Books: King of Judea

HEROD—Jacob S. Minkin—Macmillan ($2.50).

In the New Testament Herod figures as the King of Judea who, when he heard reports of the birth of Christ, ordered all babes in Bethlehem under two years of age put to death. “As though the list of his numerous crimes were not yet long enough,” comments Author Minkin, “. . . his name was taken for what the world considers one of the blackest and most abnormal outrages.” Probably Herod died at Jericho, four years before the birth of Christ, at the age of 70, after a reign of 35 years. Last week Dr. Minkin offered readers an old-fashioned biographical essay, filled with common-sense analyses and romantic speculations, that was calculated to reduce Herod’s crimes to historical perspective, render him less a monster, more the victim of a monstrous set of circumstances. Although the portrait that emerges seems plausible, readers are likely to feel that the value of Herod lies less in the discussions of the central figure than inDr. Minkin’s learned account of the relations between Rome and Judea that raised Herod to power, won him the everlasting hatred of the Jews.

Herod was of desert stock, an Idumean, traditionally pagan in the Jewish world. He became king of Judea principally through the intrigues of his father, Antipater, who had been active in fomenting civil war in Palestine in the hope of securing Roman intervention. At that time Pompey, on a triumphal march from Armenia back to Rome, stopped to add to his laurels by putting Judea under Roman domination, left Antipater the real power behind a dummy king. Herod was thus always the representative of Rome in a remote and hostile country, first won recognition when he cleaned out rebellious patriots and bandits in Galilee, opened the trade routes that were closed whenever Rome’s authority was weakened. Ingratiating himself with Caesar, hemanaged to keep the esteem of the successive rulers of Rome despite their fierce quarrels among themselves, gave his loyalty to each in turn, had only Cleopatra as an implacable enemy among the ruling powers.

To give his reign stature, Herod married Mariamne, daughter of the dynasty he had supplanted. In doing so he allied himself with a family that constantly plotted his overthrow. Forthright, candid in his ruthlessness, Herod could not cope with the subtlety of the courtiers and diplomats of Jerusalem, was almost driven mad by real or imaginary conspiracies around him. He killed his wife, his mother-in-law,his three oldest sons, even shook his great prestige at Rome by the frenzy of his conspiracy-hunting. Growing more and more active as an administrator as he wiped out the members of his family, he rebuilt cities, established a navy, laid out roads, rebuilt the great temple at Jerusalem, in an effort to win the favor of his subjects. His failure to do so was so complete that according to legend, when he felt he was dying, he arranged that all scholars should be killed, so that there should be lamentationthroughout the land, even if none of it was for his death.