Jewish, Israeli, and Zionist perceptions of Herod.
Much is known from ancient authors and archaeological remains about the life and rule of Herod the Great (73-4 BCE), who was appointed king of Judaea by the Romans in 40 BCE. In later Christian mythology, Herod was depicted as an archetypical tyrant who had ordered a massacre of infants in Bethlehem at the time of the birth of Jesus, but Jewish tradition was oblivious of the Christian myth and showed little interest in Herod until the nineteenth century, when he began to be seen by some as an example of a powerful Jew who had negotiated a line between subservience to the ruling power and service to his people.
These Jewish depictions of Herod have mutated over the past two centuries under the influence of Zionist ideologies and in light of the establishment of the State of Israel and archaeological finds, and the image of Herod has been employed for markedly different and novel rhetorical purposes over recent years both by Israelis themselves and by others in relation to the actions of the Israeli state.
Martin Goodman is Emeritus Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Oxford and an Emeritus Fellow of Wolfson College. He is a Supernumerary Fellow and former President of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies. Among his books on Jewish and Roman history are Rome and Jerusalem (Allen Lane, 2007) and Herod the Great: Jewish King in a Roman World (Yale University Press, 2024).
