Herod the Great
HEROD THE GREAT
King of Judea at the time of the birth of Jesus Christ (Mt 2.1). He was born about 73 b.c., the second son of the Idumean Antipater, chief official of the hasmonaean king Hyrcanus II; his mother was Cyprus, a Nabataean woman.
Early Life. Throughout his early life, when various factions successively gained dominance in Palestine, Herod, like his father, managed always to align himself with the winning side. He first came to prominence at the age of 25, when as governor of Galilee he overreached his authority by executing some rebellious brigands; Herod escaped condemnation by the Jerusalem Sanhedrin only by leaving Judea and joining the Roman administration of Syria. When in 46 b.c. a follower of Pompey took over the Roman governor's army, Herod, his father, and his elder brother Phasael fought against him on behalf of the party of Julius Caesar. After Caesar's assassination (44 b.c.), however, they supported the republican C. Cassius, who had taken command of Syria, and aided him in preparations for the war against Mark Antony. Soon after, in 43 b.c., a personal enemy, Malichus, had Antipater murdered, and seized the government of Judea. Herod, with Cassius' connivance, had Malichus killed, and Hyrcanus reappointed Phasael governor of Jerusalem. While Cassius joined Brutus for the impending battle against Antony and Octavian, Herod and Phasael had to put down a revolt raised by Malichus's brothers and another raised on behalf of Hyrcanus's nephew and rival Antigonus. With this opposition overcome, Herod then strengthened his position by his betrothal to Hyrcanus's granddaughter Mariamme; thus the Idumean Herod, whose family had been Jewish for barely three generations, was to some extent identified with the legitimate Hasmonaean dynasty.
Tetrarch of Galilee. After the battle of Philippi (41 b.c.), Phasael and Herod ingratiated themselves with the victorious Mark Antony. Despite opposition from Jewish delegations, Antony made Phasael and Herod tetrarchs of Judea and Galilee respectively. In 40 b.c., however, the Parthians invaded Syria, and Antigonus, with the assurance of Parthian support, again marched on Jerusalem. Phasael and Hyrcanus fell into Antigonus's power, but Herod slipped away from Jerusalem with his family and household, and committed them to his brother Joseph's care in the fortress of Masada in southeastern Judea. Phasael seems to have committed suicide; Hyrcanus was mutilated and taken away to Mesopotamia.
Refused asylum with the Nabataean king at Petra, Herod went to Rome in the fall of 40 b.c. to appeal to Antony. In a formal session of the senate Antony and Octavian had Herod named king. After his arrival at Ptolemais (Accho) in the spring of 39 b.c., Herod gathered an army and relieved the besieged Masada, but he was unable to begin the siege of Jerusalem until the spring of 37 b.c., when he also married Mariamme. On taking Jerusalem Herod began his reign with a series of proscriptions, which all but eliminated the Sanhedrin. Antigonus was executed by order of Antony.
Herod faced only three dangers to his power thereafter: Cleopatra of Egypt, the surviving Hasmonaeans, and the fall of his patron, Antony. Cleopatra used her influence with Antony to acquire much of Herod's best land, including Jericho and the port of Joppe (Jaffa); she supported a plot to restore an independent Idumea; at the request of Mariamme's mother, Alexandra, she exerted pressure on Herod to appoint his brother-in-law, the young Aristobulus, high priest. As legitimate successor to the high priesthood and kingship, and as a figure attractive to the people, Aristobulus presented a threat to the parvenu Herod, who accordingly had him killed shortly after his appointment in 36 b.c. Hyrcanus, who had returned from Babylon upon the fall of Antigonus, was also murdered by Herod in 30 b.c., as the last possible rival for power. Antony's defeat at Actium removed Cleopatra as a threat to his kingship, but also put Herod in danger of removal. He quickly changed his allegiance, giving aid to Octavian's forces, and in 30 b.c. Octavian confirmed him as king and even restored the land Cleopatra had taken over, along with other coastal towns and Samaria, Gadara, and Hippos. In 22 b.c. his territory was further enlarged, to include Trachonitis, Batanaea, and Auranitis (Hauran).
King of Judea. Once established as a client king, Herod was occupied with construction projects. He required force to stay in power, and so he built or strengthened many fortresses: Masada, Alexandrium, Hyrcania, Antonia, Phasaelis, Herodium, Machaerus, and Cyprus (at NT Jericho). His army was made up mostly of mercenaries. Besides building for military purposes, Herod lavished money on cities, temples, and theaters. His outstanding achievements were rebuilding the city of Samaria as Sebaste (27 b.c.), his fortress-palace in jerusalem (23 b.c.), the port of Caesarea (22 b.c.), and the new Temple of Jerusalem (built between about 20 and 10 b.c.). Herod was a benefactor to many cities of the empire as well, financing expensive projects out of his immense wealth; these had the effect of protecting the interests of Jews in the Diaspora and reducing anti-Jewish feeling in the Hellenistic cities. Throughout his reign, Herod was on good terms with Augustus, until in 9 b.c. a misunderstanding over his actions in a military campaign against the Nabataeans brought him into the emperor's disfavor.
Herod's family life was complex and unhappy, full of intrigue and conflict. He was passionately devoted to his wife, Mariamme, and hence prone to jealousy. Salomé, his sister, out of resentment against the Hasmonaean Mariamme and her sons, Aristobulus and Alexander, poisoned Herod's mind against them. Convinced of Mariamme's unfaithfulness, Herod had her executed in 29 b.c., and her mother, Alexandra, within the year, again at Salomé's instigation. About 23 b.c. Herod married another Mariamme, daughter of Simon of Alexandria, whom he appointed high priest; by her he had a son called Herod, to whom Herodias was first married. Mariamme II was followed by seven other wives; the most important were Malthace, mother of Archelaus and herod antipas, and Cleopatra of Jerusalem, mother of Philip the Tetrarch. Salomé and Herod's brother Pheroras plotted to discredit Alexander and Aristobulus. As a result, in 14 b.c. Herod recalled to the court his first wife, Doris, and her son Antipater, and the latter, out of ambition, became a willing accomplice to the schemes of Salomé and Pheroras. On the basis of their accusations, Herod had Alexander and Aristobulus executed in Sebaste in 7 b.c., and named Antipater heir. But in 4 b.c., when he learned of Antipater's intrigues against his sons and himself, Herod had him executed too; he named Archelaus, Antipas, and Philip joint heirs. Herod himself died a short time later, apparently of cancer.
The account in Mt 2.16 of the slaughter of the Holy innocents at Bethlehem is entirely in keeping with the king's cruel jealousy.
Bibliography: flavius josephus, Ant. 14:19; Bell Iud. 17–2.183. s. h. perowne, The Life and Times of Herod the Great (Nashville 1959). a. h. m. jones, The Herods of Judaea (Oxford 1938) 1–155. f. m. abel, Histoire de la Palestine depuis la conquête d'Alexandre jusqu'à l'invasion Arabe, 2 v. Études Bibliques 1:310–406. a. momigliano, The Cambridge Ancient History (London and New York 1923–29) 10:316–339. j. blinzler, Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, ed. j. hofer and k. rahner, 10 v. (2d, new ed. Freiburg 1957–65)2 5:263–265. w. foerster, Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart (3d ed. Tübingen 1957–65) 33:266–268. Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Bible, tr. and adap. by l. hartman (New York 1963) from a. van den born, Bijbels Woordenboek 988–990.
[j. p. m. walsh]
Herod the Great
Herod the Great
Herod the Great (ca. 73 B.C.-4 B.C.), King of Judea, was an example of a class of client princes who kept their thrones by balancing between being over thrown by their own peoples for too much sub servience to Rome and being dismissed by the Romans for too much independence.
Judea was one among the many petty states into which the Hellenistic East had fragmented, ruled by high priests of the Hasmonean dynasty, descendants of the leaders who had freed the country from Seleucid rule. These Hasmoneans, however, were eager to raise revolts and engage in civil wars against each other, and Palestine was a cockpit of contending factions and forces. Against this background Herod's family rose to prominence; a Hasmonean, King Alexander Jannaeus, had appointed Herod's grandfather, who was probably an Idumean, to some sort of governorship in Idumea. Herod's father, Antipater, took a prominent part in a civil war between two further Hasmoneans, Hyrcanus II and Aristobulus II and his descendants, and became one of Hyrcanus's chief ministers; he also established close relations with the Romans.
Herod's mother's family were perhaps Nabatean Arabs—Herod himself never lived down the charge that he was only a half Jew—and he seems to have spent part of his childhood among the Nabateans.
Political Career
In 47 B.C., when Caesar momentarily settled Palestinian affairs, he seems to have entrusted Antipater with the effective civil government. Antipater named his eldest son, Phasael, governor of Jerusalem and his second son, Herod, governor of Galilee. Herod won favor with the Romans by his success in dealing with local guerrilla bands, but he executed a guerrilla leader out of hand, and opponents of the upstart Idumean family got the matter brought before the Sanhedrin. Herod was accused of murder. He did not quite dare ignore the summons of the Sanhedrin, but he did appear in Jerusalem with a large armed bodyguard, and the matter was dropped. He seems, however, to have lost his position in Galilee.
In 46 B.C. Herod was appointed governor of Coele-Syria and Samaria by Caesar's representative, but with the death of Caesar and the arrival of Cassius in Syria, Herod was quick to line up with the republicans. He won Cassius's favor by raising the 700 talents' tribute which Cassius exacted. He also married Mariamne, a Hasmonean princess and granddaughter of the high priest Hyrcanus II.
A Parthian invasion in 40 B.C. brought another change: Antigonus, a rival Hasmonean, became king of Judea, and Herod had to flee. He left his family in the fortress of Masada and went via Egypt to Rome. There both Antony and Octavian, the future Augustus, accepted him as a useful counter against the Parthians, and the Senate named him king of Judea.
Herod as King
The Jews of course did not recognize Rome's right to choose their king for them, and Herod, with Roman help, had to conquer his kingdom. Not until July 37 B.C. did he get Jerusalem. Antigonus and his chief followers were put to death, but on the whole Jerusalem was spared. Herod turned to the problem of the high priesthood; he himself had not the blood to claim the office, and he needed a priest who could not rival him in dignity. But the Hasmoneans, even those connected with Herod by marriage, would not forego their claims. By the end of this struggle, which raged for most of the reign, the priesthood had become only a temporary office held at the King's pleasure.
Herod's other chief difficulty during the first part of his reign stemmed from Cleopatra's desire to restore the lost empire of the Ptolemies. She did gain some territories, including the Jericho district, from Herod, but the coolness between them ultimately helped Herod as it kept him from being too close to Antony's party. When Antony fell, Herod found it relatively easy to shift his loyalty to Octavian. He, on his part, saw no reason to prefer some different puppet to Herod, who was eager to please, not fanatically Jewish, and already in possession. Octavian not merely confirmed Herod but restored Jericho and gave him other, particularly non-Jewish, territories.
The reason first Antony and then Augustus supported Herod for so long was that he pursued a policy they thoroughly favored, that of bringing Judea out of its isolation and religious exclusiveness and of putting it into the mainstream of Greco-Roman civilization. Herod consciously undertook to Hellenize every aspect of life in his kingdom. Officials were given the titles and functions of royal ministers elsewhere, and non-Jews were given many of the highest posts; the army was reconstructed and made into a mainly mercenary and non-Jewish force; theaters and circuses were built; and several of Herod's sons were sent to Rome for their training.
Herod also brought his kingdom considerable prosperity. He stabilized the coinage and maintained taxation at a bearable level. He encouraged trade and built the splendid port city of Caesarea. Indeed, he was a tremendous builder generally, and this too provided jobs. Much of his building naturally had a military purpose—fortresses like Masada were built or enlarged, military colonies were planted on the frontiers, and even many of Herod's numerous palaces were partly fortresses. His building in the cities had the further purpose of increasing Hellenization, for many of his cities, like Caesarea and Samaria (rebuilt and renamed Sebaste), were intentionally Hellenistic rather than Jewish, even to having a predominantly non-Jewish population.
During nearly his whole reign Herod faced trouble within his own family, stemming partly from the Hasmoneans' regal scorn for the Idumaean upstart, partly from Herod's Hellenizing policies, and partly from his paranoid tendency, when his suspicions were aroused, to turn and rend those he loved best. As early as 29 B.C. he had killed his wife, Mariamne, from jealousy. As the years went by, the whole matter was further complicated by the question of the succession, for like many people with a strong will to power, Herod showed little ability at facing the idea of losing it, even to death.
In the years of intricate scheming and counterscheming between Herod and his heirs, three of Herod's sons were put to death, and his brother "escaped death only by dying." And when Herod finally did die in 4 B.C., he left a disputed succession with two further sons both having some claim to the throne. Augustus finally resolved the matter by splitting the inheritance between these two sons and still a third one, and not allowing the title of king to any of them.
Herod's Accomplishment
In an age when even the existence of the smaller states depended not on their own strength but on the will of Rome, Herod kept Judea safe, secure, and prosperous. And yet, throughout his career Herod suffered from being caught somewhere between Jew and Gentile. He loved Greek culture and showered money on the cities of the Greek East, but he began the rebuilding of the Temple and acted as protector and spokesman for various Jewish communities scattered about the world. He sought the favor of Rome and was ostentatious in his loyalty to it, yet he wished to strengthen the position of the Jewish state. In the final analysis, he failed to judge the temper of his people, and, though the great crisis did not come until the reign of Nero, his attempt to make the Jewish kingdom another civil state of the customary Mediterranean type was already a failure at his death.
Further Reading
The chief source of information on Herod is the two works by the ancient Jewish historian Josephus, The Jewish War and The Antiquities of the Jews. Among the modern works see W. O. E. Oesterley, A History of Israel, vol. 2 (1932); Stewart Perowne, The Life and Times of Herod the Great (1959); and Samuel Sandmel, Herod: Profile of a Tyrant (1967), which is interesting but perhaps too psychological in its interpretation. □
Herod the Great
Herod the Great
Born: 73 b.c.e.
Died: 4 b.c.e.
Jericho, Judea
King of Judea
Herod the Great, king of Judea, was an example of a class of princes who kept their thrones by balancing the delicate relations with the Roman Empire. Herod's much-criticized relationship with Rome would keep Judea safe and establish a Jewish state.
Herod's rise to power
Judea was ruled by high priests of the Hasmonean dynasty, descendants of the leaders who had freed the country from Seleucid rule. The Seleucid dynasty (312–64 b.c.e.) began with Seleucus I, who created an empire from part of the area of southwest Asia that had been controlled by Alexander the Great (356–323 b.c.e.). Herod's grandfather and father held prominent political offices in Judea and established close relations with the Romans, the unquestioned world power during that time.
In 47 b.c.e., when Roman Emperor Julius Caesar (100—44 b.c.e.) momentarily settled Palestinian affairs, he seems to have entrusted Herod's father, Antipater, with the effective civil government. Antipater named his eldest son, Phasael, governor of Jerusalem and his second son, Herod, governor of Galilee, where he won favor with the Romans by his success in dealing with hostile military groups.
In 46 b.c.e. Herod was appointed governor of Coele-Syria and Samaria by Caesar's representative. But with the death of Caesar and the arrival of the new emperor, Cassius (d. 42 b.c.e.), Herod quickly dismissed his loyalty to Caesar and won Cassius's favor. He also married Mariamne, a Hasmonean princess and granddaughter of the high priest Hyrcanus II.
A Parthian invasion in 40 b.c.e. brought another change: Antigonus, a rival Hasmonean, became king of Judea, and Herod had to flee. He left his family in the fortress of Masada and went to Rome. There, Roman leaders Antony (c. 81–30 b.c.e.) and Octavian (64 b.c.e.—14 C. E.), the future Augustus, accepted him, and the Senate named him king of Judea.
Herod as king
The Jews, of course, did not accept Rome's right to choose their king for them. Herod, with Roman help, had to conquer his own kingdom, which did not occur until 37 b.c.e. Antigonus and his chief followers were soon put to death, and Herod turned to the problem of the high priesthood, the most powerful religious office in Judea. Herod did not have the correct ancestry to claim the office, and he needed a priest who could not rival him in power. But the Hasmoneans, even those connected to Herod by marriage, would not let go of their claims to the priesthood. By the end of this struggle, which raged for most of his reign, the priesthood had become only a temporary office held at the king's pleasure.
When Antony was killed, Herod found it relatively easy to shift his loyalty to Octavian. At the same time, Octavian saw no reason to look for another puppet to control in Judea and therefore stayed with Herod. Antony and then Augustus supported Herod for a long time because he pursued a policy they thoroughly favored—bringing Judea into the Roman Empire. Herod consciously undertook to Hellenize (to copy the great culture of Greece) every aspect of life in his kingdom. Officials were given the titles and functions of royal ministers elsewhere, and non-Jews were given many of the highest posts.
Herod also brought his kingdom considerable prosperity. He stabilized the economy and reduced taxes. He encouraged trade and built the splendid port city of Caesarea. His city building had the further purpose of increasing Hellenization, for many of his cities, like Caesarea and Samaria (rebuilt and renamed Sebaste), were intentionally Hellenistic rather than Jewish, even to the extent of having a mostly non-Jewish population.
The end of power
During nearly his whole reign, Herod faced trouble within his own family. As early as 29 b.c.e. he had killed his wife, Mariamne, out of jealousy. As the years went by, the whole matter was further complicated by the question of who would replace him on the throne. Like many people with a strong will to power, Herod could not face the idea of losing it. Three of Herod's sons were put to death, and his brother "escaped death only by dying." When Herod finally did die in 4 b.c.e., two other sons had some claim to the throne. Augustus finally settled the matter by splitting the inheritance between these two sons and a third one, and not allowing the title of king to any of them.
In an age when the existence of the smaller states depended not on their own strength but on the will of Rome, Herod kept Judea safe, secure, and prosperous. And yet, throughout his career Herod suffered from being caught somewhere between Jew and Gentile (non-Jew). He began the rebuilding of the Temple and acted as protector and spokesman for various Jewish communities scattered about the world. But despite his wish to strengthen the Jewish state, he still sought the favor of Rome, and this conflict would prove his ultimate failure.
For More Information
Grant, Michael. Herod the Great. New York: American Heritage Press, 1971.
Green, Robert. Herod the Great. New York: Franklin Watts, 1996.
Perowne, Stewart. The Life and Times of Herod the Great. New York: Abingdon Press, 1959.
Roller, Duane W. The Building Program of Herod the Great. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.
Sandmel, Samuel. Herod: Profile of a Tyrant. Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott, 1967.