Jason
Engwer recently left an informative comment at Michael Brown’s site on why
Josephus fails to mention the massacre of the innocents (Mt 2:16-18). I’d like
to add a few observations of my own:
i) Children are a common casualty of war, and the ancient world
was no exception. The death of a few boys in a small town by Herod’s henchmen
would not be historically noteworthy.
ii) Josephus was born c. 37-38 AD. The Antiquities was
published c. 93-94. So the event took place about 40 years before he was born–or about two generations before he was born. And his magnum opus was
published about a century after the event.
iii) In the age of local and national newspapers, not to
mention photojournalism, CNN, and so forth, it’s easy to have an unrealistic expectation
of the kinds of events that would be newsworthy in the ancient world. But I
think it’s safe to say that ancient people were remarkably ignorant of general
history. They would have known about famous kings and conquerors, as well as
having some knowledge of local lore (where they happened to live), but their
knowledge of the past would be the exception rather than the rule.
iv) Matthew doesn’t record the massacre of the innocents
because that’s a famous event; rather, that’s a famous event because Matthew
recorded it. He made it famous.
To ask why Josephus failed to record this famous event
presumes a frame of reference that Josephus never had. This is only famous in
Christian circles. Known to readers of Matthew’s Gospel. From there it become more
widely disseminated over the centuries by the church and Christmas
celebrations.
For anybody who's interested, here's an article I wrote on the Slaughter of the Innocents. And here's the Michael Brown thread Steve referred to, where I summarized some of my points.
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