History of King Herod: Why was he called Great?

HISTORY OF KING HEROD: WHY WAS HE CALLED GREAT

The Wise men asked Herod the King:

“Where is he who has been born King of the Jews?”

While this seems an unlikely question to ask a client king of the great Roman Empire, they were not asking in a complete vacuum. During the century around Jesus’ birth, there had been hints.

Historical Context of King Herod

The Roman historian Suetonius, who lived in the late 1st and early 2nd century, had written:

“There had spread over all the East an old and established belief, that it was fated at the time for men coming from Judea to rule the world.”

The Roman senator and historian Tacitus, who lived at the same time, wrote:

“There was a firm persuasion that at this very time the east was to grow powerful and rulers coming from Judea were to acquire a universal empire.”

The Jewish-Roman historian Flavius Josephus writes in his Jewish Wars that the Jews believed that one from their country would soon become ruler of the habitable world.

King Herod: Jewish Ruler

King Herod and the Magi

However, the Wise Men were asking the currently ruling King of the Jews where the king of the Jews was, perhaps unwisely, and no doubt Herod inferred this as an accusation that he himself was an imposter. Herod had been particularly paranoid at this time and mistrusted all those around him as contenders for the tenuously held throne.

Instead of imprisoning these Magi for their impudence, he perceptively endeavored to determine how he could get any intelligence from them to eliminate this potential rival. With what he learned from them about the appearance of the Star, as well as what his own scholars gleaned from the Biblical prophecies, Herod determined that this “King of the Jews” was no more than two years of age and living in the nearby town of Bethlehem, the “City of David,” just 6 miles away.

Young King Herod

Governor Herod

By this time, Herod had already been ruling for over 30 years. First, he ruled as governor of Galilee when he was a young man in his twenties, then as a tetrarch under the Roman leader Marc Antony. Due to a local disagreement with his uncle, Herod fled to Rome. While some might think that Judea was a third-rate province on the edge of the Roman Empire, it played a role in Roman politics due to General Pompey having conquered Jerusalem in 63 B.C.

King Herod

Syria in New Testament times

While in Rome, Herod was appointed “King of the Jews” by the Roman Senate itself. However, Judea was not quite a Senatorial province, nor was it an Imperial province ruled by the Emperor. Instead, it was considered a satellite of nearby Syria, a more important province at that time, governed by a prefect. This distinction would play a significant role in the Easter story and the fate of Pontius Pilate.

When Emperor Augustus came to power, young Herod had been a competent ruler as vassal king over Palestine. His family had a particular genius in telling how the wind was blowing as it related to Roman politics in his territory and making shrewd decisions. For example, his father provided critical aid to Julius Caesar in Egypt when his supply lines were cut, and the Roman Emperor rewarded him richly.

Years later, when Mark Antony came to see Cleopatra, young Herod himself urged him to make his peace with the remainder of the Roman Triumvirate he’d been in (Augustus and Lepidus) — advice Antony ignored to his peril. Herod knew Cleopatra well; they’d had a business monopoly that extracted asphalt from the Dead Sea. Later, when Augustus succeeded Julius and saw success through the civil wars, he made Herod one of his most trusted friends.

King Herod’s Public Works

Herod’s Building

In his book The Jewish War, we learn from Josephus that Herod beautified the larger Palestine area during his 33-year reign. He spent lavish sums on building for his people temples, aqueducts, cities, and for himself palaces and fortresses — like Masada, north of the Dead Sea, pictured at left.

Herod’s Temple

Second Temple

His most outstanding achievement was undoubtedly constructing the Second Temple in Jerusalem, pictured at left, to replace the older Temple of Solomon, destroyed in 586 BC when Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon conquered Jerusalem. Part of that Second Temple remains today, most notably the Western (“Wailing”) Wall of the Temple Mount. He built a theater in Jerusalem and another larger one in the plain outside the city.

Herod’s Port City

In Augustus’s honor, Herod built the remarkable port of Caesarea Maritima, along with an arena, hippodrome, and theater in that port town. In addition to stimulating commerce and trade, he patronized culture in many cities in the eastern part of the Mediterranean and sponsored the 12 B.C. Olympics. He invested so much in the games that he was proclaimed “President of the Olympic Games” for life.

Older King Herod

Roman Taxes

Later in Josephus’ Jewish Antiquities, we see a different, older Herod. Both the Sadducee and Pharisee sects opposed him. As a Nabatean and Edomite, despite converting to Judaism, he was considered no more than a half-Jew, “too Roman” for his people, from whom he extracted a heavy tax toll. He’d introduced foreign forms of entertainment and games and sponsored the building of pagan cities.

Herod’s Family

His own family opposed him, and he killed three of his sons, his favorite wife, her grandfather, mother, and brother-in-law, not to mention some of his own subjects. He frequently wrote to Rome requesting permission to execute one or more of his sons for suspected treason. Eventually, even his patron and friend Augustus admitted,

“I’d rather be Herod’s pig than his son.”

It was not only a play on the similar-sounding Greek words for son and pig but a wry observation that the Jews, at least, do not consume pork.

Death of King Herod

Herod’s Illness

Death of Herod the Great

As he neared the end of his life, Josephus tells us that the pain of his illnesses — chronic kidney disease complicated by rare Fournier’s gangrene, which ran in the family — led to intense itching and convulsions of every limb. This prompted Herod to attempt suicide, but his cousin prevented it. He was anxious that no one would mourn his death, which was a good presumption.

Palace Intrigue

To that end, he commanded a large number of disinterested men to come to the great hippodrome filled with people at Jericho, where, on the announcement of his death, archers would kill them all and grant his wish of mourning associated with his death.

Instead, his son Archelaus and sister Salome declined to carry out his wish. He failed in this plan, as he did in the Massacre of the Innocents, to kill him, “who has been born king of the Jews.”

Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
billpetro.com

Inspired in part by Paul L. Maier’s The Fullness of Time

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