Religion

That doesn't solve the problem, you see. It's not the Gospels I was looking for, I know what's in them. I was looking for corroborating evidence that the male children of Judea were slaughtered.

It's a lot of male children from many different backgrounds, including the educated and literate, wealthy or not. Herod had many enemies, as did the Judeans. Yet none of them mention this mass slaughter, across an entire Roman province. It's hard to believe.

The Romans themselves would have been aghast at this kind of thing and yes the Romans would have used it against the Judeans. Pontius Pilate the rather sadistic and cruel anti-Jewish Roman Governor would have been loathe to let this opportunity to berate the people he reportedly detested escape.

The Jews of Judea were a rich and powerful people, the Romans did not mint the face of the Emperor on it's coinage in the region out of respect for the Jewish prohibition on graven images. You don't get that kind of respect from the Romans without serious clout.

Yet there is no evidence for a mass slaughter of Judean children. Unless you consider the rather later (and not at all contradictory) accounts in the Bible with all the miraculous comings and goings as undeniable truth. No evidence where evidence should exist doesn't help your case.

Oh yes above all else, do you think that the literate, wealthy or no wouldn't write down their grief and sorrow at the loss of their child? Do you not think that people would protest and gather, appeal to other powers and the Romans for help rather than carry out this massacre of their own children? Yet none of this is recorded by anyone outside the New Testament.