I have not celebrated the Christian Christmas holiday for several years now. This year, not only am I not celebrating it, I can no longer return the "Merry Christmas" greeting to my well-meaning friends and family, because there is absolutely nothing "Merry" about Christmas this year, in 2023. And I am not the only one not celebrating Christmas this year. In the city of Bethlehem, the historic birthplace of Jesus Christ, where every year millions of Christians worldwide visit to celebrate Christmas in Jesus' birthplace, Christmas has been canceled. The Palestinian Christians, many of whose families have lived in Bethlehem for over 2000 years since the birth of Jesus, cannot be "Merry" because hundreds of them have lost their children and loved ones in the Hamas Israeli war. If you are gathering together with family and loved ones during this season, and enjoying this holiday, consider yourself blessed. There is nothing I am writing here that is intend
it s the kind of story they told about herod, as a paranoid, neurotic king who was capable of acts of great barbarism. the massacre of the innocents is not historical, but what it does do for matthew is it makes jesus look like a new moses. in the old testament, pharaoh tries to kill baby moses by slaughtering all of the hebrew children. matthew, by showing herod slaughtering all of these children in bethlehem, is showing that jesus is like moses, and herod is like the pharaoh. so who is the true king herod, and can history and archaeology reveal the man behind the myth? billions of mouths.
needed to to achieve his goal. find him! ah! it s very hard to recapture the horror of the massacre of the innocents, dozens if not scores of children being murdered in their homes. it must have been terrifying. get down! stay down. don t move. stay down! how do you hide your child from an evil king like herod who s bent on destroying these children out of a lust for power? anything? next house. wait.
would have. mary and joseph, as they reached egypt with that precious child, must have felt tremendous relief, but they also must have wondered, what now? in a foreign land. what do you do? how do you live? but some scholars question if the massacre of the innocents is a real historical event. kill them all. josephus does not talk about this kind of massacre, and you would think, given all the other massacres he talks about, that he would bring it up. it does tell us something about the way that herod s character was understood by lots of ancients.