In an article about King Herod, Der Spiegel claims that he might have been the victim of enemies around him destroying his reputation.

Interestingly enough, the rest of the article goes on to describe whom all Herod had killed, including members of his own family. Hardly a consistent statement.

One passage I found interesting is the following:

“Ins Reich der Legende gehört auch jene übelste aller Nachreden, die Matthäus im Kapitel 2 seines Evangeliums verbreitet. Demnach ziehen die Heiligen Drei Könige zuerst zum Hof des Herodes, um die frohe Botschaft von der Geburt des Messias zu melden. Doch der eifersüchtige König sendet umgehend Häscher aus und lässt in ganz Betlehem alle Jungen im Alter bis zu zwei Jahren umbringen.” Roughly translated as: “Also merely legend are the claims of Matthew chapter 2. According to it, the three wise men come first to Herod to deliver the good news of the Messiah. But the jealous king immediately sends out troops to kill all male children under two years old in Bethlehem.”

First of all, one can only guess what exactly they were referring to as “legend.” I will assume it’s the whole story of that incident. What I find interesting then is that the authors give absolutely no proof for their statement. It feels like a cheap shot against the authenticity of the bible. The authors clearly didn’t do their homework.

In this context, one objection often comes up, and one fact is often missed. First, about the killing of all the two-year-olds not being reported in any other works of history is hardly surprising, considering the town of Bethlehem had a population of only a few hundred. With that in mind, there were only a few handful children under the age of two at the most. A small event like this was not surprisingly unknown to the historians at the time.

Second, who in the world came up with the three wise men?? It’s an often circulated myth that I, too, believed from childhood. So the authors are certainly right about the legend part in their statement. Let me make it really really clear: There were not three wise men. The bible never says that. It’s, in fact, historical nonsense. Let me explain.

The bible says there were three gifts. That’s all the numbers we get. One wise man could have carried all three gifts, but seeing as they are mentioned in the plural, there were at least two. Realistically, however, there were probably around 20 to 50 of them. These magi were powerful. So powerful that they could determine the rise and fall of empires. Why do you think Herod was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him (Matthew 2:3)? Surely not because of three wise men. But a few dozen, that meant something important was going on. It’s actually likely that these magi were part of the same group of magicians and wise men of Babylon that Daniel was head over in the book of Daniel.

It’s sad to see such a widely read magazine commit to this kind of fallacy, especially since the article itself was about historical accuracy. Surely the authors realized that it wouldn’t be so easy to prove the accuracy of the bible wrong. If it were, nobody would still be reading it.

No related posts.