The Greek Orthodox Church says that he had 14,000 boys killed. The Syrian church speaks of 64,000. And later medieval authors went as far as 144,000. Interestingly though, there are no references to the mass murder of children in any other source other than Matthew. Some conclude that since Flavius Josephus, a first century Jewish historian, makes no mention of the massacre in his writings, that the story was a myth. The truth is that Bethlehem, the city where Yeshua was born, was a small village with a population of between 300 and 1000. Experts estimate that at any given a point in time the number of babies under the age of two would have been between seven and twenty. Thus, the murder of male children under the age of two is not consistent with the traditions cited above.