Had the writer of Matthew known anything of Jewish history, he never would have made so gross a blunder, and saved the immense amount of labor that it has taken to explain away the effects of his ignorance. One explanation of this mistake is, that there were two assessments--one about the time Jesus was born, and the other ten years after. The first has been proven to be a forgery, and was never made. (Renan's _Life of Christ_, chap. I. See note.) "In Ramah was there a voice of lamentation and weeping and great mourning. Rachel weeping for her children and would not be comforted." This, it is claimed, referred to the cruelties of Herod, to escape from which Joseph and Christ were forced to fly into Egypt; so that his subsequent return to Nazareth would answer to the prophecy, which says, "_Behold, from Egypt I have called my Son_." In the first place, the story of Herod's cruelties in the case of the infants is an invention, without the least claim to truth, and was a lame excuse, as we have just stated, to get Christ into Egypt. "Then Herod, when he saw he was mocked of the wise men, was exceeding wroth, and sent forth and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently inquired of the wise men." A very short time, not more than two or three days, elapsed after the birth of Christ, when Herod, not hearing from the wise men, gave the command for the wholesale murder of the infants. It was certainly giving Herod more credit for cruelty than was necessary, even on that occasion, for as Christ was only a few days old when the order was given, it was useless murder to include all under two years: ninety-five per cent, of the infants might as well have been spared as not. It is a matter of surprise that Josephus, the Jewish historian, who suffers nothing deserving notice to escape his pen, has made no mention of a fact which, if true, would have filled Bethlehem and the country round about it with mourning. He could afford to make mention of the quarrels in Herod's family; but not one word to say about the wholesale slaughter of the infants. The story is so absurd, so easily exposed, and of no possible use, that it is omitted in Mark, Luke, and John.