This was the title of a recent tv documentary that was
on discovery channel.
It was about the life and personality of the infamous King
Herod.

Like many other tv documentaries on disscovery, I found this
one informative and interesting.
However only up to a certain point was this show objective.
That is until they mentioned what some refer to as the massacre of the innocents.

The story goes that 3 wise men came to his court and
supposedly told him about a great king who was to be born in bethlehem.
When he heard this he supposedly when about killing all
the infants in Bethlehem.

The only evidence for this as the show admits, is one
passage or reference in the bible.
There is no other historical reference or evidence to support this.
This show mentioned one of the sources for Herod and
his reign was the historian Josephus.
In his writings however Josephus mentions many things
about Herod but not this incident. Why?

Some biographers of Herod have maintained that this
occurence is no more than a myth .
Michael GRant in his biography of Herod has also stated
this.

As this documentary mentions he was a brutal and paranoid ruler who had his wife and children murdered
on suspicion of treachery.
Based on this the show then concludes that it was very possible for him to go about murdering innocent infants.
That is if he thought they would have grown up to challenge his throne.
One psychologist interviewed on the show concluded
this based on his previous behavior.
Aside from that no other evidence is given but that one
scriptural evidence.

Where is the facts here in this case?
Anybody else seen this show and know anything about
this?
I still think this story about the massacre of the innocents
is simply a myth and nothing more.

I saw parts of it. Of course, there's really no way of knowing if the massacre actually occured or not. But all rulers back then were sort of kooky and paranoid, and it would be entirely possible one would slaughter children based on a prophecy foretold by wise men.

I think that the little details given in the Bible account (IE the cutoff for ages to be slaughtered) lends it a little credulity, since if it were completely made up, would the writer have cared to put in such extraneous information?

In a world where people fly planes into buildings and strap bombs to themselves to kill innocent men,women and children i unfortunately do not find it so hard to believe that 2000 years ago someone would kill infants for their own interests.

I have just pondered something.
If these 3 wise men supposedly predicted the birth of
christ as the bible says, then how is it they were not able
to foresee the massacre of the infants?

Or maybe they really didn't care ?
The lives of the innocent children were of probaly trivial
importance perhaps?
And how did they know that there was suppose to even
be a king or messiah born in the 1st place?

From seekerof>

Perhaps because the "slaughter of the innocents" (ie: the male babies) quite possibly never happened. There are no mention by historian's of that time period, Josephus, mainly, never recorded such an occurrance.

Which was exactly my point in the beginning.
This was the point I was making to others who responded
to my topic.
They seem to believe that this incident did occur as is
commonly believed.

But as you just said there is no historic evidence at all
for this .
The so-called prophecy made by the 3 wise men is just
a myth or legend.
If this was really true then the 3 wise men should have been able to foresee the results of their actions in telling
Herod of a king who was to come.
That is they would have also been able to have predicted
the massacre of the innocents.

There is tons of evidence to support what you say but much of it is hidden for obvious reasons. King Herod was a wise man who knew the fate he faced and acted rationally in his position. This is what evil does to the soul, makes it collapse on itself.

The Gospels were compiled very late in the first century, by Jews. The Gospel of Matthew was specifically written to Jews. If that had never happened, the people would only be two or at the most three generations past the event. If it hadn't happened, they would have known that and it would have hurt the credibility of the document. That points (I didn't say prove) to it really happening.