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:''For the painting by Peter Paul Rubens, see " Massacre Of The Innocents (Rubens) ". The Massacre of the Innocents is the name given to Infanticide in Bethlehem mentioned in the Gospel Of Matthew , but not mentioned in the other Gospels nor in the early Apocrypha . According to a Christian tradition, the described events fulfilled a Prophecy of Jeremiah . According to most scholars, the historic record says it is unlikely to ever have happened. According to Matthew, when 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, felt his throne was in jeopardy, and so ordered the slaughter of all male children who were ''two years old and under'', which 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. Fortunately for them, according to Matthew, Joseph , Mary and Jesus Had Fled To Egypt after they had been warned by an Angel . The passage specifically describes this event as just happening to the rural areas around the village of Bethlehem , and Bethlehem itself. If Bethlehem existed at the time, it would most likely have only been a small village, as no census or other official record of the period records its existence, and no archaeological finds have been found in Bethlehem dating from that time. Albright and Mann estimated that such a village would have had only some 300 people at the time, while Raymond E. Brown estimates it at around a thousand, although traditionally the massacre was seen as involving thousands. The Byzantine liturgy had 14,000 Holy Innocents and an early Syrian list of saints states that there were 64,000. Modern scholars consider these numbers implausible. HISTORICITY Though many readers follow the author of ''Matthew'' in identifying a prophetic allusion from ''. Noticably, Josephus , a major historian of the time, was vehemently anti-Herod in his writings, but this massacre, perhaps Herod's greatest crime, is not even hinted at in Josephus' writings. Josephus does record Herod's execution of two of his sons by his wife Marianme because he believed they posed a threat. (''The Jewish War'' (I.535–7) and ''Jewish Antiquities'' (16.121–7, 356). The episode was notorious and heavily displeased Herod's patrons in Rome, and it would be expected that a massacre of further children would have been even more notorious and even more upsetting to Rome, but Rome reports not a sound about the existence of such a massacre. The execution of the two sons, who Josephus describes as ''young men'', has been represented by Robert Eisenman as the original that inspired the account in ''Matthew'', since his two sons were the Jewish children that Herod thought had sought to replace him. Herod's murder of his own sons certainly points to Herod having deep-seated suspicion and jealousy, and some apologists have used this to argue that Matthew's portrayal of a Massacre of Innocents is ''historically plausible''. (Witherington 2001 p. 71). Josephus records several examples of Herod’s willingness to commit such acts to protect his power against perceived threats, but suggests that not all such acts were recorded, as he summarizes that Herod “never stopped avenging and punishing every day those who had chosen to be of the party of his enemies.” ''Antiquities'' 15.2. Nevertheless, Josephus is vehemently anti-Herod in his writings about the period, and would be expected to have mentioned something that could constitute a major attack on Herod's character, such as the killing of hundreds of very young children. Some apologists have argued that due to the small region involved, the massacre would not have been a particularly large atrocity for the period in general and thus might have escaped mention by Josephus and others. However, Herod Archelaus , Herod the Great's son and successor in Judah, is recorded in several historic sources as massacring some 3000 (adult) rebels shortly after he came to power, a number similar to that expected for Herod, or only one order of magnitude less, so it is certain that the numbers involved in the massacre that Matthew claims existed would be close to being noticed. It is also possible that Matthew had confused Herod the Great with Herod Archelaus, and confused the adults for children. The earliest extrabiblical reference to the Massacre of the Innocents is by Ambrosius Theodosius Macrobius , a Roman philosopher of the 4th century. The reference is found in Macrobius’ ''The Saturnalia'': When Augustus heard that Herod king of the Jews had ordered all the boys in Syria under the age of two years to be put to death and that the king's son was among those killed, he said, "I'd rather be Herod's pig than Herod’s son." It was probably a pun in Greek: ''hus'' being pig and ''huios'' meaning son. Unlike ''Matthew'', Macrobius places the massacre in a Syrian province and combines it with the separate killing of one of Herod's sons. Palestine was considered a Syrian province during Roman occupation and could justify Macrobius' use of ''Syria''. Because of Macrobius’ conflation of two different accounts and the fact that he shows no other signs of dependence on ''Matthew'', New Testament scholar Paul Barnett has posited that Macrobius was relying on an independent source. (Barnett 1993 p. 103). However, given the popularity of ''Matthew'' among Christians, the spread of Christianity by that time, and the late date in which Macrobius wrote, Raymond E. Brown conclude that Macrobius' reference is derivative of the Matthean account, though not directly dependent on it. {Link without Title} THE PROPHECY OF JEREMIAH The massacre of the innocents is explained by Matthew as fulfilling a prophecy of an old testament prophet, which most ancient manuscripts of Matthew identify as Jeremiah , but the Old Syriac Sinaiticus manuscript has it being Isaiah . The quotation is clearly based on Jeremiah 31:15, so identifying the quote as from Isaiah is a clear error, though some scholars feel this error was in the original text of Matthew, as in this case preserved by the Old Syriac Sinaiticus, with the text being corrected by later copyists. The text itself is not an exact copy of the Old Testament verse, and the passage has been taken completely out of its original context. In Jeremiah this verse is a metaphorical description of Rachel , the ancestress of the northern tribes, mourning when those tribes were taken into captivity by the Assyrians. The passage in Jeremiah was one of ultimate joy, ending by stating that God had saved the Israelites and the children would be unharmed, conflicting utterly with the destruction of Bethlehem's children in the massacre in Matthew. However in the Catholic and Orthodox churches, the slaughtered children were all proclaimed to be saints, known as the Holy Innocents , thus contriving an explanation of how the prophecy could possibly have the children as being ''saved''. It is true that Rachel's supposed tomb has long been associated with Bethlehem , providing a tenuous connection between the quotation and the massacre, but Jeremiah, in this quote, seems to be asserting that she was buried in Ramah , a town some five miles from Bethlehem, thus removing this tenuous connection. While ''Ramah'' could be translated as ''on high'', Jeremiah is very clear that he is referring to a town by the name ''Ramah''. Another difficulty with the quote is that Bethlehem is in Judah, and thus tradition held it to be descended from Leah not Rachel. IN ART '' sold for over 75 million USD at a 2002 auction]] The theme of the "Massacre of the Innocents" has provided artists with opportunities to compose complicated depictions of massed bodies in violent action. Artists of the Renaissance took inspiration for their "Massacres" from Roman reliefs of the battle of the 's early (1611) ''Massacre of the Innocents'', in an unusual vertical format, is at Bologna {Link without Title} . ). This painting was donated to the Art Gallery Of Ontario in Toronto by Kenneth Thomson . FEAST DAYS The commemoration of the massacre of these "Holy Innocents" -- considered by Christians as the first martyrs for Christ -- first appears as a feast of the western church in the Leonine Sacramentary, dating from about ; the Roman Catholic Church (using red vestments on this day since 1961, and violet or red with older missals), the Church Of England , and the Lutheran Church commemorate the children on December 28 ; and the Eastern Orthodox Church commemorates them on December 29 . In Spain and Iberoamerica , December 28 is a day for Pranks , equivalent to April Fool's Day in many countries. Prank victims are called ''inocentes''. In some cultures it is said to be an unlucky day and no new project should be started. REFERENCES
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