Beating Babies - A Christmas Story

Let's dilute the festive ribbon full of Christmas trees, bunnies, snowflakes and other cuteness with truly High Art - all sorts of Brueghel, Rubens, Cranach, Arcimboldo. Here are the details of one of the textbook Christmas stories, where blood and severed limbs are in abundance, this is the rubric "disgusting art criticism."

Everything is strictly according to the canon (in the original sense of the word, not fandom; but by the way...).

So, we know this story from one of the four Gospels - from Matthew. Somehow, in one far, far away state, three wise adherents of the light side of the Force, in other words, the Magi, looked into the sky and saw that the galaxy was rotating. They also saw some amazing astronomical phenomenon, either a comet, or a supernova, similar to Tycho Brahe's supernova, or a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in the sign of Pisces. The interpreters are not sure exactly what the Magi saw then, so we will call this event for simplicity the “Star of Bethlehem”, as the great Wikipedia teaches us.

These magi received an excellent astrological education in their academy, so they immediately understood what this sign heralds. They put on sturdy boots, stuffed their backpacks with gifts, and set off on a journey to a distant land. Instead of a compass or a navigator, they had the same star that showed them the way - judging by some paintings, hanging above the ground like ball lightning.

The Magi arrived in the Holy Land, which at that time was not yet "holy" and, since astrological signs foreshadowed the birth of a new Messiah-King, they went to the royal palace, guided by understandable logic. No messiah was heard in the palace, King Herod was very upset by his ignorance. He fed the Magi, gave them a drink, took them to the bathhouse, found out that in fact their path lies in the town of Bethlehem, where, in fact, that Baby should be. The Magi promised on the way back to report to him on the success of their mission, whether they managed to find it, to see it. They really found Mary with the Baby in the barn, gave him gifts. But since the angel sent by God told them in a low voice: “Don’t go to Herod anymore, don’t,” they went to their home by a detour, not looking into the capital, where Herod was waiting for them with news in a high tower, counting the days.

He waited, waited, waited, waited, shed tears.

Then he realized that the Magi had thrown him, and he was very sad. Here a political crisis was still brewing: as a prudent ruler, Herod could not allow all sorts of competitors to be born without supervision. He even slaughtered his own sons in order to avoid unnecessary competition, and then some stranger boys in Bethlehem.

But Herod had no other input, except for geographical data and approximately age. And so he decided to act according to the Sonderkommando method, by means of a mass purge.

And he ordered to kill all the boys under the age of two years in the designated geographical location. The exact number of deaths is unknown. Byzantine tradition says that there were  14 thousand of them. The Syrian list of saints says that  64,000 children were killed. According to Coptic sources,  144,000 died.

And scientists, in short, then figured out what kind of population in the 1st century BC. was in Bethlehem (about a thousand people) and okay, plus in the Bethlehem region within the district ring. And how many boys under two years old were there with such a number of people - it turned out to be  20 people maximum.

Not a hecatomb comes out, definitely.

Well, okay, there was also a type of census, in fact, because of which Joseph and the pregnant Mary came to the city. Let's say the population has grown five times - then there will be a hundred boys. But this is already large-scale, the bloody picture is still being recruited, call the World Press Photo jury!

Oh yes, the census...

I will note: talking about whether Jesus Christ existed in reality is a completely separate story, and these are ideological disputes.

But talking about how much folklore and fiction is crammed into the details of his biography, especially in the story about his childhood, these are completely normal disputes, and theologians also conduct them. And basically they agree that these are all fairy tales.

There was no census.

And in general, Herod did not order the killing of any Bethlehem babies. Black PR! They slandered a man!

Such a cool and colorful political action, as you understand, could not but be reflected in some other written sources of that era, in addition to the Gospel. Around the Roman Empire, where only the lazy did not scribble on Facebook, even the emperor Claudius wrote 20 volumes of history.

But no one, not a single enemy of Herod, mentioned this crime. But they described in detail and in detail how he killed some of his eight wives, children, many friends and associates.

So all this "Massacre of the Innocents", citizens, is fake! No need to worry about these children, calm down. More precisely, poetic liberty.

Why was it necessary for the authors of the Gospel?

The fact is that by the time of the coming of Jesus Christ, the Jews had a certain list of prophecies about the coming Messiah, compiled on the basis of extracts from the statements of the prophets of the Old Testament (a very long list).

For example, according to the prophet Micah, he had to be born in Bethlehem. But Jesus was from Nazareth, everyone knew that! Therefore, the authors come up with this census, and thanks to it, they “force” Joseph and his wife to get up from their homes so that the birth takes place in the appointed city.

There's a lot more like that: with fitting parts. In general, if you delete from the story of Christ the details not mentioned by the prophets, little will remain of the key milestones of the story. So, at the Crucifixion, they predicted the darkness that came from the Mediterranean Sea, neighbors with a criminal record, a poker game for his clothes by soldiers, piercing with a spear, last words, etc.
But this, of course, does not matter, from the point of view of a believer - it was or was not, fitting or not.

The main thing, citizens, is that during the creation of all these paintings, not a single baby, as well as a child of an older age group, was harmed!

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