If King Herod died in 4 B.C. ....?

Question

Then how can he have been responsible for the killing of every new born son in Egypt during the birth of Christ, which would not occur for another four years after his death??

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070507/ap_on_sc/israel_herod_s_tomb;_ylt=AgyhOcKpyLww.w1WxmeuHN2s0NUE

Furthermore, this article claims that Josephus the Historian wrote about the burial of King Herod, describing its location (the tomb was recently found.) However, Josephus was not born until 37 AD - a full 41 years AFTER the death of Herod...


So, it appears that Josephus was into embellishing the truth - at least he was never an eyewitness to this burial. And, it appears that King Herod was not responsible for the Biblical slaughter of new born males sons either...

So, please let me know what Im taking out of context with these HISTORICAL FACTS.

pliedes......thats the second response to one of my questions that had the word PROBABLY in it. PROBABLY means you arent certain...

Actually, Adolfo - it was in Bethlehem, not Judah...

Answer 1

For one thing, the birth year of Christ was miscalulated and just about everyone acknowledges it. It wasn't revised because by the time the error was discovered, people were used to the new enumeration and it was thought that a five or six year correction wasn't worth the confusion it would cause (especially since they couldn't tell whether it WAS five or six years). The death of Herod the Great was pretty well established. (There's an additional problem. Quirinius wasn't a governor till 6 CE.)

Josephus was an historian in the way that history was understood in his day. He collected stories from other people and put them into an orderly narrative. Contradictions were resolved but fact checking was an undiscovered art. And one of the historian's tasks was to explain "why" things happened as they did (i.e. what God's purpose was). Otherwise it would just be meaningless trivia. Factual accuracy was not as important as "truth". On top of that mentality, there is evidence that Josephus' work may have been tampered with by devout Christian redactors.

As for Herod's slaughter of the innocents, there is no external corroborating evidence. Some have noted a parallel between Matthew's account and another, older story about a man named Joseph who has dreams and brings his family to Egypt, and about a child who survives a slaughter of first-born males by a jealous king. (Remember, facts are secondary to meaning.)

Answer 2

Disclaimer, while I am a Historian by training I am out of practice and not a specialist. I am not sure what answers you will see but I found you some information. I fully realize this is off one site, but hey I do not know where you get all of yours.

Let us address King Herod the Great (since there are other "Herod's." Here is the later section from the site I found. "Herod's reign ended in terror. The monastery at Qumran, the home of the Essenes, suffered a violent and deliberate destruction by fire in 8 BCE, for which Herod may have been responsible. When the king fell ill, two popular teachers, Judas and Matthias, incited their pupils to remove the golden eagle from the entrance of the Temple: after all, according to the Ten Commandments, it was a sin to make idols. The teachers and the pupils were burned alive. Some Jewish scholars had discovered that seventy-six generations had passed since the Creation, and there was a well-known prophecy that the Messiah was to deliver Israel from its foreign rulers in the seventy-seventh generation (more...). The story about the slaughter of infants of Bethlehem in the second chapter of the Gospel of Matthew is not known from other sources, but it would have been totally in character for the later Herod to commit such a terrible act." Notice at no time do they disclaim the account aside from saying it is only found in scripture. Not once do they complain about the time line.

I wish I could remember where I saw it, but at one time Sodom and Gomorrah were thought fictitious until they were found one a cuneiform tablet. I know there were others that were once thought false though listed in the Bible then one day poof! "Real" proof because some Trash man with a PhD finally found evidence outside the Bible.

Now for Josephus below is another excerpt from this site and you can see that every one knows that Josephus was using records of Nicolaus.

"The most important ancient source for the rule of king Herod was written by Flavius Josephus: the Jewish War and the Jewish Antiquities. Both books are based on the history of Nicolaus of Damascus, king Herod's personal secretary."

Answer 3

Don't know if you're out of line or not. Trouble is that you have only one news source for the statements you are making, and we aren't certain that there wasn't more than one Herod. You are also judging the writing style of Josephus, and historical writers 2000 years ago didn't necessarily write in the same way that we do, nor were the rigors of academic writing held to the same standards. It's likely that things will change 2000 years from now, and our style will seem a bit out of sorts.

I'd have to see a bit more than a single news source to say that Josephus was lying, or that this particular Herod was the one that killed children at the time of Christ.

Answer 4

You have your historical facts wrong:
Herod the Great did not kill the innocents in Egypt but in Judah. This is your error, one of place. His son Herodes Antipas succeded Him and was the one that was alive during the passion of Christ.
Now, Christ was not born on exactly 0, actually, nobody can really agree on the exact date Christ was born. Is the same with the date Herod the greatd died, His exact date can't be fixed exactly but aproximately.
The killing in Egypt of the first born was an event that ocured in Egypt only in the times of Moses.

What Herod ordered according to the Bible was the killing of every male child below the age of 2, not the newly born alone. Jospehus by the way, can not be charged of doing any Christian propaganda becasue he was a Historian, and not christian, but Jewish. By the time Josephus writtes, the events described in the bible were as recent for him as WWI or WWII are for us.


My friend, responding to your recent added comment adressed to me: Study Geography and History!!!

Bethlehem was in Judah!!!!!
Bethlehem is the town, located just east of jerusalem, Judah is the kingdom, and Roman province in those times where Bethlehem was located, you really made me laugh my socks out, that's good. It's like saying that JFK was killed in Dallas, not in Texas, Funny

Answer 5

King Herod (73-4 BCE) is now believed to have died, aged 69, from chronic kidney disease, probably complicated by Fournier's gangrene, which caused his genitals to rot away.

Answer 6

King Herod's son was in power then. That's the only part of the story that can be verified through history - that his son took over when he died.

There are no historical documents of the killing of new born sons in Egypt.

Answer 7

4 BC could have been the year Jesus was born. The span is 6 BC to 6 AD.

And there was more than one Herod you know, Herod had John the Baptist killed after he baptized Jesus.

Answer 8

The guys who calculated Jesus' birth were actually wrong, off by about 3 or 4 years. So Jesus was probably born around 4 B.C. And, why would the authors of the different books of the Bible lie about something like that? They'd have no reason to.

Answer 9

Most historians place Jesus' birth as happening in 3 BCE.

Answer 10

I don't know. Josephus was prone to propoganda. My guess is that you believe the Bible because archeologist rate the bible as 70% correct the remaining 30% we don't have enough technology to test.