The Oxford History of the Biblical World

by Coogan, Michael D.

  The Reign of Herod

  Through a combination of political cunning, good luck, and an occasional murder, King Herod retained his Roman support, his throne, and his life. Presenting a Hellenistic, assimilated image to the empire while emphasizing a more Jewish perspective to his local constituency, Herod survived and prospered during the battle between Octavian and Antony. Domestically, he had to withstand unrest caused by overtaxation, famine, and religious zeal, as well as continuing threats from the surviving Hasmoneans. He also had to control a mixed and not always friendly population consisting not only of Jews and Greeks but also of Samaritans, Syrians, and Arabs. It was a formidable challenge.

  The first major crisis began in 36 when Herod’s patron, Antony, still living lavishly as the ruler of the eastern part of the empire, married his equally lavish lover, Queen Cleopatra VII of Egypt. This marriage was deplored by most of Italy, and especially by Octavian, for it suggested not only a lack of loyalty to Rome and its traditions, but also a repudiation of Antony’s wife Octavia, Octavian’s sister. Herod himself was not particularly well liked by the Egyptian queen, who wanted his lands. Cleopatra obtained Judea’s coastal cities as well as Jericho during Herod’s early time in office, but she did permit him to lease these territories.

  The animosity between Rome and Egypt, and between the erstwhile brothers-inlaw, escalated until 31, when Octavian defeated Antony at the battle of Actium. Antony and Cleopatra committed suicide, and Egypt fell directly into Roman hands. Octavian lost an in-law, but he gained the grain of Egypt for his empire, and a new title (Augustus—the “exalted one”) for himself. During his rule, the Roman Empire extended its borders and brought peace to its territories (the Pax Romana).

  Among Octavian’s earliest acts was to receive Herod. Although previously Antony’s ally, Herod courageously admitted his past errors and pledged his loyalty to the new emperor. Following his practice of leaving client kings in place, and impressed by Herod’s political acumen, Octavian accepted his support and granted him not only the lands he had leased from Cleopatra but also her holdings in Samaria and east of the Jordan.

  Herod rebuilt Samaria, which he renamed Sebaste (from the Greek word for Augustus), and he erected there a temple to the emperor. He also built a port city, which he named Caesarea in the emperor’s honor. Other projects included creating an elaborate winter palace in Jericho, reinforcing the former Hasmonean complex on Masada, and opening several areas for agricultural cultivation. To fund such enterprises as well as his extensive building in Jerusalem, Herod adapted the Hasmonean taxation system. Much of the population, particularly in Galilee, was overburdened with the taxes due to Herod and to Rome as well as the smaller contributions made to the Temple, although archaeological investigation has yielded evidence of ornate homes in the suburbs of Jerusalem. Nevertheless, Herod may have improved parts of the economy with his various projects. The construction provided substantial employment opportunities, and the increase in agricultural production offset some of the exactions due in taxes.

  Within Jewish territory, Herod showed considerable sensitivity to his population’s religious concerns. His coinage did not depict human images, he refrained from placing statues in public buildings, and he began the remodeling of the Second Temple, although in Hellenistic style. Not completed until 64 CE, during the reign of Herod’s great-grandson Agrippa II, this project employed thousands, from artisans to priests. Even within Jerusalem, however, Herod’s primary allegiance was to Rome; thus he affixed a golden eagle to the gate of the Temple. When the scribes Judas and Matthias, hearing a rumor that the terminally ill Herod was dying, attempted to remove it, the king had them and their associates tortured to death.

  Herod the Great not only engaged in extensive Temple renovations, he also controlled the high priesthood. By appointing members of the priestly families of Babylonia and Alexandria, he sought to bolster his support from the Diaspora population. Unfortunately, his appointments did little to enhance the reputation of the office or peace within his own household.

  The high priesthood would remain a point of tension. Herod first appointed Ananel, from a Babylonian priestly household. The decision did not please Mariamme’s mother, Alexandra, who attempted to have her son Aristobulus III succeed to the office; aided by Cleopatra she convinced Herod to fulfill her wishes. But Aristobulus gained great popularity with the people, so in 35 Herod arranged to have him drowned. A pattern was set: charging them with treason (perhaps rightly), Herod executed his beloved Mariamme in 29 and Alexandra in 28. By the end of his reign, he had also executed numerous nobles who either in fact or in his imagination challenged his status, his sons by Mariamme, Alexander and Aristobulus, and his son Antipater by his first wife, Doris. Such activities prompted Augustus’s quip that “I would rather be Herod’s pig [hys] than his son [huios].” Although the historicity of the “slaughter of the innocents” in Matthew 2 is questionable in the absence of other testimony—the story probably arose out of the evangelist’s strong interest in connecting Jesus to Moses (see Exod. 1–2 on the deaths of the Hebrew children) and reflects the folkloric motif of endangered heroes—doing such a thing would not have been out of character for Herod.

  Beset by Nabatean conflicts and domestic disputes, Herod’s final years granted him no peace. According to Josephus, his death brought no quietude either. Aware he was dying, Herod arranged to have many political prisoners executed at the time of his death, so that there would be general mourning.

  Temple, Synagogues, and Sanhedrin

  The Temple had been the central concern of the Maccabees and a focus of continuing Hasmonean politics, and it was central to Herod the Great’s domestic politics. Built by Solomon, destroyed by Nebuchadrezzar, rebuilt during the Persian period, and remodeled by Herod, the Temple served mythologically as the link between heaven and earth, ritually as the locus of sacrifice and domain of the priesthood, economically as the national bank, and politically as the focus of many who sought the rule of heaven as opposed to the rule of Rome. The center of worship for all Jews in the formative period—either because they participated in it or because they defined their movement as an alternative to it—the Temple would remain, long after its destruction in 70 CE, a major focus of Judaism’s religious imagination.

  The Temple’s centrality for Judaism, both locally and throughout the Diaspora, is indicated in various ways. One was Jewish fidelity to paying a Temple tax of a halfshekel annually, a practice based on Exodus 30.11–16 and mentioned in Matthew 17.24. Another manifestation of the Temple’s importance were the annual pilgrimages during the festivals of Booths (Sukkot), Passover (Pesach), and Weeks (Shavuot), which brought Jews from throughout the empire to the capital (see Acts 2.5–11). Still other signs of the Jews’ attachment to the Temple are the extensive renovations undertaken by Herod and his successors; the fight for control of the Temple and Temple Mount during the First Revolt; the extensive discussion of the Temple and its sacrifices within the documents of early Christianity and rabbinic Judaism; the depiction of the Temple menorah on the Arch of Titus; the image of the Temple on the coins minted by Bar Kokhba in the Second Revolt, more than sixty years after the Temple’s destruction; and the ongoing references to the Temple in Jewish liturgy. Yet permutations of this centrality emphasize as well the diversity of practice and belief among the people called “Jews.”

  Within the Temple, daily sacrifices were offered by the priests, both on their own behalf and for the Jewish community. The priests themselves, who inherited their position, were divided into twenty-four courses; each course served for a set period. Aiding the priests in the Temple were members of a second hereditary group, the Levites.

  Priests and Levites were not the only figures in the Temple. Pilgrims could purchase animals for sacrifice from local sellers, and those wishing to pay the Temple tax or make monetary offerings could exchange their own currency for the Tyrian shekels that alone were accepted by the institution—hence the employment that the Temple offered to
money changers.

  The Temple itself consisted of areas of increasing holiness. Outermost was the court of the Gentiles, which anyone could enter. Proceeding farther in, one reached the court of the (Jewish) women, the court of the (Jewish) men, and finally the holy of holies—entered only by the high priest on the Day of Atonement. Participation in the Temple was open to everyone: women could make offerings, as Jesus’ account of the widow’s offering (Mark 12.42–43) and Josephus’s narrative of Queen Helena of Adiabene, the proselyte, clearly indicate.

  For Jewish groups, the Temple had diverse meanings. Some Sadducees, who were priests, saw it as their livelihood; when the Temple was destroyed in 70 CE, the priestly Sadducees for all practical purposes lost their public role and disappeared. For the Pharisees, it provided the model of holiness which they then extended to the home; after 70, members of this group clung to the hope for the Temple’s reconstruction while at the same time claiming that deeds of loving-kindness took the place of sacrifice. For the authors of one of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the “Temple Scroll,” a new Temple would replace the corrupt present one. Early Christians presented Jesus as disrupting the Temple’s daily activities, and although Jesus’ Jewish followers remained involved with Temple worship, Christian theology eventually replaced Temple sacrifice with the sacrifice of Jesus, a shift articulated in the letter to the Hebrews. Thus, with the exception of the Sadducean priests, the various Jewish groups of the final centuries BCE and the first centuries CE were prepared to continue their worship apart from the Temple.

  Because the Temple was a place of sacrifice, it was also a place of sanctification. Worshipers in the Jerusalem Temple, as in most temples of Greco-Roman antiquity, had to be in a state of ritual purity before entering the sacred precincts. The Temple courts were therefore inappropriate places for men who had just had an emission of semen, or for women who were menstruating. Such traditions—many of the regulations are outlined in Leviticus and Numbers—concern the sanctity of the site, not the sinfulness of the person. To menstruate was not sinful, and sexual intercourse was mandated by God’s command to “be fruitful and multiply.” Many Temple-based purity regulations were extended to their homes by several communities of Jews, and each group determined both which rules to emphasize and how to interpret them. For example, havurah (fellowship) groups insisted on eating only food that was scrupulously tithed and prepared. For the majority of Jews during the early Roman period, however, purity concerns such as restrictions on menstruants or ejaculants were not emphasized; apart from the Temple, there was little need to maintain a state of ritual purity.

  In the absence of the Temple, the synagogue—the word itself is a Greek term that means “bring together”—became the most recognizable public Jewish institution. The synagogue and the Temple were not ultimately comparable institutions. The Temple was a place of sacrifice and pilgrimage; synagogues were not. Officially there was one Temple—although others did exist, prior to the time of Pompey, in Elephantine and Leontopolis in Egypt and, for the Samaritans, on Mount Gerizim—and it was controlled by priests. There were many synagogues, but they were apparently not, especially before 70 CE, dominated by the Pharisees, despite suggestions by the Gospels. The book of Acts (6.9) mentions synagogues of freed slaves, of Cyrenians, Alexandrians, and Cilicians. Synagogue activity included the reading and interpretation of scripture, and the institution also served as a meeting place and a house of study. From the first century CE comes this inscription from Jerusalem: “Theodotus, son of Vettenus, priest and leader of the synagogue, built the synagogue for the reading of the law and the teaching of the commandments, and the guest house and the rooms and the water supplies as an inn for those who come from abroad, which [synagogue] his fathers had founded and the elders, and Simonides.” Comparable to the synagogue is the proseuche, or place of prayer; the term appears in reference to Jewish gathering places in the Diaspora as well as in Galilee, and Acts 16.11–15 refers to a proseuche in Philippi, the Thracian city where Paul finds several women gathered and where Paul makes his first convert on European soil, Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth.

  Judea’s principal judicial body, the Sanhedrin, took its name and probably its form from the Greek institution known as the Synedrion, the “sitting together” or “assembly.” Rabbinic writings (especially Tractate Sanhedrin in the Mishnah) describe the seventy-one-member Great Sanhedrin that met in the Temple; this institution was headed by the high priest. The Gospels, which with some major discrepancies describe a trial of Jesus before the Sanhedrin, suggest that its membership included Sadducees, Pharisees, and priests. According to Josephus, the Sanhedrin met occasionally, whenever the high priest convened it for the major task of providing him guidance. Apparently it was rendered powerless under Herod, who remembered how it had once humiliated him, for there are no records of any action undertaken by it during his kingship. The Sanhedrin regained some authority under direct Roman rule. By that time its concerns included implementing religious law on such issues as agriculture and trade as well as maintaining peace with local Roman authorities.

  From Herodian Tetrarchs to Roman Governors

  Given Herod’s proclivity for removing both real and perceived threats to his power, succession upon his death in 4 BCE was less complicated than it might have otherwise been. The territory was divided among the king’s surviving sons: Archelaus, the heir according to Herod’s final wish, was appointed by Rome as ethnarch of Judea, Samaria, and Idumea; Antipas became tetrarch of Galilee and Perea; and Philip was named the tetrarch of Auranitis, Trachonitis, and probably Iturea. Only Philip would complete his rule.

  The transition began inauspiciously. Upon Herod’s death, the people of Jerusalem rebelled in reaction to the executions of the scribes Judas and Matthias. Archelaus sent in troops, and a massacre of the local population ensued. When he left for Rome with his brothers to confirm the distribution of territory, another revolt erupted in Judea. This time Varus, the Roman governor of Syria, quelled the conflict and left a legion in Jerusalem as insurance against further outbreaks. Yet the legion’s commander, Sabinus, oppressed the local population, and sporadic outbreaks continued. Concurrently, in Galilee and Perea new rebellions brewed. In response, Varus returned, crushed the resistance, and crucified over two thousand rebels.

  This presence of Roman troops in Judea facilitated Archelaus’s removal from office in 6 CE. Hearing substantial complaints by a delegation from Judea and Samaria, and perhaps concerned as well with Archelaus’s internal policies with respect to the trade route between Syria and Egypt, Augustus banished Herod’s first heir to Gaul. Judea and Samaria were incorporated into the province of Syria and consequently fell under the authority of a succession of Roman governors.

  In the absence of a local king, Rome permitted the Jewish population substantial political autonomy; the arrival of the Roman governor coincided with the reestablishment of the Sanhedrin with the high priest as its leader. Among the twenty-eight priests who held the office between Hyrcanus II and the destruction of the Temple, the most famous is also the one with the longest tenure, Joseph Caiaphas, who served from 18 to 36 CE. To avoid rebellion under this local authority, Rome reserved the right to name the high priest and to control the priestly vestments needed for the celebration of major holidays.

  Unlike the Herodian rulers, the governors had no sympathy for the population’s economic situation or religious sensibilities. Their policies of raising taxes, bringing Roman standards into Jerusalem, raiding the Temple treasury, and other such provocations would eventually lead to a full rebellion against Rome. Problems began almost immediately with Rome’s demand for a census. Inaugurated by Augustus for all provinces, this practice enabled the empire to determine taxation rates for land, material goods, and individuals. Josephus mentions the census under P. Sulpicius Quirinius, which he dates to the thirty-seventh year after the battle of Actium, or 6/7 CE. Luke’s story of the birth of Jesus records: “In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the
world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria” (Luke 2.1–2). By this device, Luke explains why Joseph, together with his very pregnant wife, Mary, made the journey from Galilee to Bethlehem; thereby, Jesus is born in Bethlehem and the prophecy from Micah 5.2 can be fulfilled. (The Gospel of Matthew depicts Mary and Joseph as already living in Bethlehem; they relocate to Nazareth after the death of Herod the Great for fear of persecution by Herod Archelaus.)

  The dates provided by Josephus and Luke are not easily reconciled. Luke 1.5 depicts the census as occurring during the reign of Herod the Great, who died in 4 BCE. Possibly Luke’s “first” is incorrect, and there was an earlier census under Herod the Great, prior to the incorporation of his territory into the provincial system, but direct attestation is lacking. For Luke the census, historical or not, serves as a dramatic apologetic device. Joseph and Mary, and therefore Jesus, are seen as adhering to the demands of the Roman government: travel anywhere when one is about to give birth, let alone by donkey over the rough terrain between Galilee and Bethlehem, surely proves dedication to duty. This loyalty is contrasted with another event, and another Galilean, mentioned by both Luke and Josephus in conjunction with the census, and this other reference illustrates the problems created by the Roman policy.

  Acts 5.37, in a speech attributed to Gamaliel I, states that “Judas the Galilean rose up at the time of the census and got people to follow him; he also perished, and all those who followed him were scattered.” According to Josephus, Judas, originally from Gamala in Galilee, protested against the census held by Quirinius. In this he was joined by a Pharisee named Zadok. Whether these leaders called for open revolt or simply urged noncooperation is unclear, but the premise for the protest is certain. Judas and his followers believed that the local population should not be forced to relinquish the freedom they had struggled to attain during Maccabean times, that there is “no king but God,” and that obeying Augustus would be a violation of the First Commandment. Probably killed for his views, Judas was survived by his equally zealous sons, James and Simon, who were to be executed during the reign of Tiberius for revolutionary activities, and Menahem, a leader of the revolt in Jerusalem just before the war of 66–70. The family line, and its legacy of zeal, continued until the fall of Masada.