Herod The Great DBQ

During times of political unrest, people look towards someone to bring them through the hardships. Between the years 4 BC and 73 AD there was turmoil in Israel because of the death of the previous ruler, Herod the Great. Herod the Great ruled from 37 BC to 4BC. He was appointed to be the client king of Israel, thus converting to Judaism through the marriage of his first wife. The Jewish population had a general distaste toward him because he was not a Jew from birth, brought ideas of Hellenism, and during his reign he proved to be a ruthless man. Once he died, the Jews did not want his sons to be in power because they were afraid that Herod’s sons would be more brutal. This lead to the rise in messianic claimants because these claimants

would be “liberating and restoring Israel” (Evans 57) to her former glory. Jewish practitioners believed in messianic claimants of the era because their leadership gave guidance to Jews during a time of Roman oppression.
As always while studying ancient Jewish religion and history, there will be a strong bias since Josephus was one of the few historians to write about this era.

Josephus was part of the Sadducee sect, a small strict group that consisted of pro-roman aristocrats. He was also a general in the Jewish army, but defects to the Romans and later becomes a Roman general. This upbringing leads Josephus to have his own ideas about the other Jewish sects and messianic claimants. Seeing that Josephus had a strong connection to Rome, his idea of the messiah was a Roman general named Vespasian. Vespasian is one of the few, if not only, messianic claimant who was Roman. Josephus’s belief in Vespasian starkly contrasts most Jews’ idea about the messiah, which causes him to degrade certain claimants who detest Roman power. Josephus uses words such as bandit, tyrant, and robbers to describe claimers, and he would discredit their claims. One of Josephus’s enemies, John of Gischala, is a claimant of being messiah. Josephus believes that John demonstrates, “impiety towards God. For he [John of Gischala] had unlawful food served at his table and abandoned the established rules of purity of our forefathers” (Flavius 264). Josephus’s word is not the end all be all when it comes to people’s beliefs when discussing messianic claimants. Jewish practicers came from all different upbrings and areas; therefore, everyone’s idea of the messiah will

differ.
The word messiah originates from the Hebrew word mashiach meaning anointed one.

It is often perceived that messiah would have the same meaning, but the word messiah has a huge complexity to it, due to the many beliefs about who is the messiah, that many scholars have a difficult time trying to form a definition. For this essay, messiah will be defined as a person that believes he has been appointed by god to redeem Israel and has an eschatological concept. Eschatological concepts were important for a messiah to have because the Jewish belief is that “salvation or the end-time was to be inaugurated by a messiah or some ‘messianic’ figure as the divine agent” (Horsley 7). Before the resurrection, the messiah has to restore the kingdom of god on Earth. Messianic claimants of the time were preaching their ideas of Israel being free of Roman rule, followers would take action against Rome, they could purify Israel before the day of judgement. These men were the leaders in the social-revolutionary

movement.
Social-revolutionary movement could be lead by prophets. These movements “constituted one of the distinctive forms which social unrest assumed in the first century CE” (Horsley 3). There were three main categories of prophets in is era: diviner prophets, oracular prophets, and prophets fashioned after the great biblical prophets. Diviner prophets were very common and acted like the seers at Roman and Greek temples. They would make prediction only “ on the fortunes of individual rulers and apparently did not deal with the situation of a group or a class in society” (Horsley 449). Jewish practitioners would go and see these diviners for everyday situations, so there is little evidence that these men would have been perceived as a possible messiah. Oracular prophets were raised in the peasant classes. They were said to have resembled past prophets, and believed that they were a second version of the old prophets like Isaiah or Zechariah. Others would preach and predict the arrival of the messiah. Although these prophets believe that they were just preaching the coming, many of their followers believed that they were messianic claimants. The final type was a prophet that was designed after one of the great biblical prophets and would “lead actions of deliverance as agents of God” (Horsley 454). The main acts of deliverance The men and women who believed in messianic prophets were those of the peasant and lower class.