Why must Herod's massacre of the children be rejected? I would remark, that Mr. N.'s plan seems to have been a very useless and unphílosophical one. It would have been much more simple to have rejected the New Testament altogether, when it had lost its divine authority with him. What matter whether the details were true or not? To spend his time in disproving details, when he really did not believe any, was foolish work. It had, indeed, one natural use-to discredit the book with others. It has another-to show the utter groundlessness of what satisfied Mr. N.'s willingly convinced mind.
Now has Mr. N. any reason for rejecting the massacre of the infants? None. Josephus does not mention it: that is all. Mr. N. says it was unknown to him. But that is a mere supposition, an invention of Mr. N.'s. Is it anything extraordinary that an historian should omit a fact which another records? Has Suetonius related all that Tacitus has, or has Tacitus related all that Suetonius has? The contrary is well known. The objection has no force whatever. It is really tedious to reply to such futilities.
But in this case there is more than this. There was the strongest reason, if Josephus did know it, for not mentioning it; for he must have given some reason for the massacre-an account of what occasioned it-if he had spoken of it. That is, he must have spoken of Herod (whose jealousy as to his government was the principal source of his horrible conduct) having received the intimation, accompanied by such very remarkable circumstances, that the Messiah was born. It was not jealousy of a grown-up competitor, or of a rival son even. To slay a number of infants in a particular place, and that place David's city, where all knew that Christ was to be born, must have had some cause which pointed out an infant who claimed the throne born there at that time; and an infant's claim was not made by himself. It must have been the circumstances that marked him out -hence some extraordinary circumstances which would have designated the child with peculiar evidence as Messiah the King. Was Josephus likely to record this carefully? Roman interests and Jewish national prejudices would concur to close Josephus's mouth, parasite as he was, as to the event itself. Besides this, there is some strong reason to believe, that he has attempted to conceal it under a very obscure account of court intrigues just at that moment, which he speaks of as occasioning the jealousy and anger of Herod. The passage is obscure, and has something concealed under it of a king to be set up with miraculous power. I do not pretend to decide as to what gave occasion to it. Two passages in his works refer to it. (Antiquities, book 16, last chapter, at the end; and ibid. book 17, chapter 2, section 6.) They may be seen in Lardner.
If Matthew wrote his Gospel A.D. 38, as many suppose, living witnesses must have known the truth or falsehood of it; and even sixty years afterward it would hardly have been forgotten. Justin, Irenaeus, and Origen refer to it as a known fact; and in the fourth century a heathen author, Macrobius, speaks of it; this I mention merely as showing it was notorious. This difficulty is one for those who will have one.