus is just to remind us of that?” The same with the census. You could spend a few years doing research on Roman censuses or you could say “Why are the infancy narratives trying to be so specific about Jesus’s birth being in the year of a certain census, and in the year of such-and-such governor, etc.?” They were simply trying to emphasize the reality of Jesus as an actual person. Again, it’s not a history book.

I would suggest you read “What the Gospels Meant” by Garry Wills. At one point he goes through all the “discrepancies” in the four Gospels about the Resurrection (and yes, there are a lot!). His conclusion? “So what.” And that is indeed the proper Catholic response. Because if you think all these details matter, you’re not reading the Gospels properly.

 

[brian_custer]

i am going to have had to have had to agree to’ve go ahead & agree with this

there is a historical record of this tragic event;

i will look it up and post it

in any case, why should this biblical anecdote be a crisis of faith for OP?

 

[bobperk]

Many who have responded to this post seem to have quite a low view of Scripture.

The genre of the Gospels is not the same genre of Revelation or some parts of Genesis. The Evangelists (Sts. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John - not some “unknown authors”) set out to record history, not a hodgepodge of made up stories intertwined with truth. So what if something similar occurred in Exodus? A similar thing couldn’t have happened again 1400 years later?

Why would Matthew add a fictitious story about the murder of toddlers - a completely believable event that has occurred, and continues to occur in history - to make a theological point, and also go on to describe miraculous events like the Transfiguration, miracle of the loaves and fishes, and, ultimately, the Resurrection? Did Josephus record these things? Did he write about the Virgin Birth? Did he write about Peter and Paul? Perhaps some folks on here hold the works of Josephus in higher regard than Sacred Scripture. Another recent CAF post deals with the historicity of Moses and the Exodus. Well, Josephus holds them both to be historical. But many of the same folks who use Josephus against the Gospels also claim the Exodus was a myth; so depending on what they want to believe, they either follow Josephus or dismiss him.

So, there is a problem with dismissing accounts within the Gospels as fictitious. Because then you can keep going through all four of them and saying that if such-and-such event wasn’t recorded elsewhere, then it must not be true. Ultimately, one ends up looking rather ridiculous when they claim to be Catholic, professing the creed, believing in a Resurrected Jesus with a glorified body who will come again to judge the living and the dead…but then become skeptic about a completely believable event like the murder of children.

“19. Holy Mother Church has firmly and with absolute constancy held, and continues to hold, that the four Gospels just named, whose historical character the Church unhesitatingly asserts, faithfully hand on what Jesus Christ, while living among men, really did and taught for their eternal salvation until the day He was taken up into heaven (see Acts 1:1). Indeed, after the Ascension of the Lord the Apostles handed on to their hearers what He had said and done. This they did with that clearer understanding which they enjoyed (3) after they had been instructed by the glorious events of Christ’s life and taught by the light of the Spirit of truth. (2) The sacred authors wrote the four Gospels, selecting some things from the many which had been handed on by word of mouth or in writing, reducing some of them to a synthesis, explaining some things in view of the situation of their churches and preserving the form of proclamation but always in such fashion that they told us the honest truth about Jesus.(4) For their intention in writing was that either from their own memory and recollections, or from the witness of those who “themselves from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the Word” we might know “the truth” concerning those matters about which we have been instructed (see Luke 1:2-4).” (Dei Verbum)

 

[HarryStotle]

I would suggest you read “What the Gospels Meant” by Garry Wills. …His conclusion? “So what.” And that is indeed the proper Catholic response. Because if you think all these details matter, you’re not reading the Gospels properly.

No, the “proper Catholic response” is to view the Gospels and writings of the New Testament as authentic historical works.

Not sure what you mean by “not reading the Gospels properly” if someone takes the details seriously. If the Gospel writers include “all these details” it is because they are trying very hard to place the life of Jesus in history and within its historical context. It isn’t just that there is some lofty theological message to be had without regard to the situation of the day. It is that the Gospel writers, Jesus, the Apostles and the early Church were there and those putting the events in writing were detailing forthrightly and honestly what was going on around them.

As soon as we begin distancing the historical events from the revealed truths we “spiritualize” the message and begin to rapidly lose sight of the significance of God becoming a human being and walking among us.

Continued…

 

[HarryStotle]

The passage in Matthew that immediately follows the slaughter of the innocents is another passage which has been questioned by critics of the Gospel. It is the story of the return from Egypt.

When Herod died, an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who were seeking the child’s life are dead.” Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was ruling over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. And after being warned in a dream, he went away to the district of Galilee. There he made his home in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, “He will be called a Nazorean.” (Matt 2:19-23)

Most critics will claim this didn’t happen, either, but was added by Matthew for “theological” reasons to mirror the Exodus from Egypt and to reconcile Jesus’ birthplace Bethlehem with his childhood home in Nazareth.

The thing is, Matthew gets correct a couple of details regarding the political situation at the time but does so in a very matter of fact way, skipping over the real significance of the events. Herod the Great had just died in 4 BC and his kingdom was divided up with his son Archelaus “ruling over” Judea and his other son Herod Antipas ruling in Galilee.

What Matthew gets correct is the fact that if Joseph and Mary had returned shortly after this time with Archelaus coming to power early in 4 BC, they would have had very good reason to decide not to settle in Judea but rather go on to Galilee. Archelaus was a bloodthirsty tyrant who, according to Josephus, canceled Passover that year and ordered the killing of 3000 Jews after trapping them in the Temple. This actually helps p(name removed by moderator)oint the time of Mary and Joseph’s return from Egypt since they would have encountered many Jews returning to their homes because Passover had been cancelled. Galilee was ruled by Herod Antipas who was nowhere near the bloody tyrant that his older brother, Archelaus, was.

The historical context makes sense of the Gospel narrative.

The other thing that is interesting is Matthew’s use of the the words “ruling over Judea” to describe what Archelaus was doing. Notice Matthew doesn’t say Archelaus was “king” nor anything to that effect. The reason is because Archelaus was never installed as king of Judea by Augustus like his father was, but he was allowed to “rule over” that area as ethnarch in place of his father. Matthew gets the political situation correct even though his intention was merely to explain a detail in the life of Jesus.

I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the significance of these little details, they serve to tie the life of Jesus, the man, into human history in a way that is difficult to deny.

Unfortunately Scripture scholarship has been at the mercy of agnostics and atheists for the past century, but that has been rapidly changing over the past 30 years. It’s just that the person on the street, and entry-level instructors at universities are about 30 years behind the scholarship.

 

[HarryStotle]

ascetic:

As far as I know, Flavius Josephus is the only written source of history from that time and place

It really does depend on what one counts as ‘history’ and ‘written’ (for example, how far a redacted text counts as original).

No credible historian regards Josephus as “redacted.” There are only two passages that have been deemed problematic to some extent.

The first from Antiquities of the Jews XVIII.63-64 which the majority (10) of thirteen scholars, with academic interest in Josephus, recently surveyed by Peter Kirby, deemed the passage at least partially authentic.

The other from Antiquities XX.200 was unanimously considered genuine. This is interesting because part of the passage reads “…brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Messiah, whose name was James,…”

See: https://historyforatheists.com/2017/05/did-jesus-exist-the-jesus-myth-theory-again/