* Herod’s family tree is complicated because the family were so endogamous, repeatedly intermarrying and remarrying within the Herodian and Maccabee clans trying to reconcile them: he married his brother Pheroras to Mariamme’s sister and his eldest son Antipater to the daughter of the last King Antigonos (beheaded at his request by Antony). But the marriages were interspersed with executions: Salome’s first two husbands were killed by Herod. Herodians also married into the royal families of Cappadocia, Emesa, Pontus, Nabataea and Cilicia, all Roman allies. At least two marriages were cancelled because the husband would not convert to Judaism and be circumcised.
* Doctors have debated his symptoms ever since. The most likely diagnosis is that Herod suffered hypertension and arteriosclerosis complicated by progressive dementia and by congestive heart and kidney failure. The arteriosclerosis led to venous congestion, aggravated by gravity, so that fluid collected in his feet and genitals, becoming so severe that the fluid bubbled through the skin; the blood flow became so poor that necrosis of the flesh – gangrene – developed. The bad breath and itching were caused by kidney failure. The penile/scrotal gangrene provided ideal material for the laying of eggs by flies that hatched as maggots. It is possible that the genital worms were hostile propaganda, symbolizing divine vengeance on an evil king: Antiochus IV Epiphanes, Herod’s grandson, Agrippa I, and many other sinners including Judas Iscariot, were assigned similar worm-infested, bowel- and scrotum-exploding exits.
* Jesus’ birth is historically challenging, the Gospels contradictory. No one knows the date but it was probably before Herod’s death, in 4 BC which means Jesus died in his early thirties if he was crucified in AD 29–30, forty if it was AD 36. The story of the census summoning the family to Bethlehem is not historical because Quirinius’ census took place after Herod’s successor, Archelaus, was deposed in AD 6, almost ten years after Jesus’ birth. In recounting the journey to Bethlehem and his Davidic genealogy, Matthew’s Gospel provides Jesus with royal birth and fulfilment of prophecy – ‘for thus it is written by the prophet.’ The Massacre of the Innocents and the escape to Egypt are clearly inspired by the Passover story: one of the Ten Plagues was the Killing of the First Born. Wherever Jesus was born, it is likely that the family did travel to the Temple for the sacrifice. Muslim tradition, expanded on by the Crusaders, believes that Jesus was raised in the chapel beneath al-Aqsa Mosque, Jesus’ Cradle. Jesus’ family is mysterious: after the birth, Joseph simply disappears from the Gospels. Matthew and Luke state that Mary remained a virgin and Jesus was fathered by God (an idea familiar in Roman and Greek theology, and also suggested in Isaiah’s prophecy of Emmanuel). But Matthew, Mark and John name Jesus’ brothers: James, Joses, Judas and Simon along with a sister, Salome. When Mary’s virginity became Christian dogma, the existence of these other children became inconvenient. John mentions ‘Mary the wife of Cleophas’. If Joseph died young, Mary may have married this Cleophas and had more children because, after the Crucifixion, Jesus was succeeded as leader first by his brother James then by ‘Simon son of Cleophas’.
* Herod’s tomb was discovered in 2007 by Professor Ehud Netzer who found an ornate red sarcophagus, decorated with flowers, smashed to pieces almost certainly by the anti-Herodian Jewish rebels of AD 66–70. Two other sarcophagi are white, decorated with flowers: do they belong to his sons? Herodium was another miracle of Herod’s construction – a man-made mountain 210 feet in diameter with a massive luxurious palace on top containing a domed bathhouse, towers, frescoes and pools. Herod’s pyramidal tomb was on the Herodium Hill below the eastern tower of the fortress, also destroyed in 66–70
* One of these ‘kings’ was Simon, a hulking slave belonging to Herod, soon beheaded by the Romans. Simon may be the subject of the so-called Gabriel’s Revelation, a stone inscription found in southern Jordan in which the Archangel Gabriel acclaims a ‘prince of princes’ called Simon who will be killed but will rise again ‘in three days’ when ‘you will know that evil will be defeated by justice. In three days you will live, I, Gabriel, command you.’ The details – resurrection and judgement three days after a prophet’s death – predate Jesus’ crucifixion by over thirty years. After killing Simon, Publius Quinctilius Varus commanded the German frontier. Some ten years later, in AD 9, he was ambushed, losing three legions. This disaster spoiled the last years of Augustus, who supposedly wandered his palace crying, ‘Varus, give me back my legions!’
† All three sons adopted the name ‘Herod’, causing much confusion in the Gospels. Archelaus was married but fell in love with Glaphyra, that daughter of the King of Cappadocia who had been married to Herod and Mariamme’s son Alexander. After Alexander was executed, she married King Juba of Mauretania and after his death returned to Cappadocia. Now she married Archelaus.
* Salome the dancer symbolizes cold-hearted caprice and female depravity, but the two Gospels Mark and Matthew never give her name. Josephus gives us the name of Herodias’ daughter in another context but simply recounts that Antipas ordered John’s execution without any terpsichorean encouragement. The dance of the seven veils was a much later elaboration. There were many Herodian Salomes (Jesus’ sister was also named Salome). But most probably the dancer was the wife of Herod Philip, Tetrarch of Trachonitis, until his death when she married another cousin who was later appointed king of Lesser Armenia: the dancer ended upas a queen. Ultimately John’s head would become one of the most prized of Christian relics. There would be at least five shrines claiming to have the originaclass="underline" the shrine of John’s head in the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus is revered by Muslims.
* No one knows exactly when Jesus came to Jerusalem. Luke starts Jesus’ ministry with his baptism by John, around AD 28–29, saying he was about thirty, suggesting that his death was between AD 29 and say AD 33. John says his ministry lasted one year; Matthew, Mark and Luke say it lasted three years. Jesus may have been killed in 30, 33 or 36. But his historical existence is confirmed not only in the Gospels but in Tacitus and Josephus, who also mentions John the Baptist. At the very least, we know that Jesus came to Jerusalem at Passover after Pilate’s arrival as prefect (26) and before his departure (36) during the reigns of Tiberius (died 37) and Antipas (before 39) and the high priesthood of Caiaphas (18–36): most likely between 29 and 33. Pilate’s character is confirmed by both Josephus and Philo Judaeus of Alexandria, and his existence confirmed by an inscription found in Caesarea.
* Such as those of the Essenes, probably an offshoot of the pious Hasidim who had originally backed the Maccabees. Josephus explained that they were one of the three sects of Judaism in the first century AD, but we learned more in the Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered in eleven caves at Qumran near the Dead Sea in 1947–56. These contain the earliest Hebrew versions of some of the biblical books. Christians and Jews had long debated the differences between the Septuagint Bible (translated into Greek, from a vanished Hebrew original and the basis of the Christian Old Testament, between the third and first centuries BC) and the earliest surviving Hebrew Bible (the Masoretic, dating from seventh to the tenth centuries AD. The Aleppo Codex is the oldest, but incomplete; the St Petersburg Codex is dated 1008, and it too is complete.) The Scrolls revealed differences but confirm that the Masoretic was fairly accurate. The Scrolls prove, however, that there were many versions of the biblical books in circulation as late as Jesus’ time. The Essenes were austere Jews who developed the apocalyptic ideas of Jeremiah and Daniel and saw the world as a struggle between good and evil ending in war and judgement. Their leader was a mystical ‘Teacher of Righteousness’; their enemy was the ‘Wicked Priest’ – one of the Maccabees. They feature in many crackpot theories about the origins of Christianity, but we can only say that John the Baptist may have lived with them in the desert and that Jesus may have been inspired by their hostility to the Temple and by their apocalyptic scenarios