With the moral and military
backing of Rome, Herod returns to Judea, and lays
siege to Jerusalem. After the fall of Jerusalem, Herod
becomes undisputed King of the Jews in 37 BC. With
the help of Rome, Herod expands his kingdom until
it reaches up into Syria;
Herod is even promised the Nabatean Kingdom and Petra
on his south east borders. Monuments bedeck the land.
New cities are erected, and the Jerusalem Temple is
rebuilt in 19 BC, with more than 160 Corinthian columns,
a palace and courtyards of breath-taking beauty. Herod’s
dramatic and imposing Masada fortress, with its accompanying
winter palace, still perches in Olympian splendor
over the stark wilderness of the Judean desert. Seen
from the air, its magnificence still startles one.
Though it is Herod’s building program which
sets him apart as one of the great creators of history,
it is probably his dark propensity for family murder
and assassination which fascinates us the most. As
Herod kills his family one by one, from his beloved
wife to his mother-in-law and sons, a climate of horror
pervades the palace. Herod’s hatred reaches
its peak in the slaughter of the innocents when Herod
ordered the murder of all male children in Bethlehem
under the age of two because of his fear of the coming
of the new “King of the Jews.”
Herod died in 4 BC, but his cruelty seemed bred into
the genes. His successor, Herod Antipater, rejected
Jesus and summarily handed him over to Pontius Pilate,
while Salome dancing for Herod and demanding the head
of John the Baptist is one of the most infamously
celebrated scenes in biblical history.
Who has not heard of the massacre of the innocents?
This gruesome event has become the subject of paintings,
medieval plays, stories and poems. Yet this killing
was just one minor incident in the life of Herod -
a man whose acts affected the history and future of
the Jewish people, the birth of Christianity, and
whose many monuments still bestride the Holy land.
This man reminds us of the Borgias, and history has
indeed celebrated him with operas, tragic love stories,
epic poems, and major plays. Many of these intrigues
and murders are presented in incredible detail by
the historian Josephus, and read like the fully scripted
scenario for a Wes Craven horror film. But no one
has ever made a film about Herod. This is incredible
since all the elements exist to make such a film as
a truly dramatic portrait of one of the most fascinating
evil geniuses of the ancient world – a man whose
story will intrigue not just Christians and Jews,
but the world at large. Certainly well worth a film!
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