Who Was The Real Herod The Great? | Biblical Tyrant | Timeline

the massacre of the innocence is one of the bloodiest stories of the Bible Herod the Great King of the Jews bordered the murder of thousands of babies in order to kill the infant Jesus on the account from Matthew's Gospel rests Herod's reputation as a cold-blooded tyrant he sent in his troops but Jesus and his parents had escaped to Egypt Herod was furious when he realized he'd been outwitted and in Bethlehem in its surrounding district he had killed all the male children who were two years and under [Music] but there is much more to Herod than his infamous role as murderer in the Nativity story he was a shrewd politician and visionary leader the 37 years he ruled Judea the land we now call Israel a puppet King installed by Rome he fought to win the hearts of a people who despised him he kept the peace transformed Judea into an international trading state and built astonishing buildings on a grand scale there is no doubt that Herod killed to protect his throne he even executed his own sons but modern science suggests the bloody axe that Herod ordered in his final days may have been the result of madness a symptom of an agonizing illness from his deathbed he demanded mass executions but did this jealous volatile king really order the massacre of the innocents as the Bible says as this one story obscured the real Herod [Music] we know more about Herod than we do about Jesus his life and times were faithfully recorded in extraordinary detail by an historian named Josephus under Herod the land of Judea became an enterprise zone and the Jewish faith so fashionable that even some Romans took up the One God idea but there was a problem one that right from the start blighted the reign of the king of the Jews he wasn't Jewish Herod was an Arab his mother was a princess from the rose-red city of Petra in what is now Jordan his father was an Arab diplomat from a desert tribe that had been forced into Judaism at the point of a sword to real Jews Herod came from a family of heathens they'd never call him King one way or another he was never accepted by the Jewish nation as the legitimate ruler over the land over the Jewish nation simply because the Bible said that only King David and one of his dynasty can rule the Jews [Music] Herod was born in 73 BC at that time Judea was part of the Roman Empire but ruled from Jerusalem by a popular Jewish royal family the Hasmoneans the ultra religious Hasmoneans were direct descendants of King David Herod's Arab father was their prime minister and a statesman of genius a man the Romans could do business with the boy Herod grew up in Jerusalem playing in the corridors of power but he might as well have been in Rome his father was on first-name terms with Julius Caesar who bestowed on him Rome's greatest honor and that itself is a distinctive mark of being a family that's on the rise perhaps even on the make in his teens Herod was already being groomed for power the key to his future success would be his relationship with Rome and that started with a close friendship with Rome's man in the east playboy and politician Mark Anthony Mark Anthony drank a lot laughed loudly made jokes and he was also men of action though Herod thought much more than Mark Anthony Mark Anthony only acted without further thinking but still they they went together pretty well I think Herod got his first taste of power at the age of 26 when a rebellion broke out in the wild northern frontier territory of Galilee the locals refused to pay taxes and the Romans sent Herod in as governor he was efficient and brutal he was very good at taxation he was also very good at catching and executing terrorists who were active at the time Josephus speaks of brigands is the word Josephus usually uses and of course you can wonder were they criminals out plain and simple or were they nationalist criminals who were thinking of taking advantage of the Roman problems to reestablish some sort of house mony and sovereignty it's hard to know but in any case Herod is said to have caught them and executed them and thereby even gotten into trouble some with the Jewish authorities in Jerusalem were upset about this youngster he was in his mid-20s at the time or perhaps a little later taking the loss so much into his own hands that he was also executing people not just arresting them but killing Jews even if they were terrorists didn't make him too popular at home the aristocracy of Jerusalem demanded a trial to punish the young upstart but the Romans put pressure on the courts and the case was dropped Herod was now their man it has clearly demonstrated that Herod is a man of action and that he acts really decisively and and can seize the moment and those kinds of qualities probably are what endeared him to Roman interests Herod was appointed Roman governor in Syria he also took his first wife Doris their son was the apple of Herod's eye but after six years of marriage he banished mother and child from his household he had fallen for a Jewish princess Marianna would have been a very young girl at this time as I reconstruct the chronology she was probably only 13 or 14 at the most at the time Mary ami would be marriage' belad 16 but to Herod she was worth waiting for she was royalty the grand daughter of the Hasmonean King by marrying a princess he hoped to gain a place among the Jewish aristocracy her blood would guarantee their children the legitimacy he craved Mary ami was an investment in his future what status he had Herod owed to his link with Rome through Mark Antony but the Roman had fallen under the spell of the world's most desirable woman Cleopatra Mark Antony was responsible for Rome's interest in the eastern Mediterranean including Judea but while he cavorted in Egypt he neglected his military duties Herod watched in dismay as the land of the Jews was invaded the Parthian a superpower to rival the Romans occupied Jerusalem and installed their own Jewish puppet King Herod acted decisively he fled Harrod rode out to rally neighboring rulers to organize a counter-attack if Judea were no longer part of the Roman Empire Herod's dreams of power and influence would come to nothing Herod makes a lightning escape out of Jerusalem heading southeast towards Petra but Petra is used to allow him to him and so he went to Alexandria where he had a meeting with Cleopatra Herod leaves Alexandria boards a ship in the middle of winter for Rome to seek Rome's help in this desperate situation even pirates stayed off the Mediterranean after the Ottoman news of Herod's daring voyage reached throne before he did when Herod appeared in the Senate house his Roman masters were already impressed this crucial meeting would change his life forever when he got to Rome the the two most powerful people in Rome where Mark Antony and Octavian yet had a long and quite satisfactory connection with Mark Antony he had had virtually no contact with Octavian and Mark Antony was in effect his advocate in Rome Herod had never been to Rome but he must have appeared very confident he traded on his father's good name to lend weight to his story you knew my father and he was your man in Judea and now he's dead and everybody else is dead and the Parthians man is king of Judea he pleaded for continued support for the Hasmonean royal family but the Senators didn't care who ruled you dear they just wanted it Roman again the Parthian is defeated and a hard man in place to keep order I think it was a complete surprise to him but in fact the Senate preferred to take the action that Octavian and Mark Antony had proposed Herod's diplomatic mission had become a job interview the Senate pledged military support to remove the Parthians from Judea but they were not going to restore the rule of the Hasmoneans the hardman they needed was before them Herod would be the new King of the Jews whether the Jews liked it or not in 40 BC the Romans made Herod king of the Jews before he could take the throne he had to rid Judea of the Parthian invaders but the Jews preferred the king the Parthian 's had installed Herod was not welcomed with Roman military help Herod began a long campaign against his own people and it was only in the summer to be safe let's say of 37 BCE in other words just about three years after the time when he actually was given the crown in Rome's that he was actually able to take his capital and set himself up as King it was a hollow victory the Roman oppressors might have named him King of the Jews but to his subjects only a descendant of King David was eligible his authority was constantly in question in his bid to gain legitimacy in the eyes of his people Herod had now married his Hasmonean Princess Mary Army she bore him to blue blooded Jewish sons but there was a problem Herod had deposed Mary armies grandfather to become King he adored her she loathed him as a result Herod was wracked with jealousy and paranoia whenever he went on a dangerous mission he left instructions for Mary army to be killed if he failed to return then as now Jerusalem was a city dedicated to worship the real power in the land was held by the religious authorities on the Temple Mount it was the site of King Solomon's Temple the Holy of Holies to shore up his position Herod desperately needed to win over the politician priests he proposed Mary Ami's younger brother Aris table ulis for the job of high priest at the Temple of Jerusalem the teenager was of course a Hasmonean Prince when the boy first officiated at the altar jubilant crowds swarmed to the Temple Mount swooning with delight and hailing the return of the Jewish Royals [Applause] as a non-jew Herod couldn't even watch from the back this appears to lead to a certain amount of jealousy on on Herod's part and Josephus tells an account of a celebration which is followed by a pool party in his palace town in Jericho Jericho the lush steamy weekend destination for The Jerusalem Jet Set and a royal resort was about to become the setting for a hideous murder as his family settled in Herod crazed by his lust for power formulated his plan it was in this very swimming pool that the Royals and their friends splashed and chatted while a group of muscular guards played what must have looked like a boisterous game in the deep end heiress Tobias darling of the masses was in their midst on Herod's orders his wife's beloved brother was held under the water and drowned as the court went into mourning Herod was summoned to Mark Antony to answer a charge of murder the dead boy's mother was bent on revenge and she called on an old friend for help Cleopatra was only too happy to demand that Mark Antony punished Herod preferably with death that would leave her free to take over his territories and in particular the Oasis of Jericho once an Egyptian possession in the event Mark Antony let his old friend Herod off the hook but appeased Cleopatra by giving her Jericho as a gift with its citrus groves date wine industry and balsam plantations Jericho was a jewel in Judas crown rather than occupy her new possession Cleopatra leased it back to Herod at vast expense for three years it cost him almost half the national income once again the impotent Herod was humiliated and reminded of his reliance on Mark Antony and Rome Cleopatra's ambition is simply to reassert the control of Egypt over the whole of this region as was true in much earlier years Herod resented Cleopatra's hold over Mark Antony and she delighted in baiting him when she came to Judea to survey her properties she demanded that he escort her and even tried to seduce him Herod was the only man known to have resisted the world's most irresistible woman [Music] right from the start of his reign Herod was a man in search of a public-relations miracle having destroyed Jerusalem in a ghastly siege he set about rebuilding it with vigor his architects went to work on a project so monumental it remains to this day the most famous landmark in Israel the Temple Mount it was the most elaborate lavish monumental whatever all the superlatives buildings it's really a genius idea and and here no doubt Herod was monumental the original temple built by King Solomon was the most sacred place in the Jewish world over 900 years old it was a virtual ruin while as a non Jew he would never be allowed to enter it Herod was bent on giving his people a new temple in a glorious setting but it wasn't easy the priesthood required him to lay out all his building materials before work began Josephus says that when Herod began the project there was a lot of suspicion on the part of Jews that he would manage to destroy things and not to rebuild them because in the process of renovating you have to destroy as well and he tried to away their doubts and Josephus even has him betraying some resentment at them he said look where were the husband's all these years they were high priests they didn't even attempt such a project it took Herod eight years to create a new Holy of Holies and dramatically expand the area of the Temple Mount itself he surrounded it with colonnaded walkways and dominated the southern end with a building that was part Palace and part shopping mal a vantage point from which to keep an eye on the turbulent priests below the site was opened up to all Jews Gentiles and even women making it a center for business as well as devotion this is a street built by her the great along the Temple Mount wall this was the main set of Jerusalem of that time people used to walk here from the north to the south people used to cross it on the way to Temple Mount it was like the fifth avenue of those days and no doubt the Jesus as a Jew coming from the Galilee with his father and later on spend time here in Jerusalem no doubt that he walked here as far as we can judge this is the area where the moneychangers used to be sometime these took their tables and walk up to thermal mound to make a better business and that's what Jesus talked about when he tried to fold them to Temple Mount back to the market area it was here the rabbi's of whom we have there literature beginning and they would say the third and fourth and fifth centuries of the Common Era who have every reason in the world to say nasty things about Herod and they do say lots of nasty things about her nevertheless say on a couple of occasions that whoever has not seen the temple which Herod built has never seen a beautiful building so there they grudgingly but nevertheless they say it [Music] the Temple Mount has been fought over ever since Herod's Jewish constructions were replaced by invaders with newer faiths at present Jews and Christians are unable to visit what is now an exclusively Islamic site Jews still worship at Herod's western wall [Music] rebuilding the temple was undoubtedly a shrewd move and an expensive gesture by the new king I can imagine that their main motivation was political in terrible politics I'm not sure that healthy great was a great believer in good but all Herod's palaces featured Jewish ritual baths and his households observed strict religious law Herod may not have been of pure Jewish blood but is it possible that his rebuilding of the temple was motivated by belief from my point of view Herod was a convinced Jew and he saw this as a way of both making a mark on on Judaism and of winning support of Jewish authorities and of the Jewish people at large by the middle years of his reign Herod was exhausted balancing the need to please Rome placate Jerusalem and monitor Palace gossip for threats to his throne meant there was no rest then in 31 BC the very root of his power was threatened simmering ill feeling between Mark Antony and the Emperor Octavian erupted into civil war if his friend Mark Antony were to lose Herod feared he too would fall from favor in September of that year Octavian defeated Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the great sea battle of Actium but Herod wasn't there to support his patron Herod should have been there would have been there and would have been there unmarked Antony side in effect on the losing side had Mark Antony not wanted Herod to intervene with the Nabataeans Herod was kept busy in the desert fighting a small border war now he faced a crucial decision the man who had made him King and to whom he owed everything had been defeated his future hanging in the balance Herod once again braved winter seas to visit Octavian the new ruler of the Roman world if he was to remain King of the Jews he would have to perform a spectacular u-turn [Music] in 30 BC Herod's patron Mark Antony took poison and died in his lovers arms he did so knowing that Herod the man he had called his friend had already betrayed him no sooner had Mark Antony been defeated at Actium than Herod sought a new alliance with his enemy Octavian Herod's future rested on his ability to win the patronage of the new power in Rome he goes explicitly without any of the paraphernalia of his royal status without his crown without his robes he goes in effect cap in hand before Octavian and he says I in effect I make no apology I was a supporter of Mark Antony's I should have been at Actium I would have been fighting on Mark Antony side I was loyal to Mark Antony during that whole period but now he said I will offer my loyalty to you I will be loyal from now on to Octavian and the same kind of loyalty that I showed to Mark Antony will now be shown to you Octavian surprisingly in some ways accepts the offer and confirms him in his kingship offers him more lands to to rule adds to the size of Judea right at that moment inroads as a response to this rather object sort of picture of Herod on his knees before Octavian it appeared to have been yet another triumph for Herod silver tongue but Octavian remarkable open handedness towards the friend of his old enemy may have had more to do with chests of silver Octavian was bankrupt Herod came in with at least 700 talents of pure silver one talent his thirty kilos as much as one man can carry a huge amount and from from this background is quite it is quite obvious that it was not a problem for our boosters to keep Herod in power one of the main items in the fire which shows that Herod was a wonderful diplomat was the way he was able to save himself time and again after he had been backing the wrong Roman Herod had a new sponsor and even more territory he returned to Judea in triumph but his joy was to be short-lived there were rumours that his wife Mary ami the woman he loved more than anything had a lover and Herod became convinced that in his absence Mary Ammy had had an affair and was in fact trying to promote the interests of somebody with whom she had had an affair and he seems unable to deal with those suspicions in any rational intelligent way Herod had Mariani executed it may have been a politically useful marriage but Herod was also obsessed with her he took to the wilderness in despair his will to live extinguished he goes into a deep deep depression and himself almost dies as a result of that very tragic incident something that he seems never to have quite gotten over with the death of Mary ami Herod had reached a turning point henceforth he abandoned all efforts at impressing the Jewish elite with his Hasmonean connections he could never change what he was but he could glorify his name with monuments that would last forever the main thing to remember is the kings in antiquity had two avenues of getting himself a place in posterity he could either do wars where they could build or they could do both and Herod as a vassal King was not allowed to be involved in Wars he had no option of a foreign policy of his own the only thing he'd do was build he built massively the more difficult the location or outrageous the engineering required the happier it made Herod there had long been a mountaintop stronghold overlooking the Dead Sea at Masada Herod transformed it into a luxurious Palace complex that appeared to taunt gravity 450 meters high flat top mountain and unbelievable size absolutely with its northern Palace always in shade with a sauna hanging on the cliff with the beautiful view over the Dead Sea just marvelous play of environment and space and classical architecture Herod was a creative man with a knife of form and function and the resources to realize his most outrageous visions he required his architects to think the unthinkable this is one of the quite a few buildings will I claim that the great idea is not in particular the one that an architect bought up you have to learn in a school to do it this way it's just a logic and imagination together and he wrote that both of them in tones but the greatest example of creativity from this most destructive of Kings was a feat of engineering so audacious it places him amongst the greatest builders of the ancient world on a coastline without any natural foothold he created a vast artificial deep seaport what L did was unprecedented not only among the Jewish people but rarely repeated by anybody else including the vast mighty Roman Empire Avner Rabanne of Haifa University believes Herod's port of Caesarea should be counted amongst the seven wonders of the world I mean the pyramids by far more more protruded more more impressive but much less functional Herod knew that to become a great trading nation Judea had to use the Mediterranean he could then steal business from Alexandria but first he needed to change Jewish thinking about the sea to build an harbour of such a scale following a very terrestrial non might in tradition of his Jewish people that this is what made this Harbor so unique the secret of his extraordinary design Lena Roman innovation volcanic ash cement that hardened in seawater Herod's engineers filled hundreds of wooden pontoons with the powder and sank them to form the foundations for the new harbor today only divers can examine the remaining traces of the ancient artificial reef they have survived for 2,000 years but above the surface there is little left to see first of all forget about the modern one just the middle of nowhere in in relation to the ancient one what you have from the ancient one if you see down here this nicely cut flat what seemed to be bedrock it's actually the top of the erosion mold that continues or let's say a quarter mile further west turning half a mile to the north so it's rather large area it's about 40 hectares of confined ocean until Harrods bold move a late harvest in Egypt meant grain carrying ships bound for Rome had to brave winter seas now they had a safe haven in which to sit out the storms it was an instant success the harbor became a giant cash machine for Judea and a source of pride to Herod one has to admit imagine what sense of achievement it would be to take a ocean-like set uncontrolled wild effective disciple it into well confined well protected beautifully function and instrumental entity to serve the lord's demand the Lord in this particular case was held the Great Caesarea started as a harbor and became a city it was Herod's ideal world a secular metropolis where it didn't matter where you came from Caesarea wasn't just built by Herod it represented everything he stood for and so it was a city that we looked in its direction westwards across the Mediterranean at the same time as it was drawing trade in from the east towards it and and acting as a great warehouse areas so it's a very liberal City there are Jews living in the city there's a small Jewish community but the city itself is understood to be a city that is built essentially for a Gentile population Caesarea was and still is a boomtown for the middle classes commuting to destinations all around the Mediterranean and beyond well Josephus says that Herod built Syria for the he perky and the harbor for the navigators ceasarea it's natural that it attracted the people that could sense that they can grasp the opportunity of prosperity and they of course they were a Gentile there were Samaritans Phoenicians came Syrians Greek from all over the Mediterranean to settle here the period was very open I think basically when you look at Caesarea in a big way Herod built it to be a a opposite balance a counterpoint to Jerusalem and you have on the coast Caesarea and you have inland in Jerusalem as it were God's City you have Caesar City and God's City the way the rabbi's of the Talmud will eventually put it they will say that Jerusalem Caesarea when one goes up the other goes down 28 years into his reign Herod was entitled to feel pleased with himself he'd rebuilt the City of God and created a city of business the Romans were pleased and his subjects were rich but the remaining years of his reign would be characterized by murder and madness as he reached his 60s Herod could look back with satisfaction he'd kept Rome happy made his nation rich and built monuments that would last forever but the future was less certain Herod couldn't decide who should succeed him and in his paranoia became suspicious that his children were plotting against him in 14 BC Herod was so desperate for someone he could trust that he brought back a wife and a son he'd banished 30 years previously Doris and four-year-old Antipater had been thrown out when he wanted Mary a me now an tippity would become a front-runner in the battle for the throne Herod's next two sons Alexander and Aristotle aswer his children by Mary ami they were also strong contenders but Herod didn't trust them they were Hasmonean aristocrats part of the background was some snootiness on their part that they in fact had been educated in Rome and he was this provincial type who was getting old and hadn't had a very good education hadn't really spent much time in the big city at all I think that was probably part of it they were named as his successors in his early wills and it was clear that they would in effect in fact take over Herod thought they were scheming against them my guess is that there's probably some truth to that suspicion on his part Herod thought that they were trying to win over the support of the army it didn't help matters that he'd executed their mother they may have heard the rumors that ever since her death he'd kept her body embalmed in a jar of honey and that in his madness he visited her at night to continue their relationship for years Herod tried to get along with them but they would always be a threat in 7 BC his temper got the better of him and he had the scheming past strangled if we want to say something for him in in his favour he was a politician and he was for him was important to have the power so everything was related that as a king to power and so he could the kill wife no brothers at hand and is not the case but the sons friends and so on and relatives because he saw that there were some possibilities that they were working against his rule but things were about to get even darker for the Troubled monarchy the Bible tells of three wise men that appeared in Judea in the 34th year of his reign they brought gifts for the king of the Jews but it wasn't Herod they had in mind Matthew tells the account of the Magi who come to Judea seeking a new Jewish king when they do that they naturally go to Jerusalem Harrod listened with growing fury when they spoke of a star and a prophecy according to the Gospel of st. Matthew he played innocent go and find out all about the child and when you have found him let me know so that I too may go and do him homage I was the story of the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem and the massacre of the innocents in Bethlehem is certainly the most famous story about her which people on the street will know according to the Bible Herod soldiers advanced on Bethlehem but God had warned Joseph in a dream and the Holy Family escaped to Egypt the king's revenge was Swift Herod was furious when he realized he'd been outwitted and in Bethlehem and its surrounding district he had killed all the male children who were 2 years and under [Music] Herod was at times a bloody king but did he order the massacre of the innocents we only have a few lines in Matthew's Gospel as evidence the Gospel of st. Luke confirms that Jesus was born in the time of Herod but doesn't mention the mass killing of the baby boys Josephus from whom we know so much about Herod and who delights in cataloguing the Kings darker deeds never mentions the slaughter at all somebody like that would seem to be such a monster that other stories like this can easily be made up about him I myself have some question about whether or not that incident Matthew actually took place Herod the evil tyrant of the Nativity story was certainly guilty of murdering those who threatened his throne but it is possible that the massacre of the innocents as told by Matthew never took place whether the details of the story are true or not there's evidence that in the last years of Herod's reign he began killing on an unprecedented scale settling scores and murdering political rivals the period of Herod's greatest atrocities coincides with his own physical decay remember that he is almost 70 years of age that's a very advanced age for somebody he must have been a very strong man through most of his life to have survived that long now I think they his whole body is giving giving up and his mind is perhaps giving up at the same time Herod was carried here to his newest palace in Jericho the record speaks of a sickness with the hallmarks of an Old Testament plague Josephus gives a very graphic description of a painful illness focusing on the stomach and also on the mind of Herod he's going out of his mind he's gonna have his mind in pain he's stinking some versions will tell us about worms as well and his flesh is decaying from his deathbed Herod embarked on an orgy of violence it began when word reached him that a high spirited mob had torn down the Roman Eagle he had placed provocatively above one of the entrances to the Temple Mount some young students took the opportunity at the urging of one of their teachers to remove that Eagle from the temple viewing it as offensive they did so and of course Herod's retribution fell very quickly he executed the students he executed they the teacher who was responsible for encouraging them it was a rather perhaps unnecessary action on his part but one that seemed to him essential because it it challenged his authority impatient for power Dorris his son an tibetan now try to mount a palace coup that would put him on the throne Herod's firstborn the son he had brought back from exile to succeed him had jumped too soon his father rallied finding the strength to order his immediate execution Herod had just five days to live but he had a lot more killing to do all his life had been rejected by the Jewish aristocracy and now he'd get his revenge in his dying days Herod ordered Jewish Nobles to be brought down to Jericho where he is and when he dies to execute them all his sister refuses to carry out this command in his palace courtiers attended him round the clock neither prayers nor potions made any difference driven mad by pain Herod attempted to end his misery with a blunt fruit knife like most rulers of the time Herod had used violence to stay in power but the insane bloodlust of his last days stands out 2,000 years after his death modern science suggests that Herod's violence and paranoia may have been directly linked to his physical disease at the Veterans Hospital in Seattle pathologist Yan Hirshman has studied the accounts of Herod's last days he believes the lurid details mask a description of actual symptoms Herod's final killing spree might have been the result of acute kidney disease that literally drove him mad in Josephus his case he describes Herod is becoming increasingly depressed actually attempting suicide unsuccessfully and becoming more paranoid and all these features have been seen in patients with untreated chronic kidney disease as Herod's kidneys shrank to half their size his body would have been engulfed by poisons presumably this is what Herod's kidney would have liked when he had chronic kidney disease he was an enormous amount of discomfort partly because of the itching secondly because of the abdominal pain which again was very severe third because of the movements of his limbs which again was described as being very uncomfortable Josephus also speaks of the Royal genitals producing worms Herod's madness is even more understandable he may have had gangrene of the scrotum when this gangrene occurs in the genital area sometimes the surface of the scrotum the whole skin slough off leaving bare the material underneath and for somebody unfamiliar with the anatomy of the male genitalia the what the scene after the scrotum is removed is what looks very worm like when Herod finally died he was taken to the only site he'd named after himself Herodium was a palace sunk in the top of a man-made mountain below it or inspiring pleasure gardens were his marble tomb lay waiting where thousands of soldiers and courtiers waited as he was interred or may have been according to Josephus his golden casket lies somewhere here but it has yet to be found [Music] Herod's death left a vacuum his heirs couldn't fill within a century the Romans were burning his temple and persecuting the Jews perhaps the stability he created his Herod's best Monument I'm sure Herod would have rather have died about seven eight years earlier than he really did die had that been the case he would have died as someone who kept the peace built monumental things all over the country which remained and that last decade of troubles with his family and killing too many people would not have occurred a man of complex origins always the outsider Herod worked tirelessly to unite subjects of all backgrounds did he succeed where so many other rulers of his land have failed with the Gentiles and with the Jews he achieved a lot he was the person who could rule this country in the best way and I don't think that in the before and after we had such a personality who could the United such a difficult region Harrod longed for recognition and appreciation but he achieved neither 2,000 years later in spite of his creative achievements he is only remembered for ordering an act of cold-blooded murder that may never have happened at all you

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Keywords: king herod, herod the great, king herod documentary, herod the great documentary, the real herod, herod the great (monarch), biblical documentaries, bible documentaries, bible documentary, timeline documentary, full documentary, full length documentaries, 2017 documentary, history documentary, documentary history, shows topic, the bible (religious text), timeline documentary series, timeline documentaries, Historical documentaries, Tarawi, Taraweeh, Iftar, Mubarak, Kareem

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Length: 48min 27sec (2907 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 16 2018