I would like to introduce and welcome our newest member, J.P.Holding, to the CADRE. JP is sort a legend of internet apologetics. He's admired by Christians and hated by atheists. Except for puns we all hate them. An excellent writer, extremely funny, and right up along side Glen Miller the best apologetics researcher on the net. He runs http://www.tektonics.org/ I was honored to be included in his anthology Defending The Empty Tomb.
How Many Children in Bethlehem Did Herod Kill?
A couple of months ago, I wrote a post about the Gospel of Matthew’s account of the slaughter of the innocents. Therein, I argued that some of the skepticism about the account was unjustified. One argument I made was that the number of children killed in Bethlehem would likely have been no more than 20. Though obviously an act of great evil, the killing of 20 children would be much less likely to be noticed by historians of the time than the slaughter of thousands as later traditions speculated. In response to the post, Peter Kirby asked a few questions. He has patiently waited my response, continuously delayed by work, family, and the completion of my Acts article . Two of the questions had to do with how the amount of 20 was determined. Others with the omission of the account by Luke and the reliability of the tradition recounted by Macrobius. Peter also mentioned that there were other reasons to doubt the story's historicity beyond just the silence of other sources. I
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Over many years of informal debating on various Internet message boards, I recall running across a couple of names fairly often: "Metacrock" and "J.P. Holding." It has been a blessing to work with (and learn from) Metacrock (Joe Hinman) here at the CADRE, and I look forward to the same with you.