Christmas Herod's execution list

Herod the Great is central to the Christmas story, even if his name only briefly appears at the beginning of Luke’s Gospel, and in the second chapter of Matthew. Some scholars and skeptics insist that Matthew’s account of the slaughter of children is a fictional story added by later Christians designed to make Herod look more evil than he might have been. They point to an absence of the attack on Bethlehem in any other historical sources. However, those same historical sources paint a picture of Herod that makes his slaughter of children seem completely plausible. This illustrative video lists the members of Herod’s own family that he had executed. Several biographies of Herod detail his brutality inside his family and among his allies. He treated enemies with no mercy. At Mt. Arbel during his initial military campaign to take Judea, Herod destroyed entire families, including children. The humble birth of Jesus in the shadow of Herod’s fortress near Bethlehem (see our videos of the Herodium) provides a shocking contrast of lifestyles that will continue throughout the Gospels.