Over a hundred years after the time of Esther, Judea (the home of the Jews) was taken over by the Greeks when Alexander the Great arrived. And three hundred years after that, the Roman Empire took it over.

A carpenter named Joseph, who was descended from the kings of Judah, was engaged to a woman named Mary. Then God impregnated her, which nearly caused them to break up. But God insisted that Joseph should marry Mary anyway, so he did. But he didn’t have sex with her until after she gave birth to God’s baby, which they named Jesus.

While Mary was pregnant, Joseph decided to go to Bethlehem to take part in the governor Quirinius’s census of Judea. Even though Joseph didn’t live in Judea, and even though the census wouldn’t happen till several years later. And Jesus was born there.

Possibly up to two years later, some Zoroastrian astrologers saw a new star appear in the sky. They concluded that a new king of the Jews must have been born. And they wanted to worship him, for some reason. So they came and asked the Jews where they might find this new king. When Herod king of Judea heard that a baby might be planning to usurp him, he decided that baby needed to die.

So he told the astrologers to go look for the baby in Bethlehem, where a great Jewish king was prophesied to be born. And he told them to report back to him if they found the baby. But an angel warned the astrologers and Joseph about Herod’s plan. So the astrologers didn’t return to Herod after meeting Jesus in Bethlehem. And Jesus’s family fled to Egypt, leaving all the other baby boys in Bethlehem to be murdered by Herod.

The end.

The moral of the story

If you can’t stop someone intent on killing a baby, you can at least limit the damage by telling him which baby is the one he wants dead, so he won’t kill all the babies around just to be safe.

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