ra21/22 charged by Rome with pacifying & ~~~~~~~~~
ADMINISTRATING
AN UNRULY AND HETEROGENEOUS POPULATION OF JEWS, GREEKS, SAMARITANS, SYRIANS, AND ARABS ~ all of whom hated him even more than they hated each other ~ Herod did a masterful job of maintaining order on behalf of Rome!
His reign ushered in an era of political stability among the Jews that had not been seen for centuries?
He initiated a monumental building & public works project that employed tens of thousands of peasants & day laborers, permanently changing the physical land-scape of Jerusalem: thus he built markets & theaters, palaces & ports, all modeled on the classical Hellenistic style!
To pay for his really colossal construction projects & to satisfy his own extravagance, Herod imposed a crushing tax rate upon his subjects, from which he continued to dispatch a hefty tribute to Rome, and with pleasure, as an expression of his esteem for his Roman MASTERS, Herod was not just the emperor's client-king: he was a close and personal friend, a loyal citizen of the Republic who wanted more than to emulate ROME; he wanted to remake it in the sands of Judaea!
He instituted a forced Hellenization program upon the Jews, bringing gymnasia, Greek amphitheaters, and Roman baths to YERUSHALAYIM! He made Greek THE language of the court & minted coins bearing Greek letters & pagan insignia!
Yet Herod was also a "JEW", and as such he understood the importance of appealing to the many religious sensibilities of his subjects? That us why he embarked on his MOST ambitious project of all: the rebuilding and expansion of the Temple of Jerusalem!
It was Herod who had the Temple raised on a platform atop Mount Moriah ~ the highest point of the city ~ and embelli-shed with wide Roman colonnades and towering marble columns that gleamed in the sun!
Herod's Temple was meant to impress all his PATRONS IN ROME, but he also wanted to please his FELLOW JEWS, many of whom did NOT want to also consider this King of the Jews to be himself a Jew! Herod was a convert, after all! His mother was an Arab: HÌS people, the Idumeans, had come to Judaism only a generation or two earlier?!
This rebuilding of THE TEMPLE was, for Herod, not only a means of solidifying his political dominance; it was a desperate plea for acceptance by his Jewish subjects? But IT DID NOT WORK!
Despite the rebuilding of the Temple, Herod's grandiose unabashed Hellenism and HÌS aggressive attempts to "ROMANIZE" Jerusalem enraged pious Jews who seem never to have ceased viewing their king as a slave to foreign masters and a devotee of foreign gods & idols; not even the Temple, the supreme symbol of Jewish identity, could másk Herod's infatuation with Rome!
Shortly before its completion, Herod placed a golden eagle - THE sign of Roman dominion ~ over its main portal & forced his handpicked high priest to offer two sacrifices a day on behalf of Caesar Augustus as "the Son of God!"
Nevertheless, it is a sign of how firmly Herod held his kingdom in his grip that the general odium of the Jews toward his reign never rose to the level of insurrection, at least not in his lifetime.
Yet it still even now seems that almost all surrounding states copy just THAT attitude towards grandiosity a la Atatürk, Mohammed, Hassan, Ben Ali, Qadaffi Duck, Idi Amin, Faroek, Gamal Abdul Nasser, Haile Selassi, Mubarak, Hussein, Ibn Saoud, El Assad, Osman, Reza Pahlevi, Bin Laden, Khomeini, Saddamn, Erdogan & so on?
As if they ALL struggle to be the 'absolutely' gigagreatest 'übersupermega'-Farao, Caesar, Emperor, King, President, Dictator & local god!
His reign ushered in an era of political stability among the Jews that had not been seen for centuries?
He initiated a monumental building & public works project that employed tens of thousands of peasants & day laborers, permanently changing the physical land-scape of Jerusalem: thus he built markets & theaters, palaces & ports, all modeled on the classical Hellenistic style!
To pay for his really colossal construction projects & to satisfy his own extravagance, Herod imposed a crushing tax rate upon his subjects, from which he continued to dispatch a hefty tribute to Rome, and with pleasure, as an expression of his esteem for his Roman MASTERS, Herod was not just the emperor's client-king: he was a close and personal friend, a loyal citizen of the Republic who wanted more than to emulate ROME; he wanted to remake it in the sands of Judaea!
He instituted a forced Hellenization program upon the Jews, bringing gymnasia, Greek amphitheaters, and Roman baths to YERUSHALAYIM! He made Greek THE language of the court & minted coins bearing Greek letters & pagan insignia!
Yet Herod was also a "JEW", and as such he understood the importance of appealing to the many religious sensibilities of his subjects? That us why he embarked on his MOST ambitious project of all: the rebuilding and expansion of the Temple of Jerusalem!
It was Herod who had the Temple raised on a platform atop Mount Moriah ~ the highest point of the city ~ and embelli-shed with wide Roman colonnades and towering marble columns that gleamed in the sun!
Herod's Temple was meant to impress all his PATRONS IN ROME, but he also wanted to please his FELLOW JEWS, many of whom did NOT want to also consider this King of the Jews to be himself a Jew! Herod was a convert, after all! His mother was an Arab: HÌS people, the Idumeans, had come to Judaism only a generation or two earlier?!
This rebuilding of THE TEMPLE was, for Herod, not only a means of solidifying his political dominance; it was a desperate plea for acceptance by his Jewish subjects? But IT DID NOT WORK!
Despite the rebuilding of the Temple, Herod's grandiose unabashed Hellenism and HÌS aggressive attempts to "ROMANIZE" Jerusalem enraged pious Jews who seem never to have ceased viewing their king as a slave to foreign masters and a devotee of foreign gods & idols; not even the Temple, the supreme symbol of Jewish identity, could másk Herod's infatuation with Rome!
Shortly before its completion, Herod placed a golden eagle - THE sign of Roman dominion ~ over its main portal & forced his handpicked high priest to offer two sacrifices a day on behalf of Caesar Augustus as "the Son of God!"
Nevertheless, it is a sign of how firmly Herod held his kingdom in his grip that the general odium of the Jews toward his reign never rose to the level of insurrection, at least not in his lifetime.
Yet it still even now seems that almost all surrounding states copy just THAT attitude towards grandiosity a la Atatürk, Mohammed, Hassan, Ben Ali, Qadaffi Duck, Idi Amin, Faroek, Gamal Abdul Nasser, Haile Selassi, Mubarak, Hussein, Ibn Saoud, El Assad, Osman, Reza Pahlevi, Bin Laden, Khomeini, Saddamn, Erdogan & so on?
As if they ALL struggle to be the 'absolutely' gigagreatest 'übersupermega'-Farao, Caesar, Emperor, King, President, Dictator & local god!
20 nov 2015 - bewerkt op 22 nov 2015
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