Much of what we understand from the past, stems from the fragments and the bits and pieces of the puzzle that are unearthed every now and then. Biblical antiquities are especially rare and contentious, as the sites of importance tend to be completely destroyed, altered beyond recognition, or damaged due to the continuous cycles of war and occupation, development, and redevelopment, with each cycle erasing the remnants of the previous cycle. Following the era of the First Temple, Israel was conquered by foreign hands, and the Jewish jurisdiction of the Second Temple was relinquished to the Romans. Subsequently, Israel saw a phase of Christian-Byzantine rule under Constantine. This was followed by a period of Muslim occupation. The Christians then regained occupation, but the Muslims next returned and forced out the Christians. These messy historical chapters comprised of constant confrontation, territorial occupation, neglect, rise and declines of populations, and then renewed settlements, contributing further wear, tear, and destruction to the fragments of earlier remains (Kloner 2000).
The birth place of Jesus – Bet Lehem, or Bethlehem, is one such site with its veracity under debate. Until recently, evidence for its actual prevalence in the time of the First Temple, was questionable as nothing had been found – written records and artefacts, outside of the Bible. Given the lack of archaeological evidence, archaeological finds bring new insight, and can often rewrite History. In 2012, a clay shard, measuring 1.5 centimetres across, and dating to 2,700 years ago, was found at an excavation site outside Jerusalem’s Old City, and mentions in its Hebrew inscription, Bethlehem, marking for the first time, real and archaeological evidence for the fact that Bethlehem actually existed and was inhabited before and until the time before AD1, beyond and outside the written sources of the Bible. The shard was a bulla, or a seal imprint used to officiate and seal shipments of silver or goods paid as tax to the Kingdom of Judah in the late 8th and 7th centuries BC. The fragment presents the following Hebrew texts:
בשבעת Bishv’at
בת לחם Bat Lechem
[למל]ך [Lemel]ekh
From these words is deciphered the meaning: in the seventh year of the reign of a king (it is unclear if the king referred to here is Hezekiah, Manasseh or Josiah), a shipment was dispatched from Bethlehem to the king in Jerusalem and signed and sealed for by the bulla. (Israel Antiquities Authority 2012). It is mind-blowing to consider how this small tiny piece of clay, fitting nicely on the tip of one’s finger, bears such importance in proving the legitimacy of a place.
Likewise, scholars have debated for centuries, the veracity of Herod’s massacre of the holy innocents at the time of Jesus’ infancy. The problem, like the problem of Bethlehem, was that there was no evidence outside of the Gospel of Matthew to prove that this massacre actually took place. Josephus, the historian who documented with utmost fidelity the building projects of Herod, for example, maintains silence about any massacre in Bethlehem (Josephus and Whiston 1888). So with the lack of physical artefacts, written documentation, oral and social histories, for example in literary texts and poems, and the triangulation process of corroborating different sources of evidence, it is tough to argue for the case that the massacre really did happen. Nonetheless, Josephus (1888) does write quite extensively about the consistency of Herod’s character to effect destruction and murder, whenever he felt that his throne was threatened.
When Herod first ascended the throne, one of his first acts, was to dispose of those of Hasmonean heritage in his court who could potentially usurp the throne. Antigonus was executed with the help of Mark Antony and Herod killed 45 leading men of Antigonus’ party in 37 BC (Josephus and Whiston 1888; Netzer 2001). He then oversaw John Hyrcanus II’s strangulation an alleged plot to overthrow Herod in 30 BC (Josephus and Whiston 1888; Witztum and Gold 2007).
Herod then proceeded to eliminate his brother-in-law, Aristobulus, who was at the time 18 years old. (Josephus and Whiston 1888; Netzer 2001); Herod executed his Hasmonean mother-in-law, Alexandra (Josephus and Whiston 1888); He then killed his second wife Miriamme in 29 BC (Josephus and Whiston 1888). At around the time of 20 BC, Herod set up an internal spy network and actively sought to annihilate people suspected of rebellion and treason (Josephus and Whiston 1888). Eventually, Herod would also kill off his own sons. The first two, Alexander and Aristobulus, the sons of Mariamme, were strangled in Sebaste (Samaria) in 7 BC and buried at the Alexandrium ((Josephus and Whiston 1888; Netzer 2001). The last child, Antipater, was killed off five days before Herod’s own death (Josephus and Whiston 1888; Neese 2018; Netzer 2001).
When psychoanalysis was applied to Herod, it was determined by psychologists that Herod presented with Paranoid Schizophrenic Disorder. The traits of this disorder were evidenced by recurring patterns in Herod’s life. It was ascertained by the psychologists that Herod’s growing up with an ambiguous identity and low-self-esteem, and his subsequent attacks of delusions, hallucinations, and spectres, would lead Herod to constantly kill off persons who were rumoured in planning revolts against him. He would then fall into bouts of severe clinical depression, then he would come out of depression, enter into manic states and start to build project after project. This cycle would then repeat itself again and again, and he would begin to kill people again when he felt threatened, slump into depression for his actions, then be revived in manic state to build often spectacular things and very grand projects (Chilton 2021; Goodman 2024; Kasher and Witztum 2007).
Why then did Josephus not write about the infant massacre of Herod?
First, Bethlehem was a tiny town situated at the outskirts. Scripture records Bethlehem as such, “But you, Bethlehem-Ephrathah least among the clans of Judah, From you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel; Whose origin is from of old, from ancient times.” (Micah 5:1). Politically, Bethlehem could be considered almost invisible due to its insignificance. As such, historians recording the great deeds of the empire may not necessarily have thought of the need to document anything that happened in Bethlehem. In that same light, Josephus would have filtered the events of the day, and may or may not have omitted details of certain ongoings. Josephus, for example, does not record the incidence of conflict between Pontius Pilate and Herod that is alluded to in Luke 23:12 “Herod and Pilate became friends that very day, even though they had been enemies formerly.” Nonetheless, this incidence surrounding the golden shields, was recorded in Agrippa’s letter to Gaius – According to scholar Gers-Uphaus (2020), “The incident of the Gilded Shields shows that “there is no fundamental conflict between these two positions,”(Bond 1998) because by removing them, “both the honour of the Emperor and the traditional policy regarding Jerusalem were alike preserved.”(Smallwood 1961) According to Philo, it is obvious that dishonour shown toward Jewish Law is therefore connected with dishonour to the emperor,(Smallwood 1961) which is recognised immediately by an emperor such as Tiberius. (Smallwood 1961) Therefore, Pilate’s action of setting up the shields can only have been “with the intention of annoying the Jews rather than of honouring Tiberius.”(Gers-Uphaus 2020).
Second, children were considered as being of the lowest status in the time of Jesus (Misula 2008). While the names of dead men were recorded, the names of women and children were often lost in History (Carroll 2011). The Grecco-Roman population of that time would have deemed infant births as insignificant, and few historians would have kept records of such infant mortality statistics. In ancient Rome, babies were not considered fully human upon birth. For the ancient Romans, they gained humanity gradually over time until they could walk and talk (Shelton 1998). Thus, it is highly unlikely for Josephus to consider the death of the infants by Herod, as something shocking, or worthy of note.
With these silences and gaps, there are still many things which remain unexplained. Nonetheless, the Gospel of Matthew is for us a credible and historical, if anything, the only source of evidence – given how so much of the ancient world has been lost to us, that we are often left with a single artefact, like a coin, or a clay fragment – that writes to corroborate with consistency the characteristics of Herod, and is consistent with the happenings of the time. As Lee Strobel (2016) writes,
“In trying to determine if a witness is being truthful, journalists and lawyers will test all the elements of his or her testimony that can be tested. If this investigation reveals that the person was wrong in those details, this casts considerable doubt on the veracity of his or her entire story. However, if the minutiae check out, this is some indication – not conclusive proof but some evidence – that maybe the witness is being reliable in his or her overall account.” (127-128)
As Matthew’s testimony in the Gospel is consistent with the historical renderings of Herod, we can thus say that Matthew is a reliable witness.
Advances in technology continue to unearth hidden mysteries that have been buried for millennia, such as the Bethlehem bulla, and with new discoveries today, we gain a better understanding of how life was like, as the places, practices, cultures, and events of Scripture take tangible shape and form, with archaeology proving the reality and existence of what was thought previously as figments of imagination. As Paul Barnett (2003) observes:
“…archaeology neither proves nor disproves the New Testament. It does, however, endorse the narratives at many points, especially in the case of inscriptions, which by their nature are specific. Here we meet characters secondary to the main story – the Herods, the high priest and several Roman governors. Moreover, through archaeology we are able to fill in background details that enhance the narratives in both the Gospels and in the book of Acts. Archaeological findings have confirmed that the texts of the New Testament are from first to last historical and geographical in character.” (Barnett 2003: 182)
At the end of the day, the message is this. Under Herod’s reign, the people suffered great atrocities, and amid the most adverse of sufferings, God was present in a quiet way and God saw the injustices. As life’s irony would have it, Herod killed his own sons by his own hand as he descended into madness, and died with his skin riddled with countless worms and parasites. In a strange and macabre twist of events, Herod was punished by the very sin he committed.
By the Grace of God,
Brian Bartholomew Tan
References
Barnett, Paul. 2003. Is the New Testament Reliable? Rev. ed. Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
Bond, Helen Katharine. 1998. Pontius Pilate in History and Interpretation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Carroll, Maureen. 2011. “Infant Death and Burial in Roman Italy.” Journal of Roman Archaeology 24:99–120. doi: 10.1017/S1047759400003329.
Chilton, Bruce. 2021. The Herods: Murder, Politics, and the Art of Succession. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press.
Gers-Uphaus, Christian. 2020. “The Figure of Pontius Pilate in Josephus Compared with Philo and the Gospel of John.” Religions 11(2). doi: 10.3390/rel11020065.
Goodman, Martin. 2024. Herod the Great. Jewish King in a Roman World. Yale University Press.
Israel Antiquities Authority. 2012. “Earliest Archaeological Evidence of the Existence of the City of Bethlehem Already in the First Temple Period.” Israel Antiquities Authority. Retrieved January 9, 2025 (https://www.antiquities.org.il/Article_eng.aspx?sec_id=25&subj_id=240&id=1938&hist=1).
Josephus, Flavius., and William Whiston. 1888. The Works of Flavius Josephus…: Containing Twenty Books of the Jewish Antiquities, Seven Books of the Jewish War, and the Life of Josephus, Written by Himself. Philadelphia: Lippincott.
Kasher, Aryeh, and Eliezer Witztum. 2007. King Herod: A Persecuted Persecutor: A Case Study in Psychohistory and Psychobiography. Berlin ; New York: Walter De Gruyter.
Kloner, Amos. 2000. Survey of Jerusalem: The Southern Sector. Jerusalem: Israel antiquities authority.
Misula, Maryana. 2008. “Jesus and the Children in the Gospels.” Verbum 6(1:10).
Neese, Shelley. 2018. The Copper Scroll Project: An Ancient Secret Fuels the Battle for the Temple Mount. Newburyport: Morgan James Publishing.
Netzer, Ehud. 2001. The Palaces of the Hasmoneans and Herod the Great. Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi Press : Israel Exploration Society.
Shelton, Jo-Ann. 1998. As the Romans Did: A Sourcebook in Roman Social History. Second edition. New York Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Smallwood, E. Mary. 1961. Philonis Alexandrini, Legatio Ad Gaium. E. J. Brill.
Strobel, Lee. 2016. The Case for Christ: A Journalist’s Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus. Updated&expanded edition. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, Willow Creek Resources.
Witztum, Eliezer, ed.Gold, Karen, tran. 2007. “Chapter 7. Elimination of Herod’s Hasmonaean Family Members (30–28 BCE).” Pp. 155–80 in King Herod: A Persecuted Persecutor. Walter de Gruyter.