Why Christianity Framed Herod as a Baby Killer (feat. Dr Jodi Magness) 

Ah but you see, Jesus is the protagonist of God's plan. He has to get special plot armor. It's the same reason he isn't stoned to death for proclaiming himself divine in the gospel assigned John's name.

​​​​​​@@violeth2255Not to mention that he literally got a much less painful death than the other two on the crosses and yet Christianity insists it has meaning only if it is the greatest human suffering in history. THE STORY SAYS HE HAD IT EASIER THAN THE OTHER TWO.

In order for the Christ-stains to have their special needs met, normal people have to suffer. It's been going on for 2023 years too long, and I'm looking forward to when we stop giving these people special treatment just because they have an imaginary friend (or three).

Never thought of that before...thanks!

​@@mrharry448He had it easier than any crucified victim ever. Died by evening? What a godsend.

But God is Love; Whatever he does is perfect, because he's perfect, somehow. Sarcasm.

And because God designs Herod (and Satan) and writes the entirety of their script, all babies *they* kill are a direct responsibility of His.

Don't forget all the babies who died in the flood and during the destruction of Sodom & Gomorrah

@@Mkeusquealbby And during the conquest of Canaan.

As well it should be. I mock the public education where I live for failing to teach anything of value, but actively punishing children for wanting to learn is more than just ineptitude, it's cruelty and very literal indoctrination. I can't count the number of stories I've seen like yours where people were chastized or even kicked out of these sorts of classrooms because they _wanted to better understand God._ Imagine if a kid asked why division was the opposite of multiplication and the teacher sent them out into the hall to think about what they'd done. Now imagine this was the commonplace and accepted response to any questions of why math was the way it was. That's what we allow religion to do on a daily basis. It's an offense to the very idea of Learning. And all that is before we consider the fact that they're teaching things that have been _proven_ factually inaccurate.

He had the key of Solomon. The other kids did not.

❤❤Jesus power here is proof. 😮 Warning it is intense

What a goal in life to have - wow.

Enjoy your work myth vision guy .

Foreshadowing your WLC response. I see you, Derrick

Yeah, like the time Paul interviewed Dr. Mary Schweitzer!

she wasnt misquoted - she put it in writing.

@@PC-vg8vn just a different interpretation of an infallible document.

@@GameTimeWhy you explicitly said they 'misquoted' her. That is different from a 'different interpretation'.

@@PC-vg8vn they do misquote. I was making a joke about the infallibility of words being written down.

I'm definitely at that point in life where there's nothing more entertaining to me than listening to someone extremely knowledgeable and passionate talk about their thing.

you understood 18% more than creationists and proponents of Jesus' existence and divinity do.

Well, another 70% is just "we don't know" so you aren't missing as much as you think.

Whew! Agreed! That lady could condense an hours worth of information into 15 mins or less

Next time you will understand 19%! I've been an obsessive full time fan of RU-vid Atheism content for almost a decade now, so I am up to understanding about 80%! Keep up the good (undervalued by society) work! Debunking theist absurdism is truly a Holy Calling!

Kind of, christianity has a long history of scapegoating whoever they can just to propel their narrative, Herod was known as a very cruel king, so it is no surprise christianity used his name to make shit up about how jebus was being persecuted (according to the prophecy) since before he was born. Also, matthew needed some excuse to justify jesus moving to Nazareth so he made up that thing about herod. Just like luke needed also an excuse, and he made up a census that doesnt make sense around a time there is no evidence any census at all happened. TLDR, christian hate probably had nothing to do about herod's fable, they just needed some excuse to fix the flaws in their narrative.

Jews hate Herod more. Almost as much as Antiochus Epiphanes

@@Julian0101 Yeah, but Pontius Pilate was also known for cruelty, and he's the good guy in the same(!) story.

@@JudasMaccabeus1 they hated him because they did not consider him truly Jewish because Herod's ethnic group had been forcibly converted to Judaism.

@@grapeshot I’m aware. I think most people and figures in history are exactly like most people today: nuanced. None of us can really know Herods character or disposition, whether he was “good” or “bad” depends upon the vantage point and the view point from which he is observed. An Idumaean and a Judean would write two entirely different accounts.

Philip's wife's name was Herodias (heroine of the path, or zodiac = Virgo), the lady who longed for John the Baptist's head. She was the daughter of Herod (hero of the path, or zodiac = the Sun) the tetrarch (governor of four). She was also the daughter of Hercules (hero of the skin - the Sun). He is placed north of the equator on the solstitial colure, with a lion's skin thrown over his back. He is tetrarch, because, as the Sun, he is Lord of the four seasons. Directly below him, on the opposite side of the colure, is Philip (Sagittarius), the son-in-law, with bow in line with the triple-headed dog of Hell in the hand of the father-in-law. Looking westward on Map 4 (Elijah Burritt's), we see Herodias, Philip's wife, precisely on the equinoctial colure. She is looking at her father as if asking for John-the-Baptist's head - a cup of cool water, which of a sultry and dry in August, is quite refreshing. The time was near the end of the dry season. Soon, however, the fall rains began and her longings were appeased.

It’s a retelling of the killing of the first born of Egypt in Exodus. Matthew wants to cast Jesus as a mosaic figure, in fact, he makes the hint even clearer by having Joseph taking his family to Egypt and back. Zero chances it actually happened. It is a literary device that Matthew uses throughout his gospel: telling the Jesus story by using motifs, references and quotes from the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Bible that was popular at the time). Apparently it was common for ancient authors to tell new stories by using imagery and tropes their audience was already familiar with.

@@pansepot1490 agreed. It makes sense as a literary device. Not to much as history.

​@pansepot1490 In below article, it shows how "Matthew" used the Septuagint to try and get Jesus to comport to old testament prophecy and botches it. *"How Did The Gospel Writers Know? - The Doston Jones Blog"*

​@@ancientfiction5244Thabks for sharing the great article.

Well said. That's how I feel about the Lazarus story too. Jesus' most famous miracle somehow is only mentioned in one gospel.

Right?! I spend hours every day watching and studying religious studies content and this is one of the best guests ever. The town I live in in Mississippi used to have something called the 100 Men Debating and Benevolent Society - they formed a nightclub to raise money to cover medical and burial expenses for members. So yes I can say very much that burial clubs are a thing!

Philip's wife's name was Herodias (heroine of the path, or zodiac = Virgo), the lady who longed for John the Baptist's head. She was the daughter of Herod (hero of the path, or zodiac = the Sun) the tetrarch (governor of four). She was also the daughter of Hercules (hero of the skin - the Sun). He is placed north of the equator on the solstitial colure, with a lion's skin thrown over his back. He is tetrarch, because, as the Sun, he is Lord of the four seasons. Directly below him, on the opposite side of the colure, is Philip (Sagittarius), the son-in-law, with bow in line with the triple-headed dog of Hell in the hand of the father-in-law. Looking westward on Map 4 (Elijah Burritt's), we see Herodias, Philip's wife, precisely on the equinoctial colure. She is looking at her father as if asking for John-the-Baptist's head - a cup of cool water, which of a sultry and dry in August, is quite refreshing. The time was near the end of the dry season. Soon, however, the fall rains began and her longings were appeased.

It is even worse as the skeleton had only the nail through one foot and no nails through the hands at all. In 1985, Joe Zias, curator of the Israel Department of Antiquities and Museums, and Eliezer Sekeles, from the Hadassah Medical Center, reexamined the crucifixion remains. They alleged that Haas' analysis was fraught with errors: The nail was shorter than Haas had reported and thus would not have been long enough to pierce two heel bones and the wood. Pieces of bone had been misidentified. There was no bone from a second heel; the nail-pierced only one heel. Some of the bone fragments were from another individual. Zias and Sekeles also stated the presence of the scratch in one of the forearms "was not convincing" evidence of a nail wound: Many non-traumatic scratches and indentations similar to these are found on ancient skeletal material. In fact, two similar non-traumatic indentations were observed on the right fibula, neither is connected with the crucifixion...Thus, the lack of traumatic injury to the forearm and metacarpals of the hand seems to suggest that the arms of the condemned were tied rather than nailed to the cross. In conclusion, the findings of Zias and Sekeles do not indicate whether in this case a horizontal patibulum cross-beam was attached to the upright stake to which the victim's heel was nailed. The evidence was so ambiguous concerning the arms that Zias and Sekeles had to rely on the data provided by contemporary writings to support their reconstruction of the position of the arms as attached to a crossbar: The literary sources for the Roman period contain numerous descriptions of crucifixion but few exact details as to how the condemned were affixed to the cross. Unfortunately, the direct physical evidence here is also limited to one right heel calcaneum (heel bone) pierced by an 11.5 cm iron nail with traces of wood at both ends.

Pharaoh is the winter sun. Moses was "gathered unto his people" (Num. 31.2), i.e., leaving the Sun, "he went and returned, and dwelt" with the Sun - he completed the circle of the zodiac, or year. Having thus looked upon the Promised Land (summer), Moses died, and buried himself in a valley in the land of Moab (water-father = Aquarius = Moses), "but no man knoweth of his sepulcher unto this day" (Deut. 34.6). Although one hundred and twenty years old, (12 months) "his eyes," it is said, " were not dim (his stars shine as brightly now as they did then), nor his natural force abated (the rainy season still comes on every year) " However, the people wept thirty days, i.e., during the passage of the Sun through Aquarius, the Wash-pot (Ps 60.8), or the rainy month of January.

Exactly! And the author of Matthew has Jesus and his family flee to Egypt, so that Jesus could come out of Egypt, just like Moses. 'Matthew' is very intent on drawing all these parallels.

I'm glad you enjoyed. I did too.

Supposedly, crucifixion was reserved for enemies of the Roman state, not mundane criminals. Often it was slow painful, shameful & public. It was supposed to be a lesson to warn off those who might rebel against Roman rule. Think of the work to make the crosses. Trees had to be felled, trimmed & hammered together into a cross shape (actually, many were shaped into a "T", not a full cross). Then a hole had to be dug in the ground to plant the cross, and it would have to be sturdy enough to hold the body upright for several days. If you ever tried to dig a hole for a fencepost, you get an idea of how much work it is to get it right. A lot of work to kill a petty thief who would be put to better use being slaughtered in the Coliseum.

@@Herschel1738- The Coliseum didn't exist, then. A petty thief would have been imprisoned and probably enslaved.

Probably by looking on the bright side of life. A good outlook and stiff upper lip can go a long way to help with such minor inconveniences after all. Worse things happen at sea you know!

The Savior is crucified twice. As Christ (summer sun) he is crucified In Egypt (autumn equinox) and as Jesus (winter sun) he is crucified in Calvary (spring equinox). The summer sun is Christ and the winter sun is Jesus.

Why not? After all, we have a record of conservations between Jesus and Satan when there was no one else there to hear them.

@@grahvis Jesus was Satan aka Beelzebub.

@@grahvis These "conversations" are added to make sure the audience comes to the intended conclusions. If you read the story of Job without its preamble with God and Satan talking, you might take away a different view of it.

Bethlehem was such a small town that no one would've noticed, yet Matthew is the only one who noticed? No other Jew to where Josephus would've heard about it growing up? And Josephus died about 100AD. Did he not read or hear about the Matthew gospel Hebrew or Greek version and throw that description of Herod's act in with the rest?

It looks like some gospels used material from Josephus. As Josephus wrote in the 90s this means fan fiction stories who used his material had to be writgen later.

Josephus was highly critical in “Antiquities of the Jews”. His first book was written to ingratiate himself with Rome, and Herod had been a major ally of the Empire under Augustus.

@@brianfileman You never read Josephus? Is that correct? If you had you would have noticed how critical of Herod he was. Do you understabd the difference between Augustus and the Flavians? They were different dynasties and no one cared what Josephus wrote after the jewish war about these rebels against Rome.

@@TorianTammas I was responding to the comment that he’d had a massive ‘hard-on’ for Herod. He was largely uncritical of Herod in his earlier work. I made a a bit of an intuitive leap in ascribing a reason for that. I will bow to your superior knowledge.

They almost seem to want to paint him as an "antichrist" figure and while horrible people did horrible things in history, I think we have to be careful when a source that has a demonstrated bias paints people in any light. I mean look at how the Pharisees are painted by Jesus, as being these horrible people and yet when you read into the role of the Pharisees, especially how integral they were to the Talmud and the Masoretic text, you get a very different perspective. Though as the Talmud and the Masoretic text both refute the idea that Jesus is the Messiah, it is important to paint the enemies of xtianity in a particular light, often as justification for the horrible things that befall them. Just as "thou shalt not kill" during the crusades was replaced with the idea that to kill an infidel was a path to heaven, which also refutes Jesus own words. So long story short, how a source depicts the enemies of that source, is something that should also be factored into considerations. Also Herod is a king, with all the resources at his disposal. As if he couldn't send men to follow the Magi or to force them to return after they found the Messiah. If Herod is what the bible claims he is, then he absolutely would have sent men to shadow the Magi and murder the baby Jesus when the Magi found him.

This is a fan fiction story where we create a superhero with all the right ingredients. Mathew makes out of him a new Moses (which was a Sargon copy) with the killing of the children, and the fleeing to Egypt so he could return like Moses. The star gazers (aka magi as in Persian priests watching the stars to see the plans of the gods) are there to announce an omen and to bring the proper gifts for a king. So they have a double function they announce that the star constellation hints at the birth of a special person and they bring this person the gifts proper for a king. This fan fiction story is so overdone it is like putting sugar on top of sugar on a sugar cake.

I mean, while she did not give a definitive answer, deferring to the idea that "scholars disagree on the subject", the fact that she boils down the story to "A group of Jewish people's reactions to Herod's claim or posture as messiah himself" suggests that she, at least, is of the opinion that it's anti-Herod propaganda, basically, but doesn't feel like she has the hard evidence to definitively say. Since she's largely talking about her academic work, what's actually been discovered, etc. in this, I imagine she defaulted to an academic way of answering the question, which is to say "Since I don't have hard evidence, I can't say definitively, but here's what the evidence suggests to me." Less of a waffle, and more of standard academic hedging, not saying you *know* things if you don't have the material to back up what you're saying you know.

@@thaddeusgenhelm8979 There is one and only one reference in all of history to the Massacre, Matthew’s. How does that tune go? “Well scholars disagree”. Of course they do. The vast majority of scholars who study this are devout Christians who have signed statements of faith. I must admit that up until ten years ago I didn’t realize that the Herod (the Great) of Massacre of the Innocents fame WASN’T the same person as his son Herod (Antipas) of Dance of the Seven Veils / John the Baptist fame and trial of Jesus fame. I assume Herod was great because he renovated and expanded the Second Temple which was apparently shabby little affair built under the Achaemenid Persian Cyrus the Great after he freed Jews from the Neo-Babylonians. I knew that Cyrus was considered the Messiah for a while because of his deeds, but finally was decided against since, well he was Persian and not from the House of David. I just learned from our good Doctor here that HtG was also considered the Messiah by some because of his work on the Temple and explains the Herodians references that she talked about.

@@oscargordon To be clear, I feel the hedge was not because she was seriously entertaining the idea that it actually happened, but more that arguing the point wasn't viewed as being worthwhile to her. If nothing else, if you consider how she analyzes his actions, his character the idea he would perform such an absurdly bad PR move, as it were, is similarly absurd. It is, certainly, internally inconsistent with the picture she has of him. But, of course, I'm not actually psychic, I can't know her exact intentions in that sense, it's just the impression I get of it.

@@thaddeusgenhelm8979 And there in lies my problem. Someone who actually KNOWS better isn't challenging her fellow "academics". There is only one and only one account of HtG ordering the massacre of a town full of babies because of a story about a talking star. She should be calling BS on it to her Christian peers and making them defend their position.

@@oscargordon Yeah, I can understand why that frustrates you. Makes sense that you'd want someone with expertise in the field to demand more substantiation from their colleagues when something seems more to be accepted/allowed to "maybe" have happened due to private beliefs than the evidence.

That's not what he said. At least not as a general statement. It is similar to public executions in the early modern times, where sometimes the body was displayed (left on the cross), because of a particularly egregious crime or to be a warning to others, but often they were just thrown into a ditch. What exactly is confusing in the video? She says the same.

The confusion is she makes it out to be common that she makes sound common and no big deal and I got from him it wasn’t.

No, it's just the way academics talk. She was speculating, and she said she was. You have to look out for those little caveats. They can go by fast. You notice she also said many were left to rot by taking about the dogs and the body parts. Nothing she said was in contradiction to what he said. She just thinks about it a bit differently. You have to pay attention to when they say they aren't sure. THEY mean it when they say that unlike christians who are 100% sure about everything.

@@littlebitofhope1489 you are 100% on that. It’s not easy keeping up.

She thinks in Judea they were buried. She does disagree with Bart Ehrman on this.

Basically making one’s research available to review from experts and/or peer review. Because peer review is such an exacting process, one usually does this with the support of an educational institution. TLDR: the main difference is seeking and obtaining graduate degrees in research, in the field in question.

A doctoral degree in that field of study from an accredited university. But Paulogia is still friken awesome !

Everyone should be a scholar... if not on paper - then in their lives!!!@@dugganclhallrentals2089

Even Herod's contemporaries said he was unusually brutal and cruel and he put his own sons to death. Saturnalia jokes that Herod was kinder to pigs (since Jews didn't eat pork) than his own family.

‘The Messiah’ is a purely Christian concept, implying a divine saviour, dying for the sins of mankind. Although in post Biblical Hebrew eschatology there were some mentions of a messiah son of David (or from the royal Davidic line) and a messiah son of Jacob, these were understood as freeing ‘Israel’ from Hellenic rule. Jews who thought Jesus was such a messiah, claiming symbolic royal descent, saw him as freeing them from Roman oppression. 2000 years of Christian theology and belief has somewhat skewed the reality and basis of what a messiah was: somebody or something anointed with holy oil for a specific task (king, priest, altar, ewer, etc).

Mark Goodacre’s lecture addresses specifically this (I think)

A dead body in loads of cenotaphs...😬

As I understand it, when a body was laid in one of these tombs, it would be left for a year on a bench cut into the rock. Then, the family would return, scrape away any remaining flesh, and put the bones in an ossuary ("bone box") and move the box to a shelf cut into the rock of the tomb, leaving the bench available for the next person in the family to die. This was, of course, something only very rich families could afford.

Herod is one of those historical figures that for a series of circumstances has gained a very bad rep. Hated by the Jews because he wasn’t actually Jewish and hated by the Christians because of how he is portrayed in the gospels. As kings go he probably wasn’t any worse than other rulers of the time and probably better, at least as far as building goes. He is known for his colossal building projects throughout Judea. Among these works are the rebuilding of the Second Temple in Jerusalem.

@@pansepot1490 Philip's wife's name was Herodias (heroine of the path, or zodiac = Virgo), the lady who longed for John the Baptist's head. She was the daughter of Herod (hero of the path, or zodiac = the Sun) the tetrarch (governor of four). She was also the daughter of Hercules (hero of the skin - the Sun). He is placed north of the equator on the solstitial colure, with a lion's skin thrown over his back. He is tetrarch, because, as the Sun, he is Lord of the four seasons. Directly below him, on the opposite side of the colure, is Philip (Sagittarius), the son-in-law, with bow in line with the triple-headed dog of Hell in the hand of the father-in-law. Looking westward on Map 4 (Elijah Burritt's), we see Herodias, Philip's wife, precisely on the equinoctial colure. She is looking at her father as if asking for John-the-Baptist's head - a cup of cool water, which of a sultry and dry in August, is quite refreshing. The time was near the end of the dry season. Soon, however, the fall rains began and her longings were appeased.

​@@pansepot1490he killed his wife and sons

Simping is an employment prerequisite at Biola.