Herod the Great

123:0.5Mary had never fully given up the idea that Je­sus ought to grow up in Beth­le­hem, the City of David. Joseph did not re­ally be­lieve that their son was to be­come a kingly de­liv­erer of Is­rael. Be­sides, he knew that he him­self was not re­ally a de­scen­dant of David; that his be­ing reck­oned among the off­spring of David was due to the adop­tion of one of his an­ces­tors into the Da­vidic line of de­scent. Mary, of course, thought the City of David the most ap­pro­pri­ate place in which the new can­di­date for David’s throne could be reared, but Joseph pre­ferred to take chances with Herod An­tipas rather than with his brother Archelaus. He en­ter­tained great fears for the child’s safety in Beth­le­hem or in any other city in Judea, and sur­mised that Archelaus would be more likely to pur­sue the men­ac­ing poli­cies of his fa­ther, Herod, than would An­tipas in Gal­i­lee. And be­sides all these rea­sons, Joseph was out­spo­ken in his pref­er­ence for Gal­i­lee as a bet­ter place in which to rear and ed­u­cate the child, but it re­quired three weeks to over­come Mary’s ob­jec­tions.

121:2.11Herod built the har­bor of Cae­sarea, which fur­ther aided in mak­ing Pales­tine the cross­roads of the civ­i­lized world. He died in 4 B.C., and his son Herod An­tipas gov­erned Gal­i­lee and Perea dur­ing Je­sus’ youth and min­istry to A.D. 39. An­tipas, like his fa­ther, was a great builder. He re­built many of the cities of Gal­i­lee, in­clud­ing the im­por­tant trade cen­ter of Sep­pho­ris.

121:2.9The Jews were un­usu­ally ap­pre­hen­sive and sus­pi­cious dur­ing the times of Je­sus be­cause they were then ruled by an out­sider, Herod the Idumean, who had seized the over­lord­ship of Judea by clev­erly in­gra­ti­at­ing him­self with the Ro­man rulers. And though Herod pro­fessed loy­alty to the He­brew cer­e­mo­nial ob­ser­vances, he pro­ceeded to build tem­ples for many strange gods.

185:4.1When Herod An­tipas stopped in Je­ru­sa­lem, he dwelt in the old Mac­cabean palace of Herod the Great, and it was to this home of the for­mer king that Je­sus was now taken by the tem­ple guards, and he was fol­lowed by his ac­cusers and an in­creas­ing mul­ti­tude. Herod had long heard of Je­sus, and he was very cu­ri­ous about him. When the Son of Man stood be­fore him, on this Fri­day morn­ing, the wicked Idumean never for one mo­ment re­called the lad of for­mer years who had ap­peared be­fore him in Sep­pho­ris plead­ing for a just de­ci­sion re­gard­ing the money due his fa­ther, who had been ac­ci­den­tally killed while at work on one of the pub­lic build­ings. As far as Herod knew, he had never seen Je­sus, al­though he had wor­ried a great deal about him when his work had been cen­tered in Gal­i­lee. Now that he was in cus­tody of Pi­late and the Judeans, Herod was de­sirous of see­ing him, feel­ing se­cure against any trou­ble from him in the fu­ture. Herod had heard much about the mir­a­cles wrought by Je­sus, and he re­ally hoped to see him do some won­der.

121:2.10The friendly re­la­tions of Herod with the Ro­man rulers made the world safe for Jew­ish travel and thus opened the way for in­creased Jew­ish pen­e­tra­tion even of dis­tant por­tions of the Ro­man Em­pire and of for­eign treaty na­tions with the new gospel of the king­dom of heaven. Herod’s reign also con­tributed much to­ward the fur­ther blend­ing of He­brew and Hel­lenis­tic philoso­phies.