The 28th of December is popularly celebrated in Spanish-speaking regions as the Day of the Innocents. In reality, the date is part of the hagiography (biography of saints) of Christianity and recognised as the Day of the Holy Innocents, in memory of the alleged massacre of children under the age of two perpetrated by Herod I “The Great” in order to get rid of a newborn in Nazareth, who would later be known worldwide by his mythical name, Jesus.
Alleged history, we say, because according to Wikipedia, in its allusive article, there is no evidence of it, since none of the historians of the time mentions the fact. It is not even recorded in the work of the Roman Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, renowned for his dedication to the figure of Herod I, king of the region between 37 BC and 4 BC and father of Herod Antipas, who became famous thanks to his accounts of the death of the Nazarene and John the Baptist.
The source of the biblical mention of the terrible event is the book of the apostle Matthew, who wrote the first gospel in Aramaic, addressed to the Jews.
According to Paul Mayer[1], quoted in the same Wikipedia entry, there is no documentation to support the historicity of the event, but, on the contrary. “Herod died in 4 BC and the census of Quirinius mentioned in Luke was 9 years after, in 6 AD, so Herod the Great could not have had any role in the events surrounding the birth of Christ.”
Beyond these preciousness’s, there are historians who claim that, if the account is unlikely to contain historical accuracy, it “possesses a certain verisimilitude, as a classic example of the genocidal abuse of power.”
More imprecise becomes the question, when one seeks to investigate the identity of the Christian Messiah (Christ, in his Greek etymology) himself, not in mythical or religious terms, but historiographically.
In paragraphs 63 and 64 of chapter XVIII of the book Jewish Antiquities, written by the aforementioned Flavius Josephus around 93 CE, we find the so-called Flavian Testimony, which was used by later historians to testify, from a non-mythical perspective, to the events surrounding the life of Jesus Christ.
The text of the Greek version of Josephus, collected by Eusebius of Caesarea in Ecclesiastical History (chapter I, 11), from the year 323 and which was the one officially transmitted in Europe in later centuries and which, according to several scholars, has possibly been interpolated by this or other authors belonging to the Christian flock, says:
“There appeared at this time Jesus, a wise man, if indeed he can be called a man. He was the author of astonishing deeds; a teacher of people who receive the truth with pleasure. Many, both Jews and Greeks, followed him. This was the Christ (the Messiah). Some of our most eminent men accused Him before Pilate. Pilate condemned Him to the torture stake. However, those who had loved him before did not cease to love him. He appeared to them risen on the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold, foretelling this and a thousand other marvellous things about Him. And to this day, the tribe of Christians, which owes him this name, has not disappeared.”[2] These doubts, common in scientific arguments, are commonplace in the scientific discussions.
These doubts, common in scientific debates in the case of figures of historical relevance, acquire verisimilitude with the appearance of other versions of the passage quoted from Flavius Josephus. For example, in an Arabic translation in the Universal History by Agapius, Bishop of Hierapolis, which reads:
“At this time there was a man by the name of Jesus. His conduct was good and he was considered virtuous. Many Jews and people from other nations became his disciples. Those who became his disciples did not abandon him. They reported that he appeared to them three days after his crucifixion and that he was alive. According to this he was perhaps the messiah of whom the prophets had told wonders.”
It is understandable that, with the passing of so many centuries, so many interpretations and translations of a fact fundamental to the Gospels – also these of different authorship and some of them considered “apocryphal”, and of vital importance to the collective vision of hundreds of millions of people, some minor details may change, with or without intentionality.
None of this diminishes the referential value of the mythical identity of Jesus and the force he has acquired for his faithful, through the devotional anointing with which his image has been worshipped for more than two millennia.
So, the theory that the child born into a poor family in Galilee, who later became the son of the divinity, may not correspond to historically reliable realities adds little to the understanding of the realities of its interiority.
To dwell on academic disquisitions in this respect neither adds nor subtracts from the relationship that many human beings, having been born in areas where a certain religion is predominant, establish with this image.
What does matter is that for a large number of the faithful, the image of a guide with remarkable virtues is a powerful image, capable both of inspiring kind actions and of producing in the fevered minds of its followers and leaders an obtuse and violent fanaticism against those who venerate different images, even persecuting and sowing cruelty and death against brothers of faith with slightly different interpretations.
April Fool’s Day
Much less scabrous is the celebration of this day today. People often assume the celebration by playing pranks on each other that rely on the gullibility of relatives, colleagues and friends. In most innocuous cases – though sometimes not so innocuous – the pranksters’ stories are characterised by a lack of truthfulness and tend to end in collective laughter, when the ruse is revealed, with the phrase “May innocence count for nothing”.
This allusion to innocence is not fortuitous either, since in the Christian tradition, according to the Gospel already quoted, it is related to the trickery of the Wise Men of the East – the Magi – who managed to deceive the then monarch of Judea (whose reign, according to “pagan” historiography, would have ended before the birth of Jesus) to prevent the latter from identifying the newborn and being able to harm him.
The press of the non-innocents
Beyond this collective custom, nowadays stripped of its macabre antecedents and more inclined to share humour among close affections, there are still intentional designs, neither naïve nor innocent, that intentionally use the media at their disposal to spread mass fictions that do not collaborate with social evolution.
The reference is to the concentrated media power groups, who try to confuse the people about social and political events with viciousness and premeditation. Such is the fascination produced by a lie told repeatedly through apparently diverse channels – but usually belonging to the same company or investor – that “published opinion” ends up being “public opinion”.
The same is true of the information we watch incessantly on digital platforms that try to convince us that we ourselves decide what we want to watch and not the corporation that controls them and partly captures our tastes and interests in order to sell our attention – perhaps our most precious treasure – to its clients’ advertising.
So, this date may be a propitious opportunity to unmask this action as a tasteless ploy. Because if we continue to accept the omnipresent manipulation of the hegemonic press, if we do not wake up to the mechanisms of seduction and control that underlie the apparently neutral social networks, then it will be time to admit our naivety and shout to the four winds, innocence be damned!
[1] Paul L. Maier[1] (1998). “Herod and the Infants of Bethlehem”. In E. Jerry Vardaman, ed. Chronos, Kairos, Christos II. Mercer University Press. p. 172.
