The Sundarban
If there is a villain within the Nativity epic it is certainly Herod, the monarch who supposedly slaughtered thousands of infants and toddlers to exterminate his rival, the baby Jesus. He’s reviled in Christian tradition as a merciless tyrant—but whereas his reputation for ruthlessness is deserved, he may now now not have slaughtered the kids of Bethlehem.
A King Made by Rome
Herod the Great, who dominated Judea from 37 to 4 BCE, lived a life defined by political maneuvering and an unrelenting fight to rep his energy. Herod was now now not born into a long royal lineage, and he had no priestly background. He was an Idumaean, part of an ethnic staff from an area of Southern Judea who have been understanding to be descendants of the Biblical patriarch Esau. As such, he was an outsider to the Hasmonean dynasties that had dominated Judea for a century ahead of his reign. Adam Kolman Marshak, author of The Many Faces of Herod the Great, said that his non secular credentials have been equally tenuous: “His grandfather had transformed, and thus many saw him as now now not absolutely Jewish. For an Idumaean courtier to change into king of Judaea was reasonably a political feat and required significant success and assist from Rome.
What he lacked in pedigree, on the alternative hand, he more than made up for in political instinct. Thru his father, Antipater, he cultivated Roman toughen at some point of the civil wars that tore apart the eastern Mediterranean.
In 40 BCE, with Parthian armies threatening Roman holdings, the Roman Senate made a valiant pass. Mark Antony, soon joined by Octavian, satisfied their colleagues to appoint Herod “King of the Jews.” In reality, Herod had to earn his crown. There already was a king of the Jews and so, over the next three years, Herod fought a brutal campaign against Antigonus, the last Hasmonean king from the older royal line. By 37 BCE, backed by Roman legions, Herod seized Jerusalem.
(Is there historical proof for the star of Bethlehem?)
Ruling a Careworn Kingdom
Herod’s reign was an train in constant balance. Rome demanded stability; diverse Judean constituencies demanded legitimacy rooted in local traditions. Herod’s Idumaean background and his shut connections with Augustus meant that he was viewed with distrust as Roman stooge. To manage opposition, he built a sophisticated intelligence community and intervened decisively, and normally violently, against real or imagined threats.
The historian Josephus, our principal ancient offer for Herod’s life, portrays a ruler increasingly paranoid as the years passed, especially bearing on rival Hasmonean claimants. Josephus writes that Herod executed several participants of his possess prolonged family, along side his beloved Hasmonean spouse Mariamne, three of his sons, and his spouse’s mother and grandfather.
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Yet Herod was now now not merely a despot. He was a shrewd administrator whose economic insurance policies boosted trade, agriculture, and urban sort. Josephus, who was no admirer of Herod, tells us that at some point of a famine Herod allotted food from the royal stores. He also scaled back taxes twice and maintained a largely peaceful kingdom in a location in any other case marred by instability.
Slaughter of the Innocents
Herod’s reputation for violence is largely derived from the Nativity epic, all via which he orders the slaughter of all male kids below the age of two. The epic parallels an episode within the book of Exodus when Pharoah attempted to eliminate the infant Moses by ordering the death of male Hebrew kids. There are no diverse references to this match even among sources unfavorable to Herod. As Raymond Brown notes in his Birth of the Messiah, if this match was factual, it can detached have left some traces in Jewish historical file in diverse places.
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Tim Whitmarsh, Regius Professor of Greek at the College of Cambridge, advised that the epic of the massacre of the infants “may have been borrowed from a similar epic advised about Gaius Octavius, the future Emperor Augustus.” Whitmarsh explained that “an ancient prophecy had said that a leader of the realm would be born in Velitrae, and an omen lawful ahead of his birth was interpreted to mean the time had come. The Senate, conserving fast to the traditional republican idea of ‘no kings’, ordered all the metropolis’s male offspring to be killed; Gaius was spared because his parents did now now not register his birth.” Tales fancy this may successfully have inspired the Biblical author.
“Whereas most historians carry out now now not imagine the historicity of the Nativity epic,” said Marshak “I contemplate it does speak to a certain roughly truth” about Herod’s reign. “Within the Gospel of Matthew,” he explained, “Herod is extremely paranoid and alive to about his legitimacy. Any threat to his maintain on energy is dealt with as ruthlessly and brutally as necessary. This brutality and willingness to slay anyone who’s a threat (real or imagined) does speak to a historical truth about Herod. He knew that his maintain on energy was tenuous, and he was arresting to carry out anything (even slay his possess sons and spouse) to maintain that maintain.”
(How King Herod transformed the Holy Land)
Herod the Builder
If Herod is remembered positively for anything, it is certainly the astonishing scale of his architectural imaginative and prescient. Across Judea and beyond, he left a trail of cities, fortresses, palaces, and monuments that rivaled the greatest achievements of his Roman patrons.
Herod’s renovation of the Jerusalem Temple was one of many most ambitious building tasks of the ancient world. The Temple Mount platform was dramatically expanded with retaining walls of mountainous limestone blocks,
