The Herods: Murder, Politics, and the Art of Succession

Chilton (Resurrection Logic), a professor of religion at Bard College, fails to make the most of rich subject matter in this disappointing history of the Herodian dynasty, which reigned in ancient Israel in the first centuries BCE and CE. Chilton begins with Antipater, an Idumean warrior and mercenary allied with the Maccabees, who had revolted against the Seleucids. Antipater fathered Herod the Great (best-known to most from the Gospel of Matthew), who became the patriarch to a line of rulers. Chilton covers the lives of Herod’s sons, grandson, and great-grandchildren, focusing on their struggles for power and featuring scenes of sex and violence that would be at home in Game of Thrones, as when Herod had his wife Mariamne strangled. Collectively, according to Chilton, the “Herodian dynasty rolled through the lands of territorial Israel like a series of breakers,” but by the second century BCE had disappeared into the Roman Empire. Chilton relies largely on first-century BCE Jewish historian Josephus, and though the reliability of Josephus’s scholarship has been questioned, Chilton never meaningfully qualifies Josephus’s reliablity as a source. Small errors, meanwhile, such as referring to the fruit used during the holiday of Sukkot as lemons, rather than citrons, are another negative. Chilton’s reach exceeds his grasp in this underwhelming account. (Aug.)