Embedded into the Christmas story and in the birth narrative of Jesus into this world is a dark story of loss and of tragedy, of tears and of pain. Matthew 2.16 has been traditionally called "The Massacre of the Innocents." There we're told about the killing of all boys two years old and younger in the region of Bethlehem.

The event is deeply unsettling, but it's also part of the historical record of the birth of Christ. Or is it? Did this actually happen historically, or was this massacre of the innocents a story invented by the early Christians? And if the event is historically real, if such a public slaughter really happened, why are there no other historical records to corroborate the event?

For answers, we welcome special guest Dr. Paul Meyer, a widely respected historian, in what will be a little longer of an episode than usual. Until his retirement, Dr. Meyer served as the Russell H. Seabert Professor of Ancient History at Western Michigan University. And he is the author of many fictional books and many non-fictional books, including "In the Fullness of Time," "A Historian Looks at Christmas, Easter, and the Early Church," as well as several books for children, including "The Very First Christmas." Dr.

Meyer, thanks for joining us. I want to ask you if Matthew 2:16 really happened in history. There's a question mark on this event, of course. But before we go there, who is this figure we know of in the Christmas story, known as Herod the Great? Well, Tony, you may be surprised to hear this, but believe it or not, if you're ever asked which is the one figure from the ancient world on whom we have more primary evidence from original sources than anyone else in the world, the answer is not Jesus or St.

Paul or Caesar Augustus or Julius Caesar, none of those. Alexander the Great, no, no. It's Herod the Great, believe it or not. Why? Because Josephus gives us two whole book scrolls on the life of Herod the Great. And that's more primary material than anyone else. And I don't think Herod deserved it.

He was a very remarkably successful politician, keeping the peace between Rome, which had conquered Judea ever since 63 B.C., and he acted really simply as a Roman governor overseas. He was known as a client king, meaning very often when the Romans conquered a province, they didn't want to send a governor out.

There was a local king doing a good enough job. And so, yes, he may be called king, but he was definitely deferent to Rome as per his whole administration. He was in charge from, well, 40 B.C. he was awarded the title king. He didn't actually take control of the land until, with Roman help, he drove some adversaries out of Jerusalem and really from about 37 B.C.

on, he's in charge until his death in 4 B.C. He was remarkably successful in a lot of ways. He deserves the title Herod the Great if we talk about his accomplishments through much of his life. He was the one, of course, who rebuilt the great temple in Jerusalem. He was the one who single-handedly created a city of Caesarea, where there was no good port in the Holy Land here.

He creates one by sinking some ship hulls and then using it as a base to build a great breakwater in an otherwise rectilinear sea coast. So, and he built Caesarea in 12 years and he built other cities like that, too. In Jerusalem, he facelifted the entire city. In addition to building a gorgeous palace for himself, he had a hippodrome, a stadium, and theaters and this kind of thing.

He was kind of a Hellenistic monarch. And he also built seven great fortresses across the land, strong points at which he could defend his administration. One of them, of course, most famous was Masada, down along the southwest corner of the Dead Sea. Everything he touched diplomatically seemed to turn to gold.

He kept peace both with Jerusalem and Rome, and so in that sense he was very successful. Yeah, politically successful. But there's another side to Herod. Explain the paranoid side of Herod that begins to emerge later on in his life. Well, basically, basically, he was responsible for many of the problems back home.

His home was a can of worms, simply because he married ten wives, and each of those produced princes for him, and each of those male princes was scheming to succeed as number one, and there could only be one number one. And so if there weren't two or three collateral plots taking place before they had orange juice in the morning, you know something was wrong.

Josephus gives us just a hideous tale of what was going on in the family, attempted poisonings, one brother against another. It so rattled Herod that he actually put to death three of his own sons on suspicion of treason. He put to death his favorite wife out of ten of them.

Mariame was his favorite. She was a Hasmonean Maccabean princess, and he put her to death, and then he killed his mother-in-law, I should have said one of his many mothers-in-law. He invited the high priest down to Jericho for a swim. They played a very rough game of water polo, and they drowned him.

He killed several uncles, a couple of cousins. Some have said he's a real family man in that negative respect. As a matter of fact, Augustus himself, to whom Herod was always very deferent, said, "I would rather be Herod's pig than his son." It's a double pun. In Greek it's "souos" and "weos," clever turn of words.

And the other idea is that at least pigs weren't slaughtered for human consumption over there, and they had a better chance at a longer life. It was a brilliant pun on the part of Augustus. Yes. And at one point late in his life, Herod plots to kill a stadium full of Jewish leaders.

The plot fails. What does this reveal about him? Well, Josephus says a very grisly thing to report about Herod in his last months. He was so paranoid that he, of course, did have some grasp of reality. For instance, he was worried that nobody would mourn his own death in the Holy Land.

Of course, it shows how deadly accurate he was. They were preparing, again, a general celebration, and nobody likes to die knowing that they're going to dance in your grave. And so he was going to give the people something to cry about. Now it's in 4 BC. He's down at his winter palace in Jericho.

It's the only place in the Holy Land that doesn't snow or get cold in the winter. It's 1,200 feet below sea level. And here he's dying. He tries every remedy in the world to stop the gang of diseases that were creeping up on him. He went to the hot springs at Kalaroli at the northeastern corner of the Dead Sea.

By the way, there's still springing hot water 2,000 years later. And that didn't cure him. And so now he goes back to his winter palace, and he invites his sister Salome in. And he says, "I want you to arrest all the Jewish leaders in the land and imprison them in the hippodrome just below the palace here." And that hippodrome has been discovered archaeologically, by the way.

And so she does. And then she says, "Brother, why am I doing this?" And Herod says, "Well, I know that when I die, the Jews are going to rejoice. So I'm going to give them something to cry about." And so he wants them all executed in that hippodrome so that there'll be thousands of households weeping at the time Herod the Great dies.

So is that the kind of a sweet guy who could have killed the babies in Bethlehem? I think so. Most certainly. Goodness. Speaking of Matthew 2, the Bible records this scene from Herod's paranoia late in his life. The wise men alert him to the birth of a new king in Bethlehem.

He wants to know where so that he can eradicate this new rival. And the wise men wisely don't return to him. Herod then responds by slaughtering all the boys 2 years old and under in Bethlehem and in all the region, the Bible tells us. For all that Josephus writes about Herod, he makes no mention of this.

In fact, there's no extra biblical evidence that this slaughter ever happened. So how do you respond to that? No, it's interesting. Josephus does not mention it, and therefore a lot of biblical critics will pounce on that aspect of the nativity account and say, "Therefore it didn't happen." Now please understand, this is an argument from silence, and that's the weakest form of argumentation you can use, as we say in the profession, "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." And in this case, one or two things could have happened.

Josephus may have heard about it and not used it, because you don't have hundreds of babies killed here. You have only about 12, as a matter of fact. Twelve or 15. The infant mortality in the ancient world was so huge anyway that this is really not going to impress a reader too much, believe it or not.

And I think if Josephus is choosing between the two stories about how Herod died right before his death, I think it would take the one where he's going to slaughter hundreds of Jewish leaders. Or he may not have heard about it, again, simply because, again, little Bethlehem doesn't amount to much.

A little village of 1,500 or so, I did an actuarial study. Bethlehem at the time, you wouldn't have more than about two dozen babies two years old and under, half of them among sex. And so this is not a big deal, and I think that's why Josephus either never heard about it or didn't feel it important enough to record.

So this does not militate against Matthew's version by any means. In fact, I was arguing once years ago on the infant massacre with a professor in Wagner College in New York who claimed that this is all fiction, that surely a massacre of hundreds of Jewish boy babies would have come to the attention.

Well, I agree, it would have if there had been hundreds. But that's ridiculous. A little village that size, they have hundreds of boy babies two years old and under? Give me a break. It couldn't possibly be the case. So, and all the coasts thereof. Well, look, Jerusalem's five miles away, right?

Therefore, this would include Jerusalem as well if we're going to take literally all the coasts thereof. We're talking about Bethlehem and probably half a mile around when we're talking about the surroundings of Bethlehem. Fascinating, and certainly no less a real tragedy. So finally, as a historian, in your mind, is there any reason to doubt the historicity of the slaughter of the innocents?

I see not one iota of evidence that it could not have happened, and therefore, again, there's no reason to doubt the account as far as I'm concerned. To be sure, Luke hasn't heard about it. Remember, Matthew and Luke don't copy from one another when it comes to the Nativity.

And that's good, because this way they can hit it from different angles. I think it really happened, and let's remember again that the first martyr of Christianity was not Stephen, it was Jesus, but not even Jesus. For my money, the first martyr in the Christian Church was the first baby that was killed in Bethlehem, and we always overlook that.

Thank you, Paul. That was guest historian Dr. Paul Meyer, joining us for this special Christmas edition of the Ask Pastor John podcast. And from historical controversy, we move to cultural controversy, and tomorrow I'll ask John Paper about Santa Claus. A lot of you have emailed in to find out, is Santa harmless fun, or is he a Christmas-time diversion?

That's the question tomorrow. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. I'll see you then.