deconversion

I had a small epiphany - nothing too fancy - but for some reason my mind wandered to the bible story in Matthew when Herod killed all those boys in order to possibly kill the next king of the Jews - Jesus.  Jesus of course escaped.  From what I can tell, though there is questionable evidence that Herod may have gone on an infanticide raid, there is no evidence that it had anything to do with Jesus.  Okay - so within the Catholic church the poor little buggers are considered to be the first martyrs.  But - IF you were Jewish during the Church's infancy, wouldn't you have serious reason to be upset about this massacre in the context of Matthew?  These kids were killed to fulfill prophecy... and if you took this mostly fictional story as fact - as part of the literal history of Jesus, wouldn't you be less likely to want to worship a Messiah that spurred but survived the massacre of innocent Jewish children... all allowed and orchestrated by God?

This doesn't seem like a good way to endear the Jews to the Christians.  As in - This new god/messiah is so important that the Royal We/Three had to allow/orchestrate the death of innocent Jewish children in order to fulfill prophecy.

Also follows - if this never actually happened, and was mostly fictional, Jews may have been more likely to dismiss the accuracy of the entire Jesus story if early Christianity sects taught this massacre as fact.
 
It made more sense in the shower.

(this is not meant to be a discussion about God allowing bad things to happen - but about how the early Church and Jews courted each other)