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?

[William]

[Replying to post 1]

The Script: 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.

marco: What was upsetting the woman?

William: Mainly, her belief system.

marco: 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.

William: That's what happens when you muck around with the Occult!

Seriously though, this may be a sign of Vespasian Creativity. During the Dynasty, much focus appears to be on belief systems in general, Roman Citizen specific, and since the Jews had dared to deny the ruler of Rome their worship, ways were worked upon after they were defeated and dispersed.
One such way was to decipher the layers of Judaic Belief - which was done through Jews willing to work for the Romans in that capacity, and stitch together stories from the old religion into the newly forming one.

To be sure, "Who invented massacre of innocents" was discovered in said old writings, and Romans took advantage of that information.

marco: A bit excessive.

William: I doubt The Romans nor The Jews thought that doing stuff like that to 'the innocent' was excessive - depending of course, on who was doing the killing.

There was a competitive spin on things to do with ruling the world, and one's idea of God was important to that cause, and still is to this very day.

marco: The incarnation was God's plan; the Magi were invited; so the murdered babies were collateral damage in God's plan.

William: Put anything through the wash-cycle of human evil, and God not only grows arms, but has blood on His gnarly hands.
There is no escaping that, even by trying to hide God in the clouds...

marco: Rachel, in a town far away, is inconsolable, though she didn't know the babies personally.

William: Her beliefs were strong...portrayed as a Woman extremely close to Her Motherly instinct and thus well connected with The Mother.
Perhaps Rome had such Women, or perhaps - once again - Rachel was modeled upon another, older story....

marco: What's Rachel got to do with anything?

William: The Mother side of The Father?

marco: Is this just Matthew inventing or can we believe the story?

William: There would be some kind of Roman record if the incident had taken place, I suppose. Romans were pedantic in that regard, which is why we still know of them, and vote their off-spring as our Rulers.

They Rule.

marco: Is Matthew blaming God - indirectly - for killing baby boys again?

William: That is the gist of it. The new is like unto the old.
The old, promised Jewish Rule, but didn't deliver and the Romans left a small part of a wall as a reminder of that fact.

The evidence that they weep before it to this day, is incontrovertible...though no doubt some remain ever hopeful to this day...

Money has always been invested into this unfolding story our Rulers have provided us to believe in. That is 'the hope' manifesting itself.

[JehovahsWitness]

[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.

Tart,

The bible character by the same name didnt lose any of her children, on the contrary, her children lst her since she died at a young age giving birth to her second child, Benjamin. Its unlikely the Prophet Jeremiah was alluding to Rachel, Jacobs wife.



JW

[Difflugia]

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.

I know this doesn't quite fit what you're going for, but it looks to me like the Gospels are doing something entirely different and entirely Jewish. The slaughter of the innocents within the larger context of Matthew 2 is painting Jesus as the new Moses through an intertwined combination of midrash and pesher. Quite simply, the story as a whole didn't happen in a historical sense, but is a kind of religious fiction written to connect Jesus (as an ideal) to messianic and very Jewish expectations of salvation. The circumstances are comtemporary with the authors, but tied to historical promises and expectations. The slaughter of the innocents creates a relationship between Herod and Jesus that mirrors the one between Pharaoh and Moses. We already know the fictional stories presented of Abraham and Isaac, Jacob and Laban, or David and Saul that serve to personify themes that are important to Judaism as a whole. The only difference is that the Jesus story is assigning a role to Jesus parallel to the one that had already been assigned to Moses. It's not a lie, because we readers are expected to see the parallel and know that it's not based on historical events. The story serves to cement and interpret the Gospel author's vision of the "old" Moses in relationship with the new. It's midrash.

The Gospel author knew he was "right" in suggesting a contemporary interpretation of these old stories because he could see the multiple layers of meaning spread throughout the Tanakh. The Evangelist saw a dual meaning in the idea of Rachel weeping and presented it as interpretive pesher. It's sort of prophecy, but different. It's the same as Matthew's virgin birth and John the Baptist being the new Elijah. I've argued elsewhere that Isaiah probably didn't mean "virgin," but I also don't think Matthew got it wrong as such. Matthew knew that's not what Isaiah meant when speaking to Ahaz, just like he knew Zechariah didn't literally mean someone would ride two donkeys at once. He saw, though, that God had hidden contemporary truths within historical ones.

Neither of these is as conjectural as it sounds. We have examples of both midrash and pesher in exactly the same relationship within the Dead Sea Scrolls. Whether or not this was widespread within first century Judaism is an open question, but we know at least that the Qumran community wrote very similar kinds of allegory and supported them by connecting a series of out-of-context quotes from the Tanakh. Taking verses out of context is dubious when considering straight prophecy, but legal (dare I say Kosher?) when seeking pesharim. From The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls by Geza Vermes:

The fourth and most characteristic form of exegesis applies prophetic texts to the past, present and future of the sect. Normally the commentator expounds a biblical book verse by verse, e.g. Isaiah (4Q161–4); Nahum (4Q169); Habakkuk (1QpHab); the Psalms (4Q171, 173), etc., but some works – A Midrash on the Last Days (4Q174), The Heavenly Prince Melchizedek (11Q13), etc. – follow the traditional Jewish example and assemble passages from different parts of Scripture in order to develop a common theme.

I don't think Matthew "got it wrong" or "lied" any more than Edgar Allen Poe or John Steinbeck did. One can disagree with their ideas or conclusions, but nobody seriously tries to argue that because there wasn't a literal, historical raven or stupid turtle in the road that they were lying. To do so would be a genre error; a mistake so pervasive as to have thoroughly shaped orthodox Christian and conservative Jewish approaches to Scripture, but a mistake nonetheless.

[William]

[Replying to post 33 by Difflugia]

William: Thanks for that info. It ties in nicely with what I wrote in post #31.

The God of The Jews found a way to infiltrate Roman Rule and capture their imaginations.

The Jews who helped the Romans knit a new religion out of the old one, did so - not because they loved the Roman ways, but because they saw in that, a light at the end of the cave they were in, homeless as they now largely were and at the mercy of the elements.

Now the offspring of Roman Occupation donate handsomely to the Jewish agenda, but how much of Christianity has rubbed off on Jews along the way to make them less fanatical about getting their God into the top position and Ruling the World from Jerusalem - brand new Temple erected and all that other shiny stuff...it's been a long time coming but their version of YHVH has all the time in the world to accomplish his agenda...or does he?

[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.

Tart,

The bible character by the same name didnt lose any of her children, on the contrary, her children lst her since she died at a young age giving birth to her second child, Benjamin. Its unlikely the Prophet Jeremiah was alluding to Rachel, Jacobs wife.



JW

Agree with you there... I still havent attached any conclusion to such verses

[marco]

I doubt The Romans nor The Jews thought that doing stuff like that to 'the innocent' was excessive - depending of course, on who was doing the killing.

The Romans who have communicated with us were as civilised as the best of us. Cicero abhorred the cruelty of Verres, the governor of Sicily, and he successfully prosecuted him. If you read the contemplations of Marcus Aurelius you will discover a modern thinker, and a humanitarian. Emperor Hadrian composed a touching poem to his "little soul", giving it advice for when he died. I agree the mercenaries Rome enlisted would be brutal and Julius Caesar wasn't known for his mercy towards conquered Gauls, but he wasn't a baby killer.

[Difflugia]

Its unlikely the Prophet Jeremiah was alluding to Rachel, Jacobs wife.

Of course he is. The prophecy isn't that literal Rachel will be weeping for her literal children, but that the northern kingdom of Israel will be taken captive and then delivered. All of the allusions in Jeremiah 31:1-22 refer specifically to Israel as opposed to Judah. Israel, Ephraim, Samaria, and "north country" all refer specifically to the northern tribes. Ephraim, Joseph's son, is often used as a synonym for the nation of Israel divided from Judah, especially in the prophets (see Hosea 5; "... then Ephraim went to Assyria, and sent to the great king ..."). As Ephraim is one of Joseph's two sons, "children of Rachel" is a poetic allusion to Ephraim.

Matthew is using "children of Rachel" to more broadly (and perhaps somewhat incorrectly) refer to a combined Israel and Judah. It's obviously allegorical and in a way that shouldn't give literalists any heartburn. They both mean Rachel, Jacob's wife as a metaphor for mothers of the sons of Israel, Jeremiah because they will be captive in Assyria, Matthew because Herod ordered the killing of babies.

[marco]

I don't think Matthew "got it wrong" or "lied" any more than Edgar Allen Poe or John Steinbeck did.

The difference is, surely, that Poe and Steinbeck were composing fiction, good fiction at that. Their readers are in no doubt about this. Matthew is regarded as being divinely inspired and at one time questioning his honesty would have resulted in a death sentence. I read varying guesses about Matthew's abilities in Hebrew or in Greek. If he is simply regarded as a fiction writer and has licence to write stories as if he were reporting historical events, then this does not say much for those who have allowed the man to speak for Christ. Judas would have been a better biographer.

[Difflugia]

I don't think Matthew "got it wrong" or "lied" any more than Edgar Allen Poe or John Steinbeck did.

The difference is, surely, that Poe and Steinbeck were composing fiction, good fiction at that. Their readers are in no doubt about this. Matthew is regarded as being divinely inspired and at one time questioning his honesty would have resulted in a death sentence. I read varying guesses about Matthew's abilities in Hebrew or in Greek. If he is simply regarded as a fiction writer and has licence to write stories as if he were reporting historical events, then this does not say much for those who have allowed the man to speak for Christ. Judas would have been a better biographer.

I agree. The more I've read the Gospels in the last several years, the more convinced I am that the Evangelists were writing fiction to an audience expecting fiction. Literalism and a corresponding insistence on historicity were a response to Valentinian Gnosticism and a move away from personal insight and interpretation toward corporate agreement. Literalism and the assertion of historical verity make for a natural way to standardize theology. It doesn't eliminate all argument, but it quite drastically narrows the discussion.

The Evangelists clearly don't agree with each other, but I think they and their contemporary audiences were OK with that. it was a hundred years later that things started going a bit off.

[William]

[Replying to post 36]

William: I doubt The Romans nor The Jews thought that doing stuff like that to 'the innocent' was excessive - depending of course, on who was doing the killing.


marco: The Romans who have communicated with us were as civilised as the best of us.

William: Subjective-based opinion as with all of us.
I cannot decide that the lesser of the two evils is, therefore, good.

marco: Cicero abhorred the cruelty of Verres, the governor of Sicily, and he successfully prosecuted him. If you read the contemplations of Marcus Aurelius you will discover a modern thinker, and a humanitarian. Emperor Hadrian composed a touching poem to his "little soul", giving it advice for when he died.

William: Indeed we each have the capacity to pick out all our favorites among the dross - the Civilized Rulers of The Slaves of Dross would stoop to murder, but would not stoop to murdering innocents! Makes all the difference..?

But when faced with the reality, a Roman Ruler sees no profits to be made over kingdoms to rule, if the innocent weren't spared...

...speared or spared...the intent to force others to acknowledge you as their God, is not - imho - the lesser of the two evils.

So what is it I am missing which perhaps convinces you otherwise, marco?

marco: I agree the mercenaries Rome enlisted would be brutal and Julius Caesar wasn't known for his mercy towards conquered Gauls, but he wasn't a baby killer.

William: Surely you quibble?
Perhaps therein lucks an infatuation needing to be dealt with?