L0806 – Herod the Great

He carved a bloody path to power, built an army of 40,000 men that instilled terror into the hearts of both his enemies and those he ruled, and even murdered his own wives and children. Can anything about this ruthless tyrant make him worthy of the title, Herod the Great?

Join the world's leading archeologists, historians and scholars as they search for the truth about one of the Bibles most legendary villains.

On the extreme eastern edge of the Roman Empire, Herod ruled the earthly kingdom into which Jesus was born.With a cruelty rooted in paranoia, he kiled any who stood in his way. Matthew's Massacre of the Innocents describes his attempt to murder the infant Jesus by sending troops to slaughter of every male child in Bethlehem under trhee years of age. Yet at the same time Herod raised some of the architectural marvels of the Roman world: the brilliant new Temple in Jerusalem, the largest man-made structure in the Empire, and Caesarea Maritima, the worId's first fully man-made harbor with sumptuous palaces, temples, hippodrome and amphitheater that Herod hoped would rival Rome.

In the words of the 1st century historian, Josephus, Herod 'stole the throne like a fox, ruled like a tiger and died like a dog.0bsessed by the kingdom of this world, Herod the Great was the complete opposite of Jesus - a man whose life can be summed up by the anonymous saying 'Greater is he who acts from love than he who acts from fear'.