As part of our True Herod series, we have the following guest blog post from Professor James Charlesworth, who not only knows the work of Geza Vermes, but knew also the man behind them. Read his review of The True Herod:
'Of the kings in the East, few are so well known as Herod, whom within the Roman Senate Antony and Octavian [Augustus] voted to be “King of the Jews (rex socius).” Along with the Roman armies, Herod defeated the Persians after they invaded the Holy Land and briefly entered Jerusalem, an account made famous in the Parables of Enoch. The recent discovery of Herod’s tomb near Bethlehem has been hailed as sensational; it is heralded in an unprecedented feature in the Israel Museum. Herod is the evil king who killed his sons and wife, and (according to Matthew) was frustrated by “the Wise Men” who came to honor Jesus, a Jew who was crucified as the “King of the Jews.”
Now, Professor Geza Vermes shares with us his last thoughts on this evil genius, the greatest builder in ancient Israel. Vermes is famous for his “full” translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls and his mastery of Early Judaism as well as the historical Jesus. For Vermes, Herod – hailed for 2,000 years as “Herod the Great” – was “a powerful and athletic man,” excellent on horseback and in hunting, an “outstanding soldier,” a “brilliant general,” had “good judgement,” a politician “with exceptional gifts,” and “generous to the Pharisees and the Essenes” (which promoted “the intellectual and spiritual life” of Jews). Herod was fiercely devoted to Rome and his Idumaean family.
Unfortunately, Herod also returned minor antagonisms with “the severest retribution,” was “patently and atrociously cruel to his in-laws,” and possessed a “suspicious and brutal temperament.” Herod desecrated and robbed David’s tomb of priceless gold treasures. Vermes judges that Herod could never fully “overcome his inferiority complex.” One may appreciate Caesar Augustus’ comment, near the end of Herod’s demise: “It is better to be Herod’s pig than his son.”
This is a fascinating journey into the past; the stimulating narrative causes the reader to ponder, wonder, and speculate about human frailties and fortunes. How does an evil genius succeed in building monumental cities and the Temple (“one of the marvels of the ancient world’), even bringing peace to a tortured land? The great Jewish historian of the first century CE, “our best informed witness,” Josephus, imagined Herod was schizophrenic, being both remarkably generous to humankind and a brute to his subjects and relatives. Yet, Josephus’ cannot be expected to be fair; he was a Hasmonean, the archenemy of Herod. And Matthew’s report of “the massacre of the innocents” is a crime Herod “never committed.”
Vermes’s work fits neatly within the new perspective of Herod; he was not just an evil madman or an “infamous king” (according to S. Mason) but a person of compassion, improving the lifestyle of many artisans in Judea, remitting taxes when his subjects were in financial collapse, supplying grain for those starving, and distributing warm garments for the elderly during winters. Thus, Vermes’s portrayal is close to the portraits of Herod found in the research by A.H.M. Jones, A. Schalit, and E. Baltrusch. Vermes avoids non-commitment, writes with passion and clarity, and points out, inter alia, that Herod’s household was “a hornet’s nest” and that the Christian and Rabbinic views of Herod are “a caricature of the true Herod.” Bravo.
Herod’s life epitomized the fall of an icon, early on raising to heights in Rome and finally expiring in loneliness and great pain in Jericho. This biography of Herod, “a genuine tragic hero,” is another of Vermes’s monumental achievements from a life devoted to research, study, and reflection. I highly recommended Vermes’s masterpiece for all searching for human understanding or historical insight. The work is ideal for undergraduate or church classes.'
Professor James Charlesworth is George L. Collard Professor of New Testament Language and Literature, and director of the Dead Sea Scrolls Project at Princeton Theological Seminary. Some of his publications with T&T Clark include: The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha and the New Testament: Prolegomena for the Study of Christian Origins (1998), New Discoveries in St Catherine's Monas (1975) and Sacra Scriptura: How "Non-Canonical" Texts Functioned in Early Judaism and Early Christianity (2013).
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