Herod the Great

Today, Herod is remembered as the tyrant who, according to the Bible, sent his soldiers to Bethlehem to murder all its male babies lest one of them grow up to claim his throne.

The principal source for the life of Herod is the works of (Flavius) Josephus, a Jewish historian who wrote near the end of the first century.

Perhaps, Telushkin suggests, the terrible legacy of Herod is one of the reasons the whole conversion issue traditionally stirred up (and continues to stir up) Jewish "anxieties" about conversion:"the fear that the conversion of any Gentiles, forcible or peaceful, is a perilous undertaking" (p.

Herod is a typical Oriental tyrant, one who strangles his elder brother after twelve years' imprisonment in a cistern to satisfy his incestuous lust for his sister-in-law, as the Second Soldier reveals (585).

The discovery that Herod is thought to have died in 4BC - well before the birth date of Christ - has not helped to clear his name.

Herod is informed of the birth of Christ, and gathers information concerning the Christ.

Herod is intensely superstitious and played brilliantly.

"Dramatically, it's a story with tremendous power, but there's a kind of irony that the one thing that most people know about Herod is probably wrong," said Peter Richardson, author of Herod: King of the Jews, Friend of the Romans, who is a professor at the University of Toronto.

Herod is one of history's vilest characters, but there's not enough of him or his marauding troops, with the film content to plod from point A to point B.

For his part, Herod is certain that "John, whom I beheaded, has been raised"--and there follows the story.

In light of Herod's perspective, Salome's view of the moon as both "money" and a "virgin" points to her awareness that her body, at least as far as Herod is concerned, has an exchangeable value.