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Herod & the Hasmoneans in the time of the biblical Jesus

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ben Ananus, ben Caiaphas, Boethus, Cantharus and 13 others
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  •
    Jonathan Aristobulus III Last Hasmonean High Priest (-53 - -36)
    Aristobulus III (53 BCE – 36 BCE )===was the last scion of the Hasmonean royal house, brother of Herod the Great's wife Mariamne, and paternal grandson of Aristobulus II. He was a favorite of the peopl...
  • Pontius Pilate, 5th procurator of Judea (deceased)
    Pontius Pilatus (Greek: Πόντιος Πιλᾶτος, Pontios Pīlātos), known in the English-speaking world as Pontius Pilate (ˈpɒntʃəs ˈpaɪlət), was the fifth Prefect of the Roman province of Judaea, from AD 26–36...
  • Juba II, King of Mauretania (-52 - 23)
    Josephus calls him 'Juba, king of Libya' in "The Jewish War" 2:115ID: I62177Name: Juba II of MauretaniaGiven Name: Juba IISurname: of MauretaniaSex: M_UID: DC00C68F84F614488EEEC4D9E2B35E3A4D47Change Da...
  • James "the Just" (c.-1 - c.62)
    The Siblings of Jesus: In the Christian New Testament: Mark 6:3 [ Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?” ...
  • Jesus (c.-4 - c.33)
    Parents, marriage and other relations: Jesus . Genealogy of Jesus . More resources at the bottom. For speculative genealogies of Jesus, please see the projects: Jesus of Nazareth- Speculative ...

I'm trying to trace the degree of interconnection that occurs in the biblical genealogies across the Rome-Jerusalem-Alexandria axis at the time of the inception of Christianity.

This is something of a personal sketch-pad for an aspect of my PhD on the 'Name of the Father' so it's not a show-case project. That doesn't mean I'm not interested in help researching or analyzing. Sharon Doubell March 2012

"...yet another attempt to break open the tomb where once Jesus lay... to find a note that read “Gone Fishing,” in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek." R. Joseph Hoffmann

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Hasmonean Kingdom of Israel (140 – 37 BCE) מלכות בית חשמונאי

Hasmonean leaders - מנהיגים מבית חשמונאי

*Maccabees - המכבים

*Ethnarchs (Princes) and High Priests - אתנרכים וכהנים גדולים

*Kings and High Priests - מלכים וכהנים גדולים

Jewish tradition holds that the claiming of kingship by the later Hasmoneans led to their eventual downfall, since that title was only to be held by descendants of the line of King David.
The Hasmonean bureaucracy was filled with men with Greek names, and the dynasty eventually became very Hellenized. Frequent dynastic quarrels ensued. Josephus' accounts are in many cases our sole source of information about the Hasmoneans.

(Thanks to Malka & Yigal for many of these links.)

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High Priest under Herodians and Romans

During the First Jewish-Roman War

  • Phannias ben Samuel 67-70

The House of Boethus

  • Simon ben Boethus 23-5 BC (his daughter Mariamne was third wife of Herod the Great)
  • Joazar, son of Boethus (4 BC and before 6 AD), unpopular and an advocate of compliance with the Roman census
  • Eleazar, son of Boethus (4-3 BC)
  • Simon Cantheras, son of Boethus (41-42 AD)
  • Elioneus, son of Simon Cantheras (43-44 AD)
  • Joshua, son of Gamaliel (64 AD), whose wife Martha belonged to the house

The House of Ananus

Jesuses Mentioned by Josephus

Life:
So Jesus, the son of Sapphias, one of those whom we have already mentioned as the leader of a seditious tumult of mariners and poor people,11 prevented us, and took with him certain Galileans, and set the entire palace on fire, and thought he should get a great deal of money thereby, because he saw some of the roofs gilt with gold. They also plundered a great deal of the furniture: which was done without our approbation. For after we had discoursed with Capellus, and the principal men of the city, we departed from Bethmaus, and went into the upper Galilee. But Jesus, and his party slew all the Greeks that were inhabitants of Tiberias: and as many others as were their enemies before the war began.http://penelope.uchicago.edu/josephus/autobiog.html

King Herod the Great

Herod (73-4 BCE) was the pro-Roman king of the small Jewish state in the last decades before the common era. He started his career as a general, but the Roman statesman Mark Antony recognized him as the Jewish national leader. During a war against the Parthians, Herod was removed from the scene, but the Roman Senate made him king and gave him soldiers to seize the the throne. As 'friend and ally of the Romans' he was not a truly independent king; however, Rome allowed him a domestic policy of his own. Although Herod tried to respect the pious feeling of his subjects, many of them were not content with his rule, which ended in terror.

He was succeeded by his sons:

Herod's reign

Herod's monarchy was based on foreign weapons; the start of his reign had been marked by bloodshed. His first aim was to establish his rule on a more solid base. Almost immediately, he sent envoys to the Parthian king to get Hyrcanus back from Babylon. The Parthian king was happy to let the old man go, because he was becoming dangerously popular among the Jews living in Babylonia. Although Hyrcanus was unfit to become high priest again, Herod kept his father-in-law in high esteem. The support of the old monarch gave an appearance of legality to his own rule.

The new king started an extensive building program: Jews could take pride in the new walls of Jerusalem and the citadel which guarded its Temple. (This fortress was called Antonia, in order to please Herod's patron Mark Antony.) Coins were minted in his own name and showed an incense burner on a tripod, intended to signify Herod's care for the orthodox Jewish cult practices. These coins had a Greek legend -HÈRÔDOU BASILEÔS- which indicates that Herod considered his standing abroad. And the new king continued to please the Romans, to make sure that they would continue their support. He sent lavish presents to their representative in the East, Mark Antony, and to his mistress, the Egyptian queen Cleopatra.

These gifts almost were Herod's undoing. The relations between on the one hand Mark Antony and Cleopatra in the East and on the other hand Octavian and the Senate in the West became strained, and civil war broke out in 31. It did not last very long: in August, the western leader defeated the eastern leader, who fled to Alexandria. For the first time in his life, Herod had aligned himself with a loser.

He managed to solve this problem, however. First, he had Hyrcanus executed, making sure that no one else could claim his throne. Then, he sailed to the island of Rhodes, where he met Octavian. In a brilliant speech, Herod boasted of his loyalty to Mark Antony, and promised the same to the new master of the Roman Empire. Octavian was impressed by the man's audacity, confirmed Herod's monarchy, and even added the coast of Judaea and Samaria to his realm. Actually, Octavian did not have much choice: his opponents were still alive, and if he were to pursue them to Egypt, Herod could be a useful ally. As it turned out, Mark Antony and Cleopatra preferred death to surrender, and Octavian became the only ruler in the Roman world. Under the name Augustus, he became the first emperor. He rewarded his ally with new possessions: a.o. Jericho and Gaza, which had been independent.

Herod's position was still insecure. He continued his building policy to win the hearts of his subjects. (A severe earthquake in 31 BCE had destroyed many houses, killing thousands of people.) In Jerusalem, the king built a new market, an amphitheater, a theater, a new building where the Sanhedrin could convene, a new royal palace, and last but not least, in 20 BCE he started to rebuild the Temple. And there were other cities where he ordered new buildings to be placed: Jericho and Samaria are examples. New fortresses served the security of both the Jews and their king: Herodion, Machaereus and Masada are among them.

But Herod's crowning achievement was a splendid new port, called Caesarea in honor of the emperor (the harbor was called Sebastos, the Greek translation of 'Augustus'). This magnificent and opulent city, which was dedicated in 9 BCE, was build to rival Alexandria in the land trade to Arabia, from where spices, perfume and incense were imported. It was not an oriental town like Jerusalem; it was laid out on a Greek grid plan, with a market, an aqueduct, government offices, baths, villas, a circus, and pagan temples. (The most important of these was the temple where the emperor was worshipped; it commanded the port.) The port was a masterpiece of engineering: its piers were made from hydraulic concrete (which hardens underwater) and protected by unique wave-breaking structures.

Although Herod was a dependent client-king, he had a foreign policy of his own. He had already defeated the Arabs from Petra in 31, and repeated this in 9 BCE. The Romans did not like this independent behavior, but on the whole, they seem to have been very content with their king of Judaea. After all, he sent auxiliaries when they decided to send an army to the mysterious incense country (modern Yemen; 25 BCE). In 23, Iturea and the Golan heights were added to Herod's realms, and in 20 several other districts.

With building projects, the expansion of his territories, the establishment of a sound bureaucracy, and the development of economic resources, he did much for his country, at least on a material level. The standing of his country -foreign and at home- was certainly enhanced. However, many of his projects won him the bitter hatred of the orthodox Jews, who disliked Herod's Greek taste - a taste he showed not only in his building projects, but also in several transgressions of the Mosaic Law.

The orthodox were not to only ones who came to hate the new king. The Sadducees hated him because he had terminated the rule of the old royal house to which many of them were related; their own influence in the Sanhedrin was curtailed. The Pharisees despised any ruler who despised the Law. And probably all his subjects resented his excessive taxation. According to Flavius Josephus, there were two taxes in kind at annual rates equivalent to 10.7% and 8.6%, which is extremely high in any preindustrial society (Jewish Antiquities 14.202-206). It comes as no surprise that Herod sometimes had to revert to violence, employing mercenaries and a secret police to enforce order.

On moments like that, it was clear to anyone that Herod was not a Jewish but a Roman king. He had become the ruler of the Jews with Roman help and he boasted to be philokaisar ('the emperor's friend'), entertaining Agrippa, Augustus' right-hand man. On top of the gate of the new Temple, a golden eagle was erected, a symbol of Roman power in the heart of the holy city resented by all pious believers. Worse, Augustus ordered and paid the priests of the Temple to sacrifice twice a day on behalf of himself, the Roman senate and people. The Jewish populace started to believe rumors that their pagan ruler had violated Jewish tombs, stealing golden objects from the tomb of David and Solomon.

Herod concluded ten marriages

All for political purposes. His wives were:

1. Doris, from an unknown family in Jerusalem: married c.-47, sent away -37; recalled 1-4, sent away-7/6.

She was the mother of Antipater, who was executed in 4.

2. The Hasmonaean princess Mariamme I: married -37, executed in -29/28. According to Flavius Josephus, Herod was passionately devoted to this woman, but she hated him just as passionately.

They had five children: Alexander, Aristobulus, a nameless son, Salampsio and Cypros.

3. An unknown niece: married -37.

No children.

4. An unknown cousin: married c.-34/33.

No children.

5. The daughter of a Jerusalem priest named Simon, Mariamme II: married -29/28, divorced -7/6.

They had a son named Herod.

6. A Samarian woman named Malthace: married -28, died -5/4.

Their children were Antipas, Archelaus and Olympias.

7. A Jerusalem woman named Cleopatra: married -28.

They had two sons named, Herod and Philip.

8. Pallas: married -16.

They had a son named Phasael.

9. Phaedra: married -16.

They had a daughter named Roxane.

10. Elpis: married -16.

They had a daughter named Salome.

Herod's reign ended in terror

The monastery at Qumran, the home of the Essenes, suffered a violent and deliberate destruction by fire in 8 BCE, for which Herod may have been responsible. When the king fell ill, two popular teachers, Judas and Matthias, incited their pupils to remove the golden eagle from the entrance of the Temple: after all, according to the Ten Commandments, it was a sin to make idols. The teachers and the pupils were burned alive. Some Jewish scholars had discovered that seventy-six generations had passed since the Creation, and there was a well-known prophecy that the Messiah was to deliver Israel from its foreign rulers in the seventy-seventh generation (more...). The story about the slaughter of infants of Bethlehem in the second chapter of the Gospel of Matthew is not known from other sources, but it would have been totally in character for the later Herod to commit such a terrible act.
A horrible disease (probably a cancer-like affection called Fournier's gangrene) made acute the problem of Herod's succession, and the result was factional strife in his family. Shortly before his death, Herod decided against his sons Aristobulus and Antipater, who were executed in 7 and 4 BCE, causing the emperor Augustus to joke that it was preferable to be Herod's pig (hus) than his son (huios) - a very insulting remark to any Jew (Macrobius, Saturnalia, 2.4.11).

However, the emperor confirmed Herod's last will. After his death in 4 BCE, the kingdom was divided among his sons. Herod Antipas was to rule Galilee and the east bank of the Jordan as a tetrarch; Philip was to be tetrarch of the Golan heights in the north-east; and Archelaus became the ethnarch ('national leader') of Samaria and Judaea. Herod was buried in one of the fortresses he had build, Herodion. Few will have wept.

References & Resources

  • The most important ancient source for the rule of king Herod was written by Flavius Josephus: the Jewish War and the Jewish Antiquities. Both books are based on the history of Nicolaus of Damascus, king Herod's personal secretary.
  • Modern literature: Nikos Kokkinos, The Herodian Dynasty. Origins, Role in Society and Eclipse (1998 Sheffield) and D.W. Roller, The Building Program of Herod the Great (1998) supplement each other.
  • http://www.livius.org/he-hg/herodians/herod_the_great02.html
  • Eisenman, Robert., The New Testament Code: The Cup of the Lord, the Damascus Covenant, and the Blood of Christ, London: Watkins, 2006

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