Another popular theory is that, because of the prophecies concerning where the Messiah would be born or located, every person would travel to their place of ancestral residence in order to get the Messiah isolated. Thus follows the Massacre of the Innocents.
Welcome to the Straight Dope Message Boards, averykrouse, we’re glad to have you with us.
It’s helpful to other readers if you provide a link to the Staff Report you’re commenting on: saves lots of search time, and keeps us on the same page. In this case, I presume it’s Straight Dope Staff Report: What did the census at the time of the birth of Christ accomplish?
As author of that report, I’m not sure what you’re saying. Are you saying the notion of a census, and disrupting the lives of the entire area by sending people to their ancestral homes, was simply a ruse by the Romans to try to catch the alleged Messiah? Frankly, that doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.
The historical fact: neither the census of the “whole world” nor the massacre of the newborn babies has any basis in fact beyond the New Testament. The New Testament authors often told stories to “prove” various biblical prophecies and parallels. In this case, the story of the king murdering the babies is from the book of Exodus, and Moses escapes to eventually save the Israelites and deliver the Law. The Christian authors obviously wanted a parallel, and hence the story of the king massacring babies, and Jesus escapes to eventually save etc etc. I’m not going to say that the whole story is fiction; there may be some vague basis in fact (perhaps Herod murdered a couple of babies, just because he was that sort.)
Why would the Romans have placed any credence in Jewish prophecies about the Messiah? And remember this was a Roman census, not Herod’s.
Actually, that’s not intrinsically unreasonable; the general attitude of polytheists toward a new god is, “Cool! What are his attributes?” Romans only persecuted cults that they thought were disgusting (Cybele) or dangerous (Christianity). Jews they just thought were weird.
I don’t believe it happened that way, for a number of reasons, but being Roman wouldn’t stop them from taking a Jewish prophecy seriously.
It would have stopped them from taking it seriously in religious terms, as distinct from political. Any Jew could call himself the Messiah, and many did, but averykrouse seems to think the Romans feared the birth of the real Messiah, which makes no sense at all.
One problem with this is that it conflates Luke’s Nativity story with Matthew’s and that their respective stories are set a decade apart. Luke sets his narrative during the census of Quirinius which took place in 6 CE. One problem with Luke’s version of events is that this census was localized only to Judea and would not have included Galilee (which means it would not have had any jurisdiction over Joseph in Nazareth). A bigger problem for your hypothesis is that Herod the Great (not to be confused with Herod Antipas) died 10 years earlier in 4 BCE. That means there could have been no slaughter of innocents by King Herod following the census because there was no more King Herod.
In addition to those issues is also the point that the Romans would have had little interest Jewish Messianic “prophecies,” they wouldn’t have believed them anyway and they wouldn’t have been able to enforce a policy of return to ancestral homes in any case (how were the Romans supposed to know who came from where?)
One more point I’d like to add is that the Jewish Messiah is defined by accomplishments, not by birth. No one is born as the Messiah. The Messiah is only the Messiah after he fulfills the prophecies. You can’t actually kill the Jewish Messiah in infancy. Killing a presumptive Messiah only proves that he wasn’t the Messiah. It’s not like there is only a single, unique indivual who is born as the Messiah. Any descendant of David is eligible to try to become the Messiah.
Not that the Roman woulkd have wasted any energy on what they would have seen as rustic superstitions.
But the Jewish Messiah was not a god. They expected a descendant of David to restore the kingdom of Israel, but he was (and still is) not God (or a “son of God”) in Jewish expectation. Just a human king.
Romans would have made good Dopers, eh?
You’re kidding, right? We Dopers waste TONS of energy on what we perceive as rustic superstitions. Been through Great Debates recently?
More reasonably, the Romans might have been concerned with the existence of anyone who showed signs of being regarded as the Messiah by their subjects, for obvious reasons. It’s a bit of a stretch to see such a scenario playing out in the supposed Messiah’s infancy, however.
No, it would not, as I have already explained. Polytheists are naturally syncretic. (You might recall the altar raised in Athens to “the unknown god”.)
Wisdom and Charisma both 18 but, based on how he ended up dying on that cross in a mere three hours Constitution couldn’t have been much over seven.
In addition to the other problems with your theory, why wouldn’t the Romans have just assumed that the Messiah’s parents (note plural - being able to read Hebrew they wouldn’t have screwed up the virgin birth thing) just lived in Bethlehem. After all, David’s parents didn’t travel anywhere to have him.
Matthew’s Gospel actually does have Jospeph and Mary already living in Bethlehem before the birth. Matthew has them relocating to Nazareth only after they return from Egypt and only because they fear Herod’s son, Archelaus, in Judea.
Luke has them starting off in Nazareth, he has no slaughter of innocents or flight to Egypt and he has the family returning to Nazereth almost immediately after the birth.
(Also wiped out the Druids in Britain because they frowned on the practice of human sacrifice)
An interesting aside if the"Discovery Civilisation " programme I watched got it right ,was that Nero didn’t use the Christians as a scapegoat for the great fire of Rome ,it looks very much as though they really were the culprits.
Modern fire investigators established from contemporary records that the nearly simultaneous outbreaks in different parts of the city almost certainly meant that they were as a result of Arson.
At that time the Romans had not long ago crushed the rebellion in Palestine and had effectively exiled or enslaved most of the population resulting in a lot of very,very pissed off Jews.
Christianity was more of a faction of Judaism then, rather then a completly seperate religion and many of the adherents were racially Jewish.
A major prophecy circulating amongst the disgruntled Jews was to the effect that "The seven headed beast "(associated with Rome itself ,seven hills etc.)would be purged by fire and even gave the approximate date of the event.(There was more but that was the gist of it)
Of course Nero could have used the prophecy as a smoke screen for his culpability but it seems unlikely for reasons that the prog went into.
So maybe Nero wasn’t an utter,utter bastard after all?
I saw that show. It had rather a lot of[ul]
[li]Perhaps A[/li][li]Since A is true, perhaps B[/li][li]Since B is true, perhaps C[/li][li]and so on…[/li][/ul]Other recent studies have suggested, in fact, that the fire was entirely natural.