Herod the Great (c. 73 – c. 4 BCE) was installed as king of Judea by the Romans around 37 BCE. He is known for his great building projects and for his tyrannical rule. His tyranny extended even unto his own family as he had three of his sons executed as well as his wife Mariamne I.
But he had plenty of other children, and when he died the Romans divided his kingdom among three of his sons and his sister: his son Herod Antipas received the tetrarchy of Galilee and Peraea. I’ll be writing more about Herod Antipas in a future post.
Herod the Great is mentioned in a few verses in Matthew and nowhere else in the Bible.
The Magi or astrologers are searching for the newborn king of the Jews, so they ask Herod where to find him. Herod is upset at the thought of a newborn king of the Jews, so he directs them to Bethlehem and asks them to return and let him know where the child is. But they are warned in a dream not to return. When Herod realizes they are not returning, he has all the boys under two years old in Bethlehem and environs slaughtered.
That’s quite a story.
The problem is that the only place that story is told is in the second chapter of Matthew.
Josephus (pronounced Joh-SEE-fous) wrote a fairly comprehensive history of the Jews, including Herod’s tyranny, and he doesn’t mention it at all. One would think that such a horrendous act against the Jewish community would be well remembered. Most historians including most biblical scholars regard the story as a myth with no basis in fact. Possibly it was based on the historical fact that Herod did execute three of his own sons.
I could go through the entire nativity story as Matthew presents it and demolish it verse by verse, but to make a long story short, there is no basis in history for any of it. The author of Matthew made it all up to further his agenda.
It seems that the Catholic hierarchy realized this as well, because for hundreds of years they tried to suppress any Christmas celebrations. That might be why all the Christmas traditions stem from pagan celebrations. It wasn’t until the Industrial Revolution and the rising importance of newspapers and advertising in the early nineteenth century that capitalist advertisers began to make a big thing out of giving Christmas presents. And suddenly a lucrative holiday was born. Lucrative for businesses, that is.
But don’t despair, Christians. Even though the nativity story is 100% nonsense, it is also completely irrelevant to your religion.
After all, the Jesus cult was beginning to spread through the Middle East long before the gospel of Matthew, or any other gospel, was written. It was the writings of Paul, who had never met Jesus, that invented Christianity, and all Paul cared about was the crucifixion and rise from the dead, Jesus as a sacrificial lamb.
Oh, yes, one more thing.
The birth year of Jesus is usually given as 4 BCE (or 4 BC if you like). The truth is that nobody really has any idea when Jesus was born. Not the year, not the month, not the day of the month.
But if Herod the Great died in 4 BCE (and even that is only approximate; some sources say 1 BCE), and given that Herod the Great is mentioned in Matthew as living when Jesus was born, why then Jesus must have been born in 4 BCE. Right?
Wrong.
Take away that nativity story, and as I said, even most biblical scholars agree that Matthew had his own agenda for writing that, then there is no basis for claiming that Herod the Great was alive when Jesus was born and thus, no basis for dating his birth. None.
So we really don’t know what year he was born. Nor do we know how old he was when he died. His age is usually given as his early 30s, but again, that assumes that he was born in 4 BCE, and there simply is no good reason to accept that.
But notice something else. I accept that there was a real Historical Jesus. Some atheists don’t.