Massacre of the Innocents

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The Holy Innocents by Giotto di Bondone.
The Holy Innocents by Giotto di Bondone.
For the painting by Peter Paul Rubens, see "Massacre of the Innocents (Rubens)".

The Massacre of the Innocents is an episode of Herod's infanticide, attested in the Gospel of Matthew 2:16-18, but not mentioned in the other gospels nor in the early apocrypha. According to Christian tradition, the described events fulfilled a verse of Jeremiah, interpreted as a prophecy of this event: "Thus says the Lord: A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children."

In the event, King Herod the Great 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.

Skeptical scholars portray the nativity stories as creative hagiography rather than as history. Other scholars, however, conclude that it really happened.

Contents

[edit] The episode

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.

The passage specifically describes this event as happening to the rural areas around the village of Bethlehem, and Bethlehem itself, which would probably have been a small village. The Byzantine liturgy had 14,000 Holy Innocents and an early Syrian list of saints states that there were 64,000. The Catholic Encyclopedia states that these numbers were probably inflated, and that for a town of that size only six to twenty children would have probably been killed.

[edit] History

The Murder of the Children at Bethlehem, by Matteo di Giovanni
The Murder of the Children at Bethlehem, by Matteo di Giovanni

Matthew's nativity story, including the massacre of the innocents, shows Jesus to be the prophesied Messiah, fulfilling the prophecy of Jeremiah 31:15 and likening Jesus to Moses.[2] The Massacre of the Innocents is not mentioned in the other gospels nor in the early apocrypha. Scholars skeptical of prophetic fulfillment and the like are inclined to conclude that the account was invented to glorify Jesus.[3]

[edit] Defending the massacre's authenticity

Some scholars and Christian apologists defend the massacre as something that Herod was cruel enough to do and small enough to pass without remark outside the book of Matthew.

Josephus records Herod's execution of two of his sons and his wife Mariamne because he believed they posed a threat.[4] The execution of the two sons, whom 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 believed had sought to replace him.

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.”[5] "Such a massacre," it has been observed, "is indeed quite in keeping with the character of Herod, who did not hesitate to put to death any who might be a threat to his power."[6]

The Catholic Encyclopedia speculates about the reason Josephus did not include an account of the slaughter: "…St. Matthew's positive statement is not contradicted by the mere silence of Josephus; for the latter follows Nicholas of Damascus, to whom, as a courtier, Herod was a hero." It also cites Maas: "Cruel as the slaughter may appear to us, it disappears among the cruelties of Herod. It cannot, then, surprise us that history does not speak of it".[7]

[edit] First extrabiblical reference

The earliest extrabiblical reference to the Massacre of the Innocents is by Ambrosius Theodosius Macrobius, a Roman philosopher of the fourth 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 sow than Herod’s son." ― Macrobius, The Saturnalia, trans. Percival Davies (New York 1969), p. 171.

It was probably a pun in Greek: hus being pig and huios meaning son. Macrobius places the massacre in a Syrian province and combines it with the separate killing of one of Herod's sons. However, since Herod, as a nominal adherent to Judaism, would not eat pork, his pigs were safe, unlike his sons. Palestine was considered a Syrian province during Roman occupation and could justify Macrobius' use of Syria.

[edit] 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.

Most Jews do not interpret the quotation as a prophecy at all, but as a poetic description of the Babylonian exile. This is reflected in the next verse, Jeremiah 31:16, in which God asks "Rachel" to stop crying, because her people "shall come again from the land of the enemy."

[edit] In art

Rubens' Massacre of the Innocents
Rubens' Massacre of the Innocents

The theme of the "Massacre of the Innocents" has provided artists of many nationalities 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 Lapiths and Centaurs to the extent that they showed the figures heroically nude[8]. The horrific subject matter of the Massacre of the Innocents also provided a comparison of ancient brutalities with early modern ones during the period of religious wars that followed the Reformation.

Three artists of three distinct European ethnicies figure into this early seventeenth century fascination with the topic as Catholics and Protestants slaughtered each other. First, Italian painter Guido Reni's early (1611) Massacre of the Innocents, in an unusual vertical format, is at Bologna[9]. Second, Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens painted the theme more than once. One version, now in Munich, was engraved and reproduced as a painting as far away as colonial Peru[10]. Another, his grand Massacre of the Innocents is now at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. Third and finally, from 1632 through 1634, French painter Nicolas Poussin painted The Massacre of the Innocents at the height of the Thirty Years' War.

In the famous novel The Fall by Albert Camus, this incident is argued by the main character to be the reason why Jesus chose to let himself be crucified — as he escaped the punishment intended for him while many others died, he felt responsible and died in guilt.

The anonymous Christmas carol, Coventry Carol, (attributed to Robert Croo, 1534), is named after the city of Coventry, England, where the 15th Century Pageant of the Shearmen and Tailors depicted Herod's slaughter of the innocents, told in the lyrics:

1. Lullay, Thou little tiny Child,
By, by, lully, lullay.
Lullay, Thou little tiny Child.
By, by, lully, lullay.
2. O sisters, too, how may we do,
For to preserve this day;
This poor Youngling for whom we sing,
By, by, lully, lullay.
3. Herod the King, in his raging,
Charged he hath this day;
His men of might, in his own sight,
All children young, to slay.
4. Then woe is me, poor Child, for Thee,
And ever mourn and say;
For Thy parting, nor say nor sing,
By, by, lully, lullay.

[edit] Feast days

The commemoration of the massacre of these "Holy Innocents" — considered by some Christians as the first martyrs for Christ[11] — first appears as a feast of the western church in the Leonine Sacramentary, dating from about 485. The feast is also called Childermas, Children's Mass, and Holy Innocents' Day, and is celebrated on different dates by different traditions: the Syrians and Chaldeans commemorate them on December 27; 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 Ibero-America, December 28 is a day for pranks, equivalent to April Fool's Day in many countries. Pranks are known as inocentadas and their victims are called inocentes, or alternatively, the pranksters are the "inocentes" and the victims should not be angry at them, since they could not have committed any "sin". In some cultures it is said to be an unlucky day and no new project should be started.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ 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.
  2. ^ Harris, Stephen L. Understanding the Bible, 2nd Ed. Palo Alto: Mayfield. 1985. p. 274
  3. ^ Robert Eisenman, James The Brother of Jesus, 1997, I.3 "Romans, Herodians and Jewish sects" discusses Mariamne, the last representative of the Maccabean line, by whom Herod had two sons, whom he put to death. "Here Herod really did kill all the Jewish children who sought to replace him, as Matthew 2:17 would have it, but these were rather his own children with Maccabean blood!" (p. 49).
  4. ^ Josephus, The Jewish War I.535–7 and Jewish Antiquities 16.121–7, 356.
  5. ^ Josephus, Antiquities 15.2.
  6. ^ Francis Wright Beare, The Gospel According to Matthew, Camelot Press, Southampton, 1981.
  7. ^ Maas, "Life of Christ" (1897), 38 (note); the author shows, as others have done, that the number of children slain may not have been very great.
  8. ^ Getty Collection
  9. ^ Reni's painting at the Web Gallery of Art
  10. ^ The Massacre of the Innocents in Cuzco Cathedral is clearly influenced by Rubens. See CODART Courant, Dec 2003, p12.
  11. ^ Feast of the Holy Innocents, Encyclopædia Britannica.

[edit] References

  • Albright, W.F. and C.S. Mann. "Matthew." The Anchor Bible Series. New York: Doubleday & Company, 1971.
  • Clarke, Howard W. The Gospel of Matthew and its Readers: A Historical Introduction to the First Gospel. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003.
  • Robert Eisenman, 1997. James the Brother of Jesus: The Key to Unlocking the Secrets of Early Christianity and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Viking/Penguin)
  • Goulder, M.D. Midrash and Lection in Matthew. London: SPCK, 1974.
  • Jones, Alexander. The Gospel According to St. Matthew. London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1965.
  • Schweizer, Eduard. The Good News According to Matthew. Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1975

[edit] External links

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