Did Matthew invent the massacre of innocents?

[marco]

My view is that Matthew made things up. He stumbled on Jeremiah, lamenting as only Jeremiah laments:


“A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, weeping, and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.� Matthew 2:16-18 (NKJV)

What was upsetting the woman? Matthew explains that Herod was so annoyed at being deceived by the Magi that he just decided to kill all the male children, two years and under, in the entire region. A bit excessive. The incarnation was God's plan; the Magi were invited; so the murdered babies were collateral damage in God's plan. Rachel, in a town far away, is inconsolable, though she didn't know the babies personally.

What's Rachel got to do with anything?
Is this just Matthew inventing or can we believe the story?
Is Matthew blaming God - indirectly - for killing baby boys again?

[Avoice]

Well....Herod didnt fo a good job because he missed john the Baptist. Its a rediculous story. The writer of Mathew uses the story as a devise for a 'supposed' fulfilled prophecy.

"A voice was heard in Ramah...' is about the Babylonian exile. And if the writer of Mathew would have quoted the next line it would say they returned to the land of Israel

"Thus saith the Lord; Refrain thy voice from weeping, and thine eyes from tears: for thy work shall be rewarded, saith the Lord; and they shall come again from the land of the enemy."

THIS IS JUST ANOTHER FALSE FULFILLMENT OF PROPHECY

"..... because they [the children] were no more" (rolling my eyes) Don't Christians even bother to check what this liar says? Yeah, i called him a liar. Because he is a liar.

[Avoice]

[Replying to Tart]

Who is Rachel? She was the wife of Jacob [Israel].

[marco]

THIS IS JUST ANOTHER FALSE FULFILLMENT OF PROPHECY

"..... because they [the children] were no more" (rolling my eyes) Don't Christians even bother to check what this liar says? Yeah, i called him a liar. Because he is a liar.

I agree that Matthew is making a wrong use of a statement from scripture. I agree he might just have been lying, as you say, or he might have picked up a story many years after Christ had died or he might have felt "inspired" to show how divine Jesus was by inviting angels and wise men into his narrative and having events foretold in Scripture.

You may sometimes be right in what you hypothesise.

[Tart]

[Replying to Tart]

Who is Rachel? She was the wife of Jacob [Israel].

In Matthew that who he wrote about? Perhaps, but perhaps if it was prophecy, and came true, another Rachel existed in the time of the massacre... Is what I was questioning.

[marco]

The idea of Quasi Fictional/Historical is the question... But does that mean the Disciples lied? They made fiction? Does that mean they themselves dont even believe it? Or they made some kind of fiction that they believe in?

That's the big question. Some of what Matthew writes is so silly that it is impossible to accept he believed it unless he was abysmally thick. However, since he was able to write, we must assume he was of reasonable intelligence but was a man of his superstitious age, a man who wanted to have deities attend Jesus, as gods attended the Roman conquerors. So he picked bits of Scripture and, fully believing in Jesus, he made them fit. For some, this is called divine inspiration (by the Holy Ghost) and for others it is just plain fiction writing.

But did the disciples lie about the Resurrection? It really didnt happen? Why die for it then? Why would the disciples not denounce it in the face of death? Why didnt anyone object to their claims in the early Christian years? (that we have records of)?
Why would they write their Epistles?

Paul I believe started the avalanche of "sacred writing" on Jesus. It is possible to be insane and write lucid prose or poetry. The gospels were not written by eye witnesses and the authors obviously felt they could embroider fragments of stories they had heard. Rumour is very good at disguising itself as truth.

The Christianity that arose after Jesus died may be just a pale shadow of what Christ intended. We must thank Paul's prolific imagination for what we have today.

[Tart]

The idea of Quasi Fictional/Historical is the question... But does that mean the Disciples lied? They made fiction? Does that mean they themselves dont even believe it? Or they made some kind of fiction that they believe in?

That's the big question. Some of what Matthew writes is so silly that it is impossible to accept he believed it unless he was abysmally thick. However, since he was able to write, we must assume he was of reasonable intelligence but was a man of his superstitious age, a man who wanted to have deities attend Jesus, as gods attended the Roman conquerors. So he picked bits of Scripture and, fully believing in Jesus, he made them fit. For some, this is called divine inspiration (by the Holy Ghost) and for others it is just plain fiction writing.

But did the disciples lie about the Resurrection? It really didnt happen? Why die for it then? Why would the disciples not denounce it in the face of death? Why didnt anyone object to their claims in the early Christian years? (that we have records of)?
Why would they write their Epistles?

Paul I believe started the avalanche of "sacred writing" on Jesus. It is possible to be insane and write lucid prose or poetry. The gospels were not written by eye witnesses and the authors obviously felt they could embroider fragments of stories they had heard. Rumour is very good at disguising itself as truth.

The Christianity that arose after Jesus died may be just a pale shadow of what Christ intended. We must thank Paul's prolific imagination for what we have today.

Well i suppose that's what you believe... You're free to do so... Lately i have had a hard time believing in anything im not sure about... "What is a belief anyways?", is a question i posed in another thread.


Did you find out Santa didnt exist? Or were you like me? Maybe you never found out he existed in the first place.

You claim Paul invented Christianity... And you believe that because you believe Paul existed I suppose? Though i dont disagree, for how could the Pauline Epistles be in existence? We could certainly question that though...

The nature of reality itself, is something I question... Who's to say we arent in the matix for instance? You dont believe so do you?

Though i found this video interesting the other day
"Does Quantum Physics Confirm The Occult?"



Through our observation things pop into existence? Maybe it was your hallucination all along marco, and not Paul's... You ever think of that?

[marco]

The males-only Roman Catholic priesthood has long had what appears to me to be a homoerotic obsession with naked male bottoms in their Christian art .

They depicted classical mythological figures in pretty colours too - Caravaggio's Bacchus comes to mind. I think pudenda were often screened discreetly by a convenient leaf or hand but it may be that some of the female figures started their artistic existence as young male models. Perhaps the person paying the piper called the tune.

Matthew's story is found in no other gospel, and the Jewish historian Josephus does not mention it in his Antiquities of the Jews (c.  AD 94), which records many of Herod's misdeeds including the murder of three of his own sons...….

But if we acknowledge that whoever wrote this fable in the first place just made it up, we have to honestly ask ourselves what stuff was NOT just made up ...?

For me Matthew's walking (holy) corpses makes him not just unreliable but silly; so if there is anything that might have been deemed meritorious anywhere in his opus, it is contaminated. When he writes: "At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split..." we can expect a unicorn to fly into the sky carrying Christ's precious blood. Hilarious too is his chatty angel: "I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He's not here; he has risen.... and is going ahead of you into Galilee." He might have added: "The address is 34 Jehovah Avenue." It would be no funnier. I like the explanatory relative clause "who was crucified" - that particular Jesus, in case the ladies were confused.

I think it's safe to assume Herod, bad as he might have been, didn't have infants slaughtered. Matthew did.

[marco]

Why is your supposed homoerotic obsession put upon the Roman Catholic priesthood and not upon the non-priestly artists??? What's your proof that the artists of this and other paintings like it were in fact Christian and not pagans trying to influence Christians by insinuating their pov into so called Christian art?

Fair point. However, their survival is evidence of approval. Caravaggio's Death of the Virgin may have had a prostitute as model and the painting was rejected by the chapel that had commissioned it but Rubens liked it so it was saved.

The human form was certainly depicted with anatomical accuracy. The omnipresence of naked figures suggests that it was not just the painters but their sponsors who liked what they saw. I imagine that the Bible was used as a cover for what would otherwise be considered as obscene. Call a naked youth David and you win a prize.


Matthew does not indulge in naked figures but draws our attention to ridiculous scenes and asks us to believe what he's saying.

[marco]

Did you find out Santa didnt exist? Or were you like me? Maybe you never found out he existed in the first place.

The question is not trivial. I had already taught my friends he MUST exist, and they deferred to my 8-year-old superior powers of reasoning. When I discovered he did not exist I think I wept for an hour.

The pious little boy that I was, with bowed head and hands joined in prayer, would be repulsed at my agnostic confessions and in some ways the child is our master or, as Wordsworth put it: "The child is father of the man."

Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were the giants of truth in our instructed past. In some ways it is sad to see them torn down, like the statues of Lenin at the start of the nineties, for we have nothing to replace them with but doubt and cold reason. But when Matthew traces Christ back to caveman times, we have to accept he's raving.

[Avoice]

[Replying to Tart]

The writer of Mathew quotes a passage from the Hebrew Scriptures. If he usnt talkibg about that Rachel then it would make no sense to quote it.
What bothers me the most about the lies in the Christian testament is that they make good people (i assume you are) ...wait... They force good people to have to invent ways to perpetuate their deception.The writer of Mathew claims that the passage in the Hebrew scriptures foretells Herods supposed slaughter. Even if it happened it has nothing to do with the exiles returning from Babylon.
EVEN if there was a Rachel in the slaughter story it has nothing to do with the Babylonuan exile.
Look, I know its hard to admit.. even to yourself much less in a public forum. You dont hace to post any other comment. But be true to yourself. Then go check his other supposed fulfilled prophecies. Dont let your heart deceive you. Love your neighbor as yourself sounds like a doable thing. It takes a lot of strength to love yourself right now. You know that the writer of Mathew isnt being truthful when he claims to fulfill a prophecy that comes from the Hebrew scriptures. How do I know that you know that? Because he has forced you to cover fir him saying maybe it's another Rachel. Then if thats the case the where is the fulfillnent? Ni matter how you slice it no prophecy was fulfilled. Let me rephrase that. It was fulfilled when the exiles returned to the land of Israel after being in Babylon. IT WAS ALEADY FULFILLED.
Dont you see what the Christian Testament did? It quotes about Rachel weepibg for her children to make you think the weeping was about the kids dying. That it was foretold. The writer stops quoting with the words "because they were no more" it sure sounds like it was fukfilled alright. UNTIL YOU KEEP READING... Because they were no more doesn't mean they were wiped out...the next line tells you they returned to Israel. But the writer of if Mathew stopped short of that. He has to. Otherwise he couldn't make it look like it was about Herod. Be true to yourself. Then love others as you have loved yourself. The truth doesnt havevto force people to come up with excuses. I didnt have to invent things that aren't there. Just stand on the truth no matter where it takes you. It may not be comfortable.