Some scholars and Christian apologists defend the massacre as something that Herod was cruel enough to do and small enough to pass without remark outside the Gospel of Matthew.
Josephus records Herod's execution of two of his sons and his wife Mariamne because he believed they posed a threat.[4] The execution of the two sons, whom Josephus describes as young men, has been represented by Robert Eisenman as the original that inspired the account in Matthew, since his two sons were the Jewish children that Herod believed had sought to replace him.
Josephus records several examples of Herod’s willingness to commit such acts to protect his power against perceived threats, but suggests that not all such acts were recorded, as he summarizes that Herod “never stopped avenging and punishing every day those who had chosen to be of the party of his enemies.”[5] "Such a massacre," it has been observed, "is indeed quite in keeping with the character of Herod, who did not hesitate to put to death any who might be a threat to his power."[6]
The Catholic Encyclopedia speculates about the reason Josephus did not include an account of the slaughter: "…St. Matthew's positive statement is not contradicted by the mere silence of Josephus; for the latter follows Nicholas of Damascus, to whom, as a courtier, Herod was a hero." It also cites Maas: "Cruel as the slaughter may appear to us, it disappears among the cruelties of Herod. It cannot, then, surprise us that history does not speak of it".[7]
Ninety percent or more of the documents of the time have vanished. Amazing what gaps there are in the historical record and how random. We know more about the last century before Christ than we don about the third century afterwards. A professor of medieval history told our class that much is said aboiut Phillip the Fair of France and almost nothing is known. An American hstorian started out to wrote a study of the Radical Republicans of civil war times, following Namier’s model of his study of the 18th century English parliament. To his surpise he found that little was know about the great majority of them than what was inscribed on their tombstones or in their obituaries.