Herod the Great: Jewish King in a Roman World
Martin Goodman
Jewish Lives series, Yale University Press, 2024
227 pages
Martin Goodman begins this masterful chronicle of Herod’s tempestuous life by asking whether – given his descent from Idumeans forcibly converted to Judaism by John Hyrcanus – his life can be considered “Jewish” at all. The author’s nuanced answer is summarized by the book’s subtitle: Herod was indeed a Jewish king, but inasmuch as he depended on the patronage of leading Romans, it was far more important for him to curry favor as a loyal Roman and win their affection with lavish gifts than to work for the benefit of the people he ruled.
If Herod the Great has a fault, it’s largely unavoidable, in that the primary source of information on Herod is Josephus, so Goodman essentially interweaves the historian’s two accounts of the Herodian period. That said, the author devotes a useful appendix to Josephus, assessing the value judgments and veracity of his histories and of his source: a chronicle by Herod’s Syrian friend Nicholaaeus.
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