Literature and history

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Hello and welcome to literature and history.

Episode 76, Judea Under Herod.

In this program, the first in our series on the New Testament, we will cover the biography

and overall historical period of King Herod the Great.

Herod was a client king under Roman rule who reined over the province of Judea between 37 and 4

b.C.

King Herod, a complex and fascinating figure in the periphery of the ancient Roman world, consolidated

his power in the same decade that the old Roman Republic broke and changed into an empire

under the reign of the Emperor Augustus.

Herod's territory was the boundary between the Roman West and the Persian East

and a cultural confluence of Parthians, Greeks, Romans, Syrians, tribal groups based

in modern day Jordan and Saudi Arabia and of course Jews of every variety from the conservative Pharisees to the

assimilationist sadducees to the ascetic and communitarian Isines.

Herod reined over a region that rattled with internal tensions year after year.

Tensions between Roman leadership and Jewish

public leaders,

between his own regime and an unruly frontier territory

seemingly ever on the verge of chaos.

Perhaps the most famous client king in all history,

Herod's story is a dramatic and violent one.

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