7. Herod may have killed his children. However, he may not have “murdered the innocents ” as the gospels claim.
Herod’s most infamous crime is the Massacre of the Innocents in Bethlehem. On hearing of the birth of a rival the “king of the Jews” Herod, as paranoid as ever, ordered his soldiers to kill all the male infants under the age of two. The incident assured Herod a place in history. However, it probably never happened. Out of the four gospels chronicling Christ’s life, only St. Matthew mentions the event. Equally silent is Herod’s unstinting biographer, historian Josephus. Herod also died in 4 BC – four years before Christ’s supposed birth. Even if Christ was born in the last year of Herod’s reign, as some historians believe, most now accept that St. Matthew used Herod’s murderous reputation to create a story that emphasized the significance of Christ’s birth.
