Bibliography
| Title: The Herodian Dynasty: Origins, Role in Society and Eclipse Secondary Title: JSPE.S 30 Pages: 518 Type: Book Year: 1998 Abstract: in: JSPE 17 (1998), 52: "The remarkable Herodian dynasty flourished from the second century BCE to the second century CE. This book examines its origins, measures its impact on Jewish society, and discusses the influence it had beyond Judaea. It argues that the Herodian dynasty played a central part in the workings of the Eastern Roman Empire. The author suggests that Herod the Great would be better described as a "Hellenized Phoenician" rather than simply as an "Idumaean" and draws on a variety of evidence to support this view. The Herodian dynasty is seen in the context of the political structure of the province of Judaea and life in Graeco-Roman Palestine as a whole".
Feldman, Louis Harry in: OZA 21.3 (1998), 551: "K. treats the Herodian dynasty as an entity in its own right and, in particular, internally. He focuses on the origins of the Herodian family, the social and political conditions in Idumaea in the second Century B.C.E., the strongly Hellenized ideology of Herod the Great, the complexity of his genealogy, the status of the members of his family in Roman Judaea after the fall of Archelaus, their role during the time of the Jewish revolt, their remarkable centralization of the workings of the Eastern Roman Empire, the gradual eclipse of Agrippa II, and the transfer of Herodian power from Palestine to the wider Greek world in the second Century C.E. Josephus, our main source, K. insists, must be checked against, supplemented with, and corrected by contemporary documents and archaeology. Herod himself is presented by K. in terms of his complex identity: Phoenician by descent, Hellenized by culture, Idumaean by place of birth, Jewish by official religion, Jerusalemite by place of residence, and Roman by citizenship. The Hellenized roots of the family stand out throughout and form the background to its development and achievement of prominence down to the earlier part of the second Century C.E. The family came to be Jewish only by the accident of the forced conversion of the Idumaeans".
"Without a thorough examination of the remarkable Herodian dynasty, which flourished from the 2nd century AD , little of the political, social and economic background of Palestine and the Eastern Graeco-Roman world can be understood today. The scope of the present thesis is to discover the origins of this dynasty, sort out its complicated genealogy, measure its impact on Jewish society to the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70, and comprehend the influence which it exerted beyond Judaea to its eclipse around the time of Hadrian. Herold the Great is commonly held to have been "Idumaean", but this is an almost meaningless term. The population of Idumaea from the Neo-Babylonian to the Late Hellenistic period was highly mixed: Edomites, Hellenised Phoenicians, Jews and Arabs. Even worse, under the Maccabees, these people were converted to Judaism by force. The claim is made here that the ethnic background of Herod can only have been Hellenised Phoenician, which ties in accurately with the neglected tradition that his family came from Ascalon. This background is confirmed by a detailed investigation of all known members of the dynasty (some 142), based on an analysis of all types of evidence: literary (principally Josephus), papyrological, epigraphic (Greek, Latin and Semitic insciptions and ostraca), numismatic (coins, tokens and weights) and archaeological. A wide panoreama of social history has thus been opened out, which demonstrates the centrality of the Herodian dynasty in the workings of the Eastern Roman Empire. The ethnic origins of the Herods make it easier to see how readily they were chosen to serve as "client" kings and late Roman senators. A new understanding both of the kingdom of Judaea and of the political structure of the province from AD 6 to 41 and from 44 to the outbreak of the Jewish Revolt is offered, which carries historical implications for the life in Graeco-roman Palestine, and the adherence to Judaism and Early Christianity". Keywords: Jewish History: Roman Era |