Rebecca McLaughlin "It’s easy to sentimentalize the Christmas story. A newborn babe, angelic songs, a guiding star — the scene lights up our winter nights and warms our weary hearts. But when Herod orders the slaughter of all the male infants and toddlers within striking distance of Bethlehem, the tale suddenly becomes less family friendly. Indeed, in this moment, the Christmas dream becomes the stuff of nightmares.
"Our hearts revolt against infanticide. It strikes us as the most callous of crimes. But while the wholesale slaughter of baby boys would certainly have distressed first-century hearers, infanticide itself was broadly accepted.
“God was cradled in his mother’s arms, upending our ideas of power and telling a whole new story about babies.”
"Abandoning infants — particularly baby girls — was common. Some historians estimate that the Greco-Roman world in the first and second century was as much as two-thirds male, due to maternal deaths in childbirth and selective infanticide (Christianity at the Crossroads, 36). Meanwhile, influential philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle had supported eugenics, the latter declaring, “Let there be a law that no deformed child shall live.” But even healthy baby boys were frequently abandoned. If someone else wanted them — to raise them as a slave, perhaps — it was finders keepers." . . .
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