Herod the Great

Herod the Great — king of Judea from 37 to 4 BCE, Roman client, master builder, dynastic founder, paranoid tyrant, and the man who rebuilt the Temple of Jerusalem into one of the most magnificent structures the ancient world had ever seen — is one of the most complex and irreducible figures in the entire sweep of ancient history. He was simultaneously the greatest builder in the history of the Jewish people and a man who executed his own sons, his beloved wife, his mother-in-law, and scores of others who came under the shadow of his growing paranoia. He was a Jewish king who many Jews refused to accept as fully Jewish, a Roman ally who navigated the most treacherous political waters in the history of the Roman Republic's transition to empire, and a ruler whose name has become, in Christian tradition, synonymous with infanticidal cruelty. The reality of Herod the Great was far more complicated, far more interesting, and in certain respects far more impressive than any of these simplifications allows.

The principal ancient source for Herod's life is Flavius Josephus, the Jewish historian who wrote his Judean War (Bellum Judaicum) and Jewish Antiquities (Antiquitates Judaicae) in the late first century of the common era. Josephus had access to earlier sources now lost, including the court historian of Herod himself, Nicolaus of Damascus, whose detailed biography of Herod provides the foundation for much of what Josephus records. Josephus is not a neutral observer — he writes from a complex position as a Jew who had collaborated with Rome and who had strong views about the Herodian dynasty — but he provides information available nowhere else, and modern historians have found him, with appropriate critical attention, a largely reliable guide to the main outlines of Herod's career. The New Testament, particularly the Gospel of Matthew, provides a differently oriented perspective on Herod's final years. Roman historians including Cassius Dio and Appian provide context for the Roman civil war period in which Herod's career began. And the archaeological record — decades of excavation at Herod's building projects across the ancient land of Israel — provides invaluable physical evidence for the nature and scale of his achievements.

Herod's Birth and the World He Entered

Herod was born around 73 BCE, probably in the region of Idumea (also called Edom in the Hebrew Bible), the territory south of Judea that had been conquered by the Hasmonean ruler John Hyrcanus I in the late second century BCE and whose population had been subjected to forced conversion to Judaism — one of the very few instances of mass forced religious conversion recorded in Jewish history. Whether this conversion was entirely compelled or partly voluntary, and how thoroughly it was implemented, are questions debated by scholars, but the basic historical fact is not in serious dispute: the Idumeans were brought into the Jewish religious and political community through military conquest rather than religious persuasion.

This origin would shadow Herod's entire life and career. In the perception of many Jews — particularly those of priestly lineage or clear Israelite descent — the Idumeans were newcomers to Judaism, converts whose sincerity and loyalty were always open to question. The Talmud contains traditions hostile to Herod that reflect this skepticism about the legitimacy of an Idumean king over the Jewish people. The Hasmonean rulers who had converted the Idumeans were themselves not of royal Davidic lineage but of priestly descent, and their dynasty — which Herod would eventually replace — was itself of disputed legitimacy to some. These questions of lineage and legitimacy, which run through Jewish history and law with enormous importance, meant that Herod would spend his entire reign governing a people who contained a substantial proportion of those who questioned his right to govern them at all.

His father was Antipater the Idumean (also called Antipater I), a figure of remarkable political skill who had risen to become the chief minister and effectively the power behind the throne under the Hasmonean ethnarch (ruler) Hyrcanus II. Antipater was the son of another Antipater who had served as governor of Idumea under the Hasmoneans, and he had inherited his father's political connections and built upon them assiduously. His mother, according to Josephus, was Cypros, a Nabataean Arab woman from the aristocracy of the Nabataean kingdom whose capital was Petra (in modern Jordan). This Nabataean connection gave Herod Arab heritage on his mother's side, further complicating his ethnic and religious identity in a world where ancestry was politically charged.

The political world into which Herod was born was one of extraordinary complexity and instability. The Hasmonean dynasty that ruled Judea was in the midst of a dynastic civil war between Hyrcanus II and his brother Aristobulus II, a conflict that would provide the opening for Roman intervention in Judean affairs. In 63 BCE, when Herod was about ten years old, the Roman general Pompey the Great resolved the Hasmonean civil war by the simple expedient of invading Judea, besieging Jerusalem, and entering the innermost sanctuary of the Temple — the Holy of Holies, which only the High Priest was permitted to enter — in the most dramatic possible demonstration of Roman power over the Jewish homeland. Hyrcanus II was confirmed as High Priest and ethnarch under Roman suzerainty, while the independent Hasmonean kingdom became a Roman client state. Antipater, who had backed Hyrcanus throughout the civil war, found his position enormously strengthened.