“There’s no evidence for the event.” Matthew is literally evidence that it did in fact happen.

@repentantrevenant9776

6 ай бұрын

That's what atheist skeptics don't understand - most of what we know from history was written down once and only once. Something that is only in one gospel is the normal amount of historical evidence for true events. The truly remarkable thing is how many facts in the new testament have multiple attestation - an exceptionally rare high bar of historical evidence.

@keatsiannightingale2025

6 ай бұрын

This is true, but the issue arises when contradicting evidence also exists. In this case, the infancy narrative of Luke chapter 2, which presupposes a historical context in which Judea falls under the complete jurisdiction of Imperial Rome and is no longer an autonomous client kingdom, serves as such a piece of evidence. This development itself did not occur in all probability until around 6 AD, when Quirinius became Imperial Legate of Roman Syria. The entire birth narrative of Mathew can be dated from around 6-4 BC, putting its timetable at odds with that of Luke. This would count as a piece of negative evidence (a Christian source no less) against Matthew’s narrative. But yes, I agree that a text’s truth is not disqualified merely on the score that it contains the only attestation to a particular sequence of events.

@ryanrevland4333

6 ай бұрын

Josephus provides detailed accounts of Herod's cruelties yet fails to mention this event. He certainly would have known about such an atrocity so its historical probability is low.

@carloswater7

6 ай бұрын

​​​@@ryanrevland4333Josephus didn't mention the town of Nazareth where Jesus lived. Because of that some Skeptics and atheist scholars believe Nazareth is a myth. However there is Archaeological evidence Nazareth was a town. Only because Josephus didn't mention something that it's in the Bible, it doesn't mean Josephus is more relevant.

@tydy5266

6 ай бұрын

Confirmation of an event Vs a place are two very different things. We can archaeologically prove that a place existed because there are multiple writings and groups associated with that place. How do you prove that an event happens without other supporting documentation? ​@@carloswater7

I forget who it was, but there was a Roman politician who said “It is better to be Herod’s pig than his son,” because at least Herod had no reason to kill an unclean animal.

@Apollo1989V

6 ай бұрын

Augustus supposedly said that.

@elram2649

16 күн бұрын

Macrobases (in Saturnalía 2.11) wrote that Caesar Augustus said that statement.

Thanks, I really appreciate these, I've never really commented before. And I'm sure many others feel the same way

@szilardfineascovasa6144

6 ай бұрын

100%

@JesusWillRaptureUs

2 ай бұрын

ye!

A Homily in Preparation for the Celebration of Christmas - St. John Chrysostom: They brought gold; you must bring temperance and virtue. They brought incense; you must bring pure prayers which are spiritual incense. They brought myrrh; you must bring humility and a humble heart and love. If you approach with these gifts, with great confidence you'll enjoy this holy table.

The size of Bethlehem and the magnitude of Herod’s atrocities makes this a blip on the radar. Since the execution of some Jewish zealots for removing an eagle in the temple occurred around the same time, it would escape most people’s notice, especially historians like Josephus. Like how the Kennedy assassination overshadowed CS Lewis’s death.

People assume there is some kind of extensive historical record of the region outside of the New Testament. In fact, if it wasn't for Josephus, there would be almost no historical record outside of the New Testament. History is not as well-recorded as people think.

@LucaTigli

2 ай бұрын

Valid, what is recorded extensively is Propaganda presented as History in the educational system and beyond. This is why the records in the NT are truthful; they get attacked by Intellectually dishonest people.

@APsGTG

28 күн бұрын

Right. People act like they had iPhones & Twitter back then when in reality there were still people who were trading items instead of money.

In general, parallels don’t weaken the case for a hypothesis that an event happened. They only strengthen the case for a rival hypothesis, that the account was made up based on the parallels with the other event. If it’s not a very convincing hypothesis, or it would lead us to expect the account to be fabricated in a different way from how it is, then the rival hypothesis isn’t too troubling.

@TestifyApologetics

6 ай бұрын

Right. When your best evidence against the view is telling the truth is "but these Moses parallels" you're on some pretty shaky ground.

Imagine being Matthew, writing an account to tell people about the Messiah you believe in, and having the audacity to make up such a massive event as fiction, and try to spin it off as real to the people who would have 'lived' those events in the time period he was writing to, and not expecting any backlash from his audiences. Does that honestly sound remotely feasible for someone who is trying to 'intelligently' trick people to believe in his story? Two can play at the game of the arguments from silence. Do other historical witnesses mention it? No, but neither do they say Matthew was lying either, yet the enemies of Jesus were happy to try and accuse the Christians of lying about other things in the Gospels. Effective lies and scams are founded on the basis of believability, not outright momentous bogus statements that nobody would believe. It would be like any one of us making up an historical event to the scale of 9/11, and then saying to everyone "yeah, remember when the Eiffel Tower in France fell down?" Everyone would call you a lunatic. Yet no ancient figures have found issue with Matthew's statements, and the Jewish audiences (who of all people would be familiar with the history of Judea) accepted Matthew's Gospel in their communities

@brock2k1

3 ай бұрын

First, Matthew wrote at least 50 years after the alleged event, so there would have been like three people still alive to ask about it when it was first written, and nobody alive to ask about it by the time Christianity became important enough to refute. Second, who would care enough to "backlash" it? If some religious nut came up to you and said Zeus appeared in a field in Kansas ten years ago, would you research it, or would you just say, "Fine, buddy, " and move on with your life? And third, a backlash doesn't prevent believers from believing. Look at Jan 6 --- no matter which side you are on, riot or peaceful tour group, you have to agree that half the people are wrong about it.

@ProselyteofYah

3 ай бұрын

@@brock2k1 So all the hundreds (if not thousands) 10-30 year olds in Israel (the age ranges of reliable memory during the event) are all dead 50 years on from the event? At the age ranges of 60-80? Even if one is to date Matthew's Gospel that late, that argument is nonsensical. Furthermore, if that event wasn't true, there would be no point in Matthew making it up on the fly 50 years later, because there is no theological or religiously motivated benefit to it (it's not like baby Jesus surviving a child massacre was essential to proving the faith), and if hardly anyone remembered by that time but three people, there would be no advantage in writing about it as some kind of "proof" of his arguments or recordings of the life of Jesus. So plenty of people 'would' remember by the time of the authorship of Matthew Secondly people would care about the subject, because the topic of the Messiah was 'massively' important to the Jews, and so you underestimate their religiosity in that respect. The Pharisees and others in their writings also were desperate in their apologetics in the 1st-2nd century A.D and beyond in trying to debunk Jesus as the Messiah, and they would have raised such a thing as a point of contention to prove the Apostles to be liars. We don't care about Zeus, because we don't believe in Zeus for one reason or another, either because we have a firm faith already in something else which denies Zeus, or because many people are atheists today living in an secular world where antitheistic scepticism is the norm (nevertheless a claim would have to be investigated for evidence if someone was insistent - something the Gospels revolve around the documentation of). The Jews believed in the coming of the Messiah and such would have commanded their attention - just as it commands the attention of adherents to Abrahamic religions today. So you apply both anachronistic and anti-cultural reasoning in that respect too. I personally believe in the existence of all the "gods", just through a biblical framework (the fallen demonic gods of the Divine Council of Psalm 82 and Deuteronomy, as per a mono-henotheistic view of the world and scriptures, that God of Israel is the "God of gods"), so I would investigate the claims of someone being spoken to by "Zeus" (so-called) if I could determine by evaluation that the person didn't seem to be mentally ill and could provide convincing persuasions that they had some kind of other worldly interactions with a greater power. The OT revolves around such notions of the wars of the gods in attempting to prove which one of the "True Highest God" of all. My world-view is consistent. I believe in both the mentally ill, and that people can have true divine encounters with all kinds of "gods", which I do not assume are always cases of madness, lest the person can be obviously observed to be such.

@sliglusamelius8578

2 ай бұрын

@@brock2k1 You don't know when Matthew was written. That's a bogus idea made up by fake scholars. There is a papyrus fragment of Matthew dated to 64 AD. There is also early writings that claim that Matthew first wrote an account in Hebrew.

Thank you! I’m really struggling with my faith these days, and your channel helps. I’m trying to look at both sides of the debate on Christianity. God bless!

@davidnasibyan5170

4 ай бұрын

Seek the truth and you will find it Bro God Bless

@APsGTG

29 күн бұрын

The Bible’s historical accuracy was enough to make me realise Christ is King. It’s immaculate.

I don't think it's surprising in the slightest the historical record is silent on this. If Herod really did do this, the Roman sources probably wouldn't find it worth talking about, -especially sense they put Herod in charge. But it could have also gotten hairy for the Jews to mention it in their writings also. "Oh, and about thirty years before this alleged Messiah named Jesus was crucified because we rejected him, about thirty years before he was crucified Herod received word that a new king of the Jews had been born. Just don't assume this has anything to do with Jesus."

Matthew is wonderful Gospel

So Herod was not below killing his rivals. Even his own siblings, wife and offspring

thank you for all the amazing videos, you're an amazing apologist

Commenting for the algorithm. God bless you, Erik.

Always enjoy these videos which are more like your older ones

@NotRick95

6 ай бұрын

The classic Testify style

@jameswitt108

6 ай бұрын

Same here

Great video! I agree but why didn't Luke include it? Maybe he just felt it wasn't relevant?

@TestifyApologetics

6 ай бұрын

IDK. Why didn't US Grant mention the Emancipation Proclamation? Maybe Luke had Mary or James as a source, and they just didn't mention it to him. We can only speculate at best.

@jessknauftofsantaynezvalle4111

6 ай бұрын

It has been suggested that one of the reasons why Luke's Gospel does not include the story of the wisemen (magi from Parthia) is that it would have been a distraction to its target audience to include it at the time of its composition, as there either was or could have been a potential Roman conflict with the Parthians going on. Lucian of Samosata, the 2nd century Greek rhetorician, drew up a set of rules for the budding historian in his book How to Write History. In it he writes: "Rapidity is always useful, especially if there is a lot of material. It is secured not so much by words and phrases as by the treatment of the subject. That is, you should pass quickly over the trivial and unnecessary, and develop the significant points at adequate length. Much must be omitted. After all, if you are giving a dinner to your friends and everything is ready, you don't put salt fish and porridge on the table in the midst of the cakes, poultry, entrees, wild boar, hare, and choice cuts of fish, simply because they are ready too! You forget the cheaper articles altogether." (56)

Thanks for this!

Testify Brother love the content. Keep up the good work

Something I’d believe is that there was a very localized massacre. We often depict Nero’s massacre as being wide spread but it probably wasn’t given the numbers of Christians vs the number of administrators able to kill them, about one per ten thousand.

@briggy4359

6 ай бұрын

Don't underestimate the energetic motivation of evil people. The ratio of Nazis to Jews in 1933 favored the Jewish people... But one predator pulls many times his weight in prey.

Merry Christmas, Testify!

Nice to see that this days do apologetic videos for this themes

Great job!

Do you think Macrobius' attestation of the event where he quotes Herod as saying, "It is better to be one of Herod's pigs than his sons" (Saturnalia 2.4.11) is a good extra-biblical attestation, or too far removed to be reliable?

@TestifyApologetics

6 ай бұрын

I didn't include it because it's likely apocryphal.

@juancarlosaliba4866

6 ай бұрын

@@TestifyApologetics yet doesn't Augustus say that about Herod considering the kind of administration he has in Judea?

@juancarlosaliba4866

6 ай бұрын

​​@@TestifyApologeticsI watched in 3:19-3:20 of your video. But the reason of the Exodus massacre of the boys isn't because the numbers are getting big. If that's the case, then the Pharaoh would have to include baby girls. But Josephus had revealed something more here. In Egypt, there was a circulation among the Israelites that a powerful ruler will be born who will bring the wrath and judgement against Egypt and then bring the Exodus from Egypt. For 400 years in Egypt, they never forgot what God said to Abraham back then that they'll be slaves in a foreign land for 400 years and then He will lead them out of that foreign land. So yes, Jesus is the New Moses in Matthew 2.

Thinking the parallels disprove the account is to reveal an anti-supernatural bias. “There’s too many parallels so it must be made up, because providential things like that can’t happen!” It assumes the conclusion and is highly illogical.

Hey bro I appreciate your video,btw why you delete it a few days ago and then uploaded it back?

@TestifyApologetics

6 ай бұрын

I didn't with this one. Sometimes I make a light edit and re-upload a certain video. But I don't publish them so you shouldn't be able to see them unless you're a financial backer. (They have early access) Not sure what you're referring to. Hmm...

Very nice analysis! Two points I'd like to add: 1. Another source of skepticism about the massacre of the babies of Bethlehem is that Josephus never mentions it in his works. There are two reasons why this could be true: A. From what I have read, at the time of Jesus' birth, Bethlehem was a very small town of 200-300 people. The number of male children under the age of 2 in such a town would be no more than 10% of the population, on average. So the number of murdered children was probably between 20 and 30. B. Josephus was writing in the early 90's AD, nearly a century later. It's quite possible that the murder of a small number of children in one tiny town had pretty well been forgotten by then in light of Herod's other, far greater atrocities. 2. Although many historians dispute whether or not the massacre at Bethlehem happened, NO ONE disputes that it is absolutely in keeping with Herod's violent paranoia. The man would brutally eliminate ANY perceived threat to his power, even his own sons. So he was certainly capable of killing children if he thought one of them might grow up to be a rival.

The parallel between Moses and Jesus and is one of Matthews main points. That doesn't show that he made it up. That shows that there are parallels between Moses and Jesus.

Dang mad interesting never noticed half those details before

Revelation 14:12 12 Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.

The skeptic's argument regarding the massacre of the innnocents is that this event is far too big to not have been recorded anywhere else, so it must be a fabrication. The apologist answer to this claim is that Bethlehem was too small at the time, so the number of murdered children was too small to matter. However, the fact that it was specifically young and innocent children that were targeted makes this act specially atrocious and newsworthy. On top of that is the fact that the stroy does not appear on Luke, and the story helps Mathews obvoius purpose of drawing a parallel between Jesus and the old testament Moses. So the cumulative case favor the skeptic's conclusion. Most historians and scholars indeed agree that this event is a fabrication. You point out that, unlike Jesus, Moses was raised on the pahrao's household and had older siblings. Mathew can't make Jesus grow into Herolds household since it would contradict known facts of the time, and giving him older siblings would contradict the virgin birth narrative. As to why didn't Mathwe made even more parallels between Jesus and Moses, maybe he thought he had enough of them already. No need to turn Jesus into Moses 2.0.

i have a question,there is the mythical empire Vikramaditya ,some fictional hindu empire, wich spread to much of asia some of europe,now,if we use The Criterion Of Embarasment make this true?

@romualdandrzejczak4093

6 ай бұрын

Yes, if there are reliable sources.

Fitting character as many you can observe by historical documents even Josephus

@TheLionFarm

6 ай бұрын

Note Herod was Edom/Esau that hated his brother and even risked lives of innocent children of Jews & the like Matthew 2:16 "they saw that he was a violent and bold man, and very desirous of acting tyrannically.” - Flavius Josephus

@TheLionFarm

6 ай бұрын

Then the king told Doeg, “You turn and attack the priests.” Doeg the Edomite turned and attacked the priests. That day he killed eighty-five men who carry the linen ephod.[q] 19 He attacked the priestly town of Nob with the sword. Men and women, children and infants, oxen, donkeys and sheep were put to the sword. ~😢 1 Samuel 22 Edomite madness seemed to to be as a disease

YHWH knows the end from the beginning

It's crazy how often they come yp with silly reasons to doubt when the truth is God could easily have engineered any parallels. As he has before.

i have a question,there is the mythical empire Vikramaditya ,some fictional hindu empire, wich spread to much of asia some of europe,now,if we use The Criterion Of Embarasment make this true? there is no vedic about it, and i saw it said it spread to rome,rome is 500 BC,india would be hindu majority,hindu say every religion is true,they always change their text, and the vedic pagans were very similar,Christianity is in pagan rome and pharisee , while hinduism was with other pagans very similar, they didnt expect for non indians to know about the myth,only indians , and they could use lack of knowladge of history as a argument for indian expansion,to make the indians more willing to fight,so it would make the other hindu hinduism also hates the poor and wome but even if it is a empire ,that wouldnt mean anything,their territory is similar to the mongols, so is not anything impossible

Herod reminds me of Joseph Stalin

Isn’t it accepted by historians that Herod died before Jesus’ supposed birth?

@TestifyApologetics

6 ай бұрын

no

Yes, Jesus had brothers and a sister. They were either born after him or they came with Joseph (their mother had died)

Jesus died around 30 C.E. and that the first Gospel to be written, Mark, was penned around 65-70 C.E. Matthew and Luke were written around 80 or 85 C.E. …The historicity of the Matthew account is not accepted by scholars.[2][3][9] The story of the massacre is found in no gospel other than Matthew, nor is it mentioned in the surviving works of Nicolaus of Damascus (who was a personal friend of Herod the Great), nor in Josephus's Antiquities of the Jews, despite his recording many of Herod's misdeeds, including the murder of three of his own sons.[4] The early 5th-century account of Macrobius-that "on hearing that the son of Herod, king of the Jews, had been slain when Herod ordered that all boys in Syria under the age of two be killed, [Augustus] said, 'It's better to be Herod's pig than his son'"-has been discounted as extra-biblical evidence for the event due to its later authorship, possible influence by the gospel narrative, and the confused nature of the account.[10] In view of the lack of independent confirmation that the event ever occurred, the most likely explanation for the story is that it is folklore inspired by Herod's reputation.[9] The author appears to have modeled the episode on the biblical story of Pharaoh's attempt to kill the Israelite children in the Book of Exodus, as told in an expanded version that was current in the 1st century.[11] In that expanded story, Pharaoh kills the Hebrew children after his scribes warn him of the impending birth of the threat to his crown (i.e., Moses), but Moses' father and mother are warned in a dream that the child's life is in danger and act to save him.[12] Later in life, after Moses has to flee, like Jesus, he returns when those who sought his death are themselves dead.[12] As a matter of understanding what the myth is trying to communicate, its lack of historicity is unsurprising given that gospels were primarily written as theological documents rather than chronological timelines.[13][14][15][16]

@chosenone3295

Күн бұрын

@@Faithexplorer4376 you posted the same comments on both videos, that’s some dedication

@Faithexplorer4376

Күн бұрын

@@chosenone3295 yes

hey you might wanna consider using AI images less. 0:07 they kinda make peoples faces look weird

@TestifyApologetics

6 ай бұрын

they're royalty free; I don't have to worry about copyright. I get it, they're not great. I just am not operating with a big budget here.

@josephfox9221

6 ай бұрын

fairpoint @@TestifyApologetics

@josephfox9221

6 ай бұрын

hopefully that changes soon @@TestifyApologetics

4:11 I don't think this is a good analogy, since we have soooo much more information about Lincoln and Kennedy to compare. The more data you have about two people, the more coincidences you should expect to find. We don't have anything near that amount of information about Jesus and Moses, so, the fact that you can find tons of significant parallels between their lives should raise suspicion. It can't just be hand-waved away.

@TestifyApologetics

6 ай бұрын

Yeah they really can especially when they are so weak and if Matthew felt free to make parallels why did he not make more of them. This is really weak

@legron121

6 ай бұрын

@@TestifyApologetics He made plenty of them. You don't know that he would have made more of them if he felt free to invent parallels, since Matthew had other concerns besides just making Jesus look like Moses. For example, having Jesus grow up in Herod's household (which would more properly parallel Moses' situation) would not work since everyone knew Jesus came from Nazareth. But Matthew's bringing Egypt into the story of Jesus escaping from a tyrannical ruler who massacres innocents is surely a flag that he is imitating the origin story of Moses and Israel.

You're right about one thing --- Herod was a murderous psychopath. He would kill any perceived threat to him, and he would have spies all over the place looking for threats. And that proves that Luke's gospel is false, because Luke says (2:22) that when Jesus was six weeks old (Mary's purification period), the infant Jesus was presented in the Temple in Jerusalem, right under Herod's nose, and that various holy people publicly proclaimed him "the Lord's Christ" (2:26, KJV) and told everybody who was looking for the Messiah about him (2:38). So Herod didn't even need spies, and he didn't need the Magi, he had prominent people in the Temple telling him the new Messiah was right there. And what did he do? Nothing. Luke says the Mary and Joseph went home to Nazareth, unhindered and unthreatened in any way. Even worse for Matthew, Luke says that they returned to Jerusalem every year after that for Passover. These were the same years that Matthew says Joseph was cowering in Egypt until Herod died, and Matthew says that even after Herod died (giving no way to determine how long that took), God warned Joseph in a dream to STILL stay out of Judea (where Bethlehem and Jerusalem were), because Herod's successor Archelaus also wanted to kill Jesus. Archelaus reigned for ten years after Herod's death, so according to Matthew, Joseph would have stayed out of Jerusalem for ten years plus however many years Herod lived after Jesus' birth, while according to Luke, Joseph went to Jerusalem every year after Jesus' birth. They are two completely different stories, made up to explain why their Messiah was called "Jesus of Nazareth" instead of "Jesus of Bethlehem." They knew the Messiah had to be born in Bethlehem, and they knew Jesus was from Nazareth, so Matthew and Luke each made up a story to explain that inconvenient contradiction, but made it worse by contradicting each other. That's why Luke has no Magi, no Star, no house in Bethlehem, no slaughter of the innocents, and no flight to Egypt. Meanwhile, Matthew has Joseph apparently living in a house in Bethlehem all along before Jesus was born (the house the Star led the Magi directly to, even though they had to ask Herod which town Jesus was in), with no ridiculous census requiring people to travel to where their ancestors lived a thousand years earlier, no angels appearing to shepherds in the field, no overflowing inn, no manger, no visits to Jerusalem for over ten years, and no mention of Nazareth until Joseph was warned not to go back to his house in Bethlehem. This is one of many examples where Jesus "fulfilled" a prophecy by simply having his apologists make up a story about him that fulfilled a prophecy.

Maybe he or one of the disciples saw it in a dream.

@TheVelvetTV_Riesenglied

6 ай бұрын

while this may be possible and even be a credible source for some already believing in the inspiration of scripture, the "visions and dreams"-hypothesis doesn't give much room for reason-based apologetics

No, the author of Matthew did not lie nor was he telling the truth. The author of Matthew believed Jesus was the Jewish Messiah and came to this conclusion most likely based on other stories he had heard. Herod had a bad reputation, and this reputation could have inspired the story through rumors and spreading of tales (oral tradition). This black and white fallacy C.S. Lewis popularized of liar, lunatic, or Lord (trilemma) just needs to go away. Anyone who knows anything about religious movements know rarely are they "lying" or attempting to deceive. It's usually a mistaken belief. To understand Matthew you have to understand what the author is literary trying to show, and that is that Jesus fulfilled prophecy as the Messiah. The main premise behind the story of the Massacre of Innocents is that Herod wanted to kill the future King of the Jews. Here's a short list that one should compare to the other gospels. 1. He creates a genealogy to show Jesus is part of Davidic line. 2. Born of a virgin. (Isaiah 7:14). 3. Shows he was born in Bethlehem. (Micah 5:2) 4. Shows his escape to Egypt so he come out of it. (Hosea 11:1). 5. Kings of other nations would bring him gifts. (Psalm 72:10). I know you're not a fan of "absence of evidence", but that's the way corroboration works. Why doesn't the other gospel accounts mention the account of the Massacre of the Innocents? Why doesn't Josephus mention it or Nicolaus of Damascus (who knew Harrod) mention it either?

@TestifyApologetics

6 ай бұрын

3/5 prophecies you mentioned were not ever considered to be Messianic in the Targums or Talmud. Matthew make zero connection with Psalm 72.10 when he's quick to make OT connections elsewhere as you point out, but he never quotes it. Why would he pull for these strands based on events that didn't even happen? You're also just stomping your foot and going "no way, the argument from silence is really actually quite good" and you're ignoring any of the positive evidence I gave for the account and the reasons why the "Matthew is just trying to get Jesus to fulfill prophecy" don't work that I address in the video. I'm halfway wondering if you watched.

@questioneveryclaim1159

6 ай бұрын

@@TestifyApologetics Thank you very much for your reply. Certainly there's debate over Psalm 72.10 and others prefer Isaiah 60:6 or even Daniel for the wisemen. Why would some pull strand's from George Washington's Cherry Tree and Truth telling together if it didn't actually happen? It's the way legendary accounts occur. We don't know the mind of the author of Matthew, but virtually all textual critics agree the author wanted to tell a story about Jesus and show he fulfilled Messianic prophecy. There is no positive evidence. Let me try and explain why that's the case. And why the absence of evidence is so compelling by looking at the primary sources of each heinous deed Herod committed you describe in the video. 1. Purged his predecessors the Hasmonean. (Josephus) 2. Killing of John Hyrcanus (Josephus) 3. The drowning of Aristobulus III (Josephus) 4. The killing of mother-in-law Alexandra (Josephus) 5. Imprisonment and the killing of the 300 military leaders in the Hippodrome (Josephus) 6. Jewish citizens protestors of Jerusalem that were executed (Josephus) You use Josephus to show that King Herod operated under paranoia and suspicion or as you put it a "mob boss," rightfully so. However you fail to use Josephus in critical examination for the historicity of the Massacre of the Innocents. Why? With all this information you have about King Herod from Josephus, why doesn't he mention the Massacre of the Innocents? We've got one source, Matthew. Even the other gospels don't mention it, why? I understand your passion about the narrative, but wanting and feeling like a narrative is historical is insufficient to say it is. Why would your primary source for Herod not mention the Massacre of the Innocents? Can you see how early Christians could have spread untrue Herod tales considering his reputation?

@darkwolf7740

6 ай бұрын

​@questioneveryclaim1159 I don't get why you're using that as an argument. Most of ancient history is lost, and most massive historical events in the past were only mentioned once, like with Pompeii, or the cancelling of Passover.

@seanhogan6893

6 ай бұрын

@@darkwolf7740 this is true but surely your reasonableness test is more complex than "it was mentioned"? Several famous ancients have fantastical birth stories and we basically dismiss them.

@seanhogan6893

6 ай бұрын

@@TestifyApologetics "you're ignoring any of the positive evidence I gave" is pretty reminiscent of how pseudo-scientists talk. Listen to some of Steve Mason's interviews about Josephus on MythVision or elsewhere to get a feel for how a real historian of the period approaches evidence and how much (or little) confidence we can have in any conclusions.

Definitely agre with Michael Heiser that Jesus’ birth was 3 BC, and Herod was killed in 1 BC

@jacobhargiss9909

6 ай бұрын

jesus christ was born 3 years before christ?

@freddurstedgebono6029

6 ай бұрын

@@jacobhargiss9909 Yes. Because the original BC/AD was setup on an incorrect estimation of Christ’s birth year. Even most historians agree between 6-3 BC in reality, as we can more accurately date artifcats and writing now

@jacobhargiss9909

6 ай бұрын

@@freddurstedgebono6029 and the correct estimation is based on what exectly?

@freddurstedgebono6029

6 ай бұрын

@@jacobhargiss9909 Historical knowledge on Herod’s death. Typically seen now as 4BC, but used to be thought to be 1 BC, and the updated date is based on faulty reasoning. His sons claimed their reigns begininning in 4BC, however evidence seems they back dated their rule to when their father began assigning them governmental positions. But the basis for this is further backed up by Michael Heiser who goes to Revelation 12, which is about the birth of the messiah. The description of the stars are describing constellations and the alignments of astrological bodies. You can plug it into a star date calculator, and you arrive at a specific birth date of September 11th, 3 BC. Which aligns well with Herod dying in spring of 1 BC, or about 1.5 years later. Makes sense in choosing to kill infants he would estimate up and specify killing 2 years or younger to be on the safe side.

@HistoryNerd808

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​@@jacobhargiss9909​Don't forget that 0 was set up, not by Jesus's contemporaries but by Pope Gregory XIII in October 1582. Being off by only a few years a millenium and a half after the fact is pretty darn impressive.