Holy Innocents

Information about Holy Innocents

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 infanticide by Herod the Great, attested to in the Gospel of Matthew 2:16-18|, but not mentioned in the other gospels nor in most of the early apocrypha.

Matthew relates that King Herod 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.

Many scholars portray this and other nativity stories as creative hagiography rather than history^[1]. Others, however, conclude that it really happened.

Church tradition

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.^[2] Fortunately for them, according to Matthew, Joseph, Mary and Jesus had fled to Egypt after they had been warned by an angel.

The scale of the event

The passage specifically describes this event as happening in Bethlehem, which would probably have been a small village, and the surrounding rural areas. 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 probably only between six and twenty children would be killed.

The prophecy of Jeremiah

According to the gospel of Matthew, the massacre fulfilled a verse of Jeremiah (31:15), 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."

Most modern 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."

Although the quotation in Matthew is from Jeremiah, the Old Syriac Sinaiticus referred to Isaiah. Some textual critics conclude that the mistake occurred in the original manuscript, and was corrected in later copies.

History

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

Currently there exists no historical or archaeological evidence of this event having actually happened aside from the account by Matthew in the Bible. The Jewish historian Josephus (c. 37-c.100) who wrote about the period, makes no mention of it.

Matthew's nativity story, including the Massacre of the Innocents, is intended to show Jesus to be the prophesied Messiah, fulfilling the prophecy of Jeremiah 31:15 and likening Jesus to Moses.^[3]

The Massacre of the Innocents is not mentioned in the other gospels nor in the early apocrypha except for the Protoevangelium of James 22.^[4] Many scholars conclude that the account was invented to glorify Jesus.^[5]

Some scholars have also suggested that the event was written into Matthew's account to mirror the story from Exodus regarding the killing of the Hebrew first born by Pharaoh. This was meant to show that Jesus was to be a new Moses, and would have readily been understood in this way by a Jewish audience.

Moreover, the theme of a cruel king perceiving a newborn baby to be a threat and seeking to kill the baby was very common in the myths of the ancient world, forming the cultural millieu in which the New Testament was composed, and many prominent figures had such a legend attributed to their birth.

Defending the massacre's authenticity

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

Josephus records Herod's execution of two of his sons and his wife Mariamne because he believed they posed a threat.^[6] 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.”^[7] "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."^[8]

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".^[9]

Extra-biblical references

Assumption of Moses

Assumption of Moses 6:2-6:

An insolent king will succeed [the Hasmonean priests]… he will slay all the young.

This passage from the Assumption of Moses, dating to the first century, has been interpreted as a reference to the massacre of the innocents. E. Stauffer wrote, “Therefore the paragraph about the murder of ‘the young’ can only be pointing to a massacre of children en masse in the Pharaonic manner.”^[10]

Macrobius

In the fourth century, the Roman philosopher Ambrosius Theodosius Macrobius gave the following comment in his 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.

In art

Rubens' Massacre of the Innocents

Medieval mystery plays recounted Biblical events, including Herod's slaughter of the innocents. One in particular, The Pageant of the Shearmen and Tailors, performed in Coventry, England, included a haunting song about the episode, now known as the Coventry Carol.

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^[11]. 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^[12]. 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^[13]. 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.

A rather similar interpertation is given in JosÃ© Saramago's controversial The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, but there attributed to Joseph, Jesus' father, rather than to Jesus himself. As depicted by Saramago, Joseph knew of Herod's intention to massacre the children of Bethlehem, but failed to warn the townspeople and chose only to save his own child. Guilt-ridden ever after, Joseph finally expiates his sin by letting himslef be crucified (an event not narrated in the New Testament).

Feast days

The commemoration of the massacre of these "Holy Innocents" — considered by some Christians as the first martyrs for Christ^[14] — 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 or 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 slaughtered children on December 28; and the Eastern Orthodox Church commemorates them on December 29 (using the Julian calendar).

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". Various Catholic countries have a tradition (no longer widely observed) of role reversal between children and their adult educators, plausibly a christinianized version of the Roman annual feast of the Saturnalia (when even slaves played 'masters' for a day). In some cultures it is said to be an unlucky day, when no new project should be started.

Notes

1. ^ Paul L. Maier, "Herod and the Infants of Bethlehem", in Chronos, Kairos, Christos II, Mercer University Press (1998), page 171
2. ^ 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.
3. ^ Harris, Stephen L. Understanding the Bible, 2nd Ed. Palo Alto: Mayfield. 1985. p. 274
4. ^ Protoevangelium of James at newadvent.org.
5. ^ 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); see also E. P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus, pp. 87-88.
6. ^ Josephus, The Jewish War I.535–7 and Jewish Antiquities 16.121–7, 356.
7. ^ Josephus, Antiquities 15.2.
8. ^ Francis Wright Beare, The Gospel According to Matthew, Camelot Press, Southampton, 1981.
9. ^ 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.
10. ^ E. Stauffer, Jesus and His Story (London: SCM, 1960), p. 39.
11. ^ Getty Collection
12. ^ Reni's painting at the Web Gallery of Art
13. ^ The Massacre of the Innocents in Cuzco Cathedral is clearly influenced by Rubens. See CODART Courant, Dec 2003, p12. (2.5 MB pdf download)
14. ^ Feast of the Holy Innocents, EncyclopÃ¦dia Britannica.

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

External links

The Massacre of the Innocents is one of two paintings by Peter Paul Rubens depicting an episode of the biblical Massacre of the Innocents as related in the Gospel of Matthew.

The lost masterpiece

The first version painted by Rubens dates from around 1611.
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Infanticide is the practice of someone intentionally causing the death of an infant. Often it is the mother who commits the act, but criminology recognises various forms of non-maternal child murder.
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Herod (Hebrew: הוֹרְדוֹס Hordos‎, Greek: ἡρῴδης), also known as Herod I or
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The Gospel of Matthew is a synoptic gospel in the New Testament, one of four canonical gospels. It narrates an account of the life and ministry of Jesus. It describes his genealogy, his miraculous birth and childhood, his baptism and temptation, his ministry of healing and
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Gospel, from the Old English god-spell "good tidings" is a calque of Greek ευαγγέλιον (
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Apocrypha (from the Greek word ἀπόκρυφα, meaning "those having been hidden away"^[1]) are texts of uncertain authenticity or writings where the authorship is questioned.
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Bethlehem
بيت لحم
Roman Catholic section of Church of Nativity

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Three Kings, or Three Wise Men redirects here. For other uses, see Three Kings (disambiguation) and Wise men.

In Christian tradition the Magi, also known as the Three Wise Men, The Three Kings, or
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Hagiography is the study of saints. A hagiography refers literally to writings on the subject of such holy persons, and specifically the biographies of ecclesiastical and secular leaders.
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Three Kings, or Three Wise Men redirects here. For other uses, see Three Kings (disambiguation) and Wise men.

In Christian tradition the Magi, also known as the Three Wise Men, The Three Kings, or
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The Nativity of Jesus, or simply the Nativity, is the story of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth.

For Christians, the authoritative accounts are those given in the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke that form part of the New Testament of the Bible.
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Client state is one of several terms used to describe the subordination of one state to a more powerful state in international affairs. It is the least specific of these terms and may be treated as a broad category which includes satellite state, puppet state, neo-colony,
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Joseph "of the House of David" (heb.יוֹסֵף also Saint Joseph, Joseph the Betrothed, Joseph of Nazareth, and Joseph the Worker
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Mary (Judeo-Aramaic: מרים, Maryām, from Hebrew Miriam), called since medieval times Madonna (My Lady), resident in Nazareth in Galilee, is known from the New Testament^[1]
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Jesus (8–2 BC/BCE to 29–36 AD/CE),^[2] also known as Jesus of Nazareth, is the central figure of Christianity, and is also an important figure in several other religions.
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flight into Egypt describes an event in the Gospel of Matthew ( 2:13-23 ), in which Joseph fled to Egypt with his wife Mary and Jesus, after the visit of the Magi.
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angel (Lat. angelus, pl. angeli) is a supernatural being found in many religions. In Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism, angels, as attendants or guardians to man, typically act as messengers from God.
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Tanakh
Torah | Nevi'im | Ketuvim
Books of Nevi'im
First Prophets
1. Joshua
2. Judges
3. Samuel
4. Kings
Later Prophets
5. Isaiah
6. Jeremiah
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The Babylonian captivity, or Babylonian exile, is the name generally given to the deportation and exile of the Jews of the ancient Kingdom of Judah to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar during the 6th Century BCE.
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Codex Sinaiticus (London, Brit. Libr., Add. 43725; Gregory-Aland nÂº א (Aleph) or 01) is a 4th century uncial manuscript of the Greek Bible, written between 330–350.
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Isaiah (Hebrew: יְשַׁעְיָהוּ, Standard
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Textual criticism or lower criticism is a branch of philology or bibliography that is concerned with the identification and removal of errors from texts and manuscripts. Ancient manuscripts often have errors or alterations made by scribes, who copied the manuscripts by hand.
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Josephus (37 – sometime after 100 AD),^[1] who became known, in his capacity as a Roman citizen, as Titus Flavius Josephus,^[2] was a 1st-century Jewish historian and apologist of priestly and royal ancestry who survived and recorded the
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Moses (Hebrew: מֹשֶׁה, Standard
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The Gospel of James, also sometimes known as the Infancy Gospel of James or the Protoevangelium of James, is an apocryphal Gospel probably written about AD 150.
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Robert H. Eisenman is an American archaeologist and Biblical scholar. He is currently Professor of Middle East Religions and Archaeology and Director of the Institute for the Study of Judeo-Christian Origins at California State University, Long Beach; and Visiting Senior Member of
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Nicolaus of Damascus (Greek Νικόλαος Δαμασκηνός, Nikolāos Damaskēnos) was a Syrian^[1]
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The Hasmoneans (Hebrew: חשמונאים‎, Hashmonaiym, Audio ) were the ruling dynasty of the Hasmonean Kingdom (140 BCE–37 BCE),^[1]
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The Assumption of Moses (otherwise called the Testament of Moses) is a Jewish apocryphal pseudepigraphical work of uncertain date and authorship. It is known from a single 6th century manuscript in Latin that was discovered by Antonio Ceriani in the Ambrosian
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Ambrosius Theodosius Macrobius was a Roman grammarian and Neoplatonist philosopher who flourished during the reigns of Honorius and Arcadius (395–423).

Life and Works