I’m not quite sure what your basis for saying this is. The story of Herod’s reign as written by Nicolas and copied by Josephus includes construction and destruction of cities, large battles and wars, major natural disasters, numerous journeys and official visits from high-ranking figures, and trials and executions of important people. By contrast, how can you possibly say that the slaughter of the innocents “would be the most spectacular event of Herod’s reign”? We don’t know how many male infants were at Bethlehem but low double-digits is a good guess. In ancient Rome the authorities frequently massacred or enslaved innocent people by the hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands.
More significant, though, is social class. All historians of ancient times (with the notable exception of the gospel authors) focused on the history of the wealthy and powerful. The idea that history should include the poor, lowly, and weak, didn’t really emerge until modern times. Hence it’s quite understandable that Nicolas and Josephus would ignore this particular event.
I realize infant mortality was high and accepted as a fact of life, but what kind of demographic blip is created when all the male infants in a village are deliberately slaughtered?
Well, Luke was a gospel author, and he focused on the history of Jesus. Can you explain why he not only didn’t mention the Slaughter and Flight, but directly contradicted it?
Bearing in mind there is no proof for anything.
What I consider possible is that a young laborer from Nazareth was swayed by the preachings of John the Baptist and becomes a follower.
He rises in the movement.
John is executed and Jezus continues the preaching from a safe® place, Ceasarea.
He gathers some followers and decides it´s time to bring his message ´to the people´.
What better place than the capital.
Possibly the incident in the temple is real, and maybe he preached more anti Roman stuff than is recorded.
He is arrested and crucified.
His followers can´t accept it´s over and start making shit up.
Some of you may not be aware that Dio has suffered martyrdom for our sins, but (no one knows the time nor place) but he will one day soon rise as if from the dead and take his rightful place in this discussion.
He certainly knows more about this particular subject that most 'dopers, and his insights into this sort of thing is always interesting. Of course, he’s probably answered the questions in this OP before, so if anyone wants to trouble to find his comments using a search it would be almost like he was still with us.
Because [just as a random bit] Herodotus wrote about the scythians [also known from other documents] and mentioning that they used liquid from plants to mark cloth and the marks were as permanent as if they had been woven into the cloth [dying] which was confirmed by other documentation, that they used hemp in ‘sweat lodge’ like saunas [backed up by archeological evidence and documented in other travelers reports.] If you read Herodotus there is a fair amount that you can point to other historical evidence of, contracts, treaties, mentions by other historians, and archeological evidence.
The problem with the bible, and there have been a number of fascinating books about it is that for much of the stuff reported in it there is almost nothing evidential around. We can tell from Roman records that for example there was a Pontius Pilate, I believe that there was actually a building inscription knocking around. Found it. Unfortunately there is sod all of court documents around so we can not see frex some poor sod got railroaded onto a cross. We really have no record of anything not reported by an official, just the stuff self published, I would sort of call it. The only real discussion of Jesus in Jewish based writings tends to be from well after the era and refer to him mainly as a heretic, leading Jews away from G-d.
Of course we don’t want to get into discussing the slime who forged antiquities …
In post #56 of this thread, I asked you to clarify your argument by explaining exactly which episodes, outside of the infancy narratives, you think are in this category. I never got an answer.
As I see it, this line of reasoning puts Herodotus and the New Testament authors on similar footing as far as reliability. That is to say, in these two cases and in all ancient history we have some background information about geography, culture, and the like, and then we have narratives of specific individuals and specific events. The information in the first category can be verified to some extent, while that in the second category can’t be proved at all unless we have some other source for the same events. So with both Herodotus and the New Testament authors, we can check reliability by looking at the background information. Generally the New Testament documents are quite good as far as background information is concerned. They show solid knowledge of contemporary Jewish law, religion, and custom. The Book of Acts is particularly strong in this analysis because it contains so much information about so many different places. (Cite) Of course none of this proves the occurrence of the specific events, but it is a building block in the case for overall reliability.
