If you’ve read through the New Testament, you might be rather surprised at how often “King Herod” keeps popping up in the story. 

The book of Matthew tells a story of how the evil King Herod killed all the babies in Bethlehem in an attempt to get rid of the infant Jesus. In the story, Joseph and Mary escape with their son to Egypt, and only return a few years later when they learn that Herod is dead.  

Thirty years later, Jesus is an adult preaching in Galilee, but then he gets in trouble with … King Herod again! And this King Herod captures and kills John the Baptist and is on the lookout for Jesus. You may be wondering what’s going on here? Wasn’t King Herod already dead? Did somebody make a mistake?

Another dozen years pass, and King Herod pops up yet again, this time in the book of Acts, where he arrests one of the apostles (James) and has him beheaded. Then he arrests another apostle, Peter, who miraculously escapes. Then there’s a short story about him getting a bit conceited at a festival when the crowd acclaims him as a god. In this story, Herod is suddenly stricken with a strange illness and dies a few days later.  

More than a decade later, the apostle Paul is arrested in Jerusalem and taken to the port city of Caesarea, where he meets the Roman governor. The governor talks to Paul for a bit, and then puts him in prison in … Herod’s palace. So which Herod is this?   

How the devil does King Herod keep popping up for so many decades? Is he a zombie or what?

Four King Herods

Here’s what’s going on. The New Testament actually tells about four different king Herods, all part of the same dynasty. And it mentions a few other members of this family. Here’s a brief summary of the four main Herods:

• King Herod the Great was born about the year 73 or 74 BC and died about the year 4 BC. He’s the King Herod who appears in the Bethlehem Massacre story in the book of Matthew. He took ten different women as wives and had a lot of children. But he was a bit paranoid and executed his favorite wife and three of his sons. People joked that it was safer to be Herod’s pig than his son (since Herod kept kosher and therefore didn’t eat pigs). Herod was a prolific builder, and you can see his work today all over modern Israel—including the gigantic stone platform now known as the Temple Mount. He also created the city of Caesarea and built a palace there where Paul would be tried many decades later.
• Herod Antipas was one of the sons of Herod the Great and inherited a third of his kingdom. Herod Antipas was not actually a king. His official title was tetrarch, but people sometimes flattered him by calling him king. He was born before 20 BC and died sometime after AD 39. He’s the Herod who arrested and beheaded John the Baptist, and then went asking around for Jesus. Antipas divorced his first wife so he could marry his niece—who also happened to be his brother’s wife. His step-daughter later married another of his brothers. The Herod family tree was about as incestuous as you can get. 
• Herod Agrippa I was a grandson of Herod the Great and nephew of Antipas. He was educated in Rome and eventually became king. He ruled over Judea for only a few years, from AD 41 to 44. He’s the Herod who beheaded the apostle James and arrested Peter and then died mysteriously at the festival. But he also played a central role in choosing one of the emperors, Claudius Caesar. In a very real sense, Agrippa played the role of king-maker. In doing so, he prevented the Roman Senate from destroying the position of emperor and returning the empire to a republic. This decision had repercussions for twenty centuries, right down to our own time. 
• Herod Agrippa II was the son of Herod Agrippa I and ruled for some years over certain small territories north of Galilee. He presided over one of the trials of the apostle Paul, along with his sister Bernice. There were rumors that Agrippa and his sister were sleeping together. Bernice later became the mistress of the Roman general Titus, the one who captured Jerusalem in the year AD 70. I don’t believe Bernice was quite the terrible person that some of the historians want to make her. She did one thing that was undeniably heroic. So I made her a fairly major character in two of my novels, Premonition and Retribution, where I show her as the flawed hero I think she probably was. 

The above summary only scratches the surface on the amazing Herod family. We know a lot more about them from the historical records. They were, in a word, a remarkable dynasty that had a major impact on the Roman empire. In a future blog post, I’ll give more details about each of the four Herods.

And why does this all matter? Because Jesus of Nazareth grew up in a real world, with real enemies. Some of his most powerful enemies were members of the Herod family. So you can bet that the Herods are going to come up in my Crown of Thorns series.

The more you know about the world of Jesus and the real historical people in that world, the better you’ll understand the mission and message of Jesus.