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The King Who Deposed the Maccabees and Renovated the Temple

Dec. 19 2016

Herod the Great, who ruled Judea as a Roman vassal from 40 to 4 BCE, is primarily known today from the New Testament and Christian art, which portray him as a brutal tyrant. He doesn’t come off much better in the Talmud, in the writings of Josephus, or in other Jewish sources. Yet Herod, who was of Edomite and Arab ancestry and dubious Jewishness, saved Judea from foreign invasion, renovated the Temple (building what is now the Western Wall), and maintained an uneasy modus vivendi with the Pharisees. Antonio Piñero writes:

Having at first received the blessing of Rome, the independent Jewish kingdom [created by the Maccabean revolt] increasingly felt the pressure of the Roman republic’s expansion into the region. When Judea became its vassal state in 63 BCE, Rome found a willing collaborator in the form of Herod’s father Antipater, who was made procurator—financial governor—of the new province.

Divided over whether to fight the Romans or join them, civil war broke out among the [ruling] Hasmonean dynasty [established earlier by Judah the Maccabee]. Antipater’s son Herod appealed to Rome for aid, and was appointed king of Judea in 40 BCE. . . . With Roman help King Herod retook the city in 37 BCE, from where he developed excellent relations with high-ranking imperial figures, including Mark Antony.

[After defeating Mark Antony in the Roman civil war that followed], Octavian demanded an audience with Herod. Fearing for his life, the Judean king swore allegiance to Octavian [soon to be styled the Emperor Augustus], who confirmed Herod’s place as king. . . .

In the eyes of his pious, Jewish subjects, however, Herod’s loyalty to the pagan Romans and admiration of Hellenistic style smacked of treachery. He had been put on the throne of Judea only after considerable Jewish blood had been shed by Roman forces. . . .Worst of all, Herod rode roughshod over the customs and laws of the Jewish religion.

Read more at National Geographic

More about: Herod, History & Ideas

The Summary: 10/7/20

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.

Read more at Mosaic