Herod, the Christ Child, a President, and Brothers and Sisters in Christ

[Note: Updated and revised since 2018.
As Christians, we should still be ashamed.]

 

The message seems so clear.

Why are so many fervent believers in the Christmas message unable to apply it to today’s world and much of the leadership of our own nation?

From the second chapter of the Book of Matthew:

Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.

And from the Emperor Augustus in 4 BCE:

Melius est Herodis porcum esse quam filium.
It is better to be Herod’s pig than his son.

The ruthlessness was stunning, even to the emperor himself. Decades before, Herod had murdered his wife and had her family killed when he heard rumors that his in-laws were conspiring against him. Twenty years later, he had two of his own sons killed for possible conspiracy.

Now, he had another thought. After he had named Antipater as his heir, he began to suspect this son might also plot against him. Antipater was a victorious General by then. Emperor Augustus had to approve the execution, so he may have said what he is quoted as saying. Herod was the appointed King of Israel, so he would not have killed swine, at least for food. Killing his children was another matter.

About the same time, Herod is said to have ordered the killing of about two dozen children in and around Bethlehem. It is doubtful Augustus even heard about that, or that he would have cared if he did.

Christians cared, years later when there were Christians. We sometimes call it the Massacre of the Innocents. Matthew is applying early scripture from the Book of Jeremiah. When Jerusalem fell to Babylonian conquerors, scripture has Rachel the ancestor crying out in grief for the dead.

The Biblical story has been dramatized ever since. Herod hears through travelers from the East, the three wise men, of a new King born in Bethlehem. Once they find the new King destined to replace him, he wants them to let him know all about it.

If you find this child, bring me word. That I too might worship him.

Claude Rains as Herod in The Greatest Story Ever Told

Then he has all male infants age two and under slaughtered.

Go to Bethlehem and kill this child. To be sure, every newborn boy in Bethlehem must die.

Be certain that none escape.

Claude Rains

Well yeah, just to be sure.

Not everything you’ve been taught in Sunday School is gospel, of course. There is only one non-Christian reference to the mass-murders, and that ancient historian has some historical facts a little garbled. Macrobius has Herod’s son included in the Bethlehem slaughter because he is one of the infants under two years of age, which seems unlikely youthfulness for a military officer.

Macrobius is also the ancient source for the remark by Augustus about Herod, his unlucky sons, and his lucky pigs. It’s an ancient play on words, since pig and son sounded a little alike back then. But it would only work if Augustus was speaking Greek.

And it seems a boneheaded move for three allegedly wise men to tell Herod all about the star and Bethlehem, even if they did not know he was a remarkable sociopath. Let’s imagine the recklessness:

Can you help us, your majesty?
We’re looking for the NEW King you don’t know about yet.
The one who will be ready to replace you.

Still, Herod might have known about a future rescuer of Israel that was to come from Bethlehem. There were prophesies.

Augustus might have made a Greek pun or two. Lots of upper class Romans spoke Greek, especially when they were showing off a bit. Greek was the language of education. And the most wealthy families had tutors from Greece.

The ancient attack on infants would have provided a pretty good reason for Mary and Joseph to take their little future king and escape to Egypt.

There is some scholarly skepticism about the mass murder. But no argument involves Herod being incapable of such monstrosity. Someone who would murder so many in his own family would not have much moral objection to killing the children of strangers.

The death of those children and the flight of the family of Jesus to Egypt to escape the massacre, whether true or not, really ought to resonate among today’s Christians. We don’t know how Mary and Joseph were treated when they became foreign migrants looking for sanctuary.

Were these new refugees, escaping from violence, regarded by Egyptians as a danger themselves?

They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.

Were they closed off from others because, as Jews, they did not share the religious beliefs of most Egyptians?

…total and complete shutdown of Muslims…

Or were they welcomed, maybe even helped?

Christians sometimes look for parallels in today’s world as we speak our rituals and read our ancient teachings.

We can be tempted to lose a basic lesson. Immigrants, even those who cross into the United States apart from established points of entry, have the legal right to a hearing. If, after intense investigation, it turns out they are indeed refugees from violence or persecution, they have the right to sanctuary.

But our [former] President still insists he wants more immigration from Europe, and fewer immigrants from the south, whether they are refugees or not.

Why aren’t we letting people in from Europe?

– Donald Trump at CPAC, March 15, 2013

His administration ordered a slowdown at southern border crossings. Manpower was cut, and only slowly has since been rebuilt.

Even that slow restoration of border security has had substantial opposition:

People are still processed at an absurdly slow rate. Those obediently following instructions, staying in line, find themselves waiting along roadways or on bridges for weeks, and sometimes months. They are vulnerable to heat, cold, hunger, and thirst.

And their children share in the danger.

During the Trump years, that danger was deliberately amplified. Border patrols were assigned to seek out supplies left in the wilderness by those of good will to help those desperate to survive. When our agents found those little jugs of water and baskets of food, they were ordered to destroy them.

Children died in custody. Trump officials responded:

We’ll continue to look into the situation. But again, I cannot stress how dangerous this journey is, when migrants choose to come here illegally.

Kirstjen Nielsen, Trump Homeland Security Secretary on Fox News

The hardship was not an oversight. It became policy.

Our government adopted a strategy for the new goal of discouraging immigration by those it deemed less desirable than others. Those who gathered their children and ran away from the monstrous violence largely financed by American drug money could be turned away, if only our nation became more monstrous than the conditions from which they fled.

That articulated policy of cruelty has devolved into independent state actions by Texas. Barbed wire is placed in the Rio Grande along the border. The stated intent is to catch and drown everyone daring to cross, even small children.

On the day of the 9/11 attacks we watched, then listened to accounts about bodies hitting the pavement in New York. For years after, we wondered about the evil of bin Laden, until we could celebrate his death. What kind of person would cast innocent people into that situation, giving them that terrible choice: dying by burning or by leaping from a great height.

All too recently, our government worked to provide a terrible choice to parents of vulnerable children. Stay in the conditions we helped to create in your home countries, where your children are threatened with rape, violence and death.

Or discover we are worse than what you seek to escape.

Some of my brothers and sisters in Christ celebrated as we watched parents and children running through teargas.

Years before actual Trump inspired efforts at violent insurrection, news reports told us our then President believed he owed his office to those Christians who celebrated his actions, and that he would face defeat if he did not stoke, then satisfy, their hatreds.

And I remembered the ancient stories with which I was raised:

Stories of a national ruler who tried to keep his hold on power by sending the powerful forces he controlled to attack little children.