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- [00:04]
Dan Senor
You are listening to an art media podcast.
- [00:09]
Benjamin Beerley
We have this superpower from the west that is calling the shots. We're now a part of Rome. We're at the end of a very long reign of a king that might not even really be Jewish. So there's this feeling that the solution, both politically and religiously, can only come from. From a dramatic, drastic event, divine intervention, or a type of figure, a messiah that will shake everything up beyond the normal politics of the day.
- [00:54]
Narrator/Host Intro and Outro
It's 7pm on Tuesday, December 23, in New York City. It is 2am on Wednesday, December 24, in Israel, where Israelis are turning to a new day. On today's episode, we have Benjamin Beerley returning to call Me back due to popular demand. Benjamin is an American Israeli PhD candidate and researcher in ancient historical texts at Le Orientale University in Naples, Italy. About two months ago, Benjamin joined me on the podcast to discuss his experience with extreme anti Zionism and antisemitism in Naples. The episode had quite a response. It seemed to have touched a nerve, with many listeners reaching out to us to tell us how much they learned from Benjamin's stories and insights. Today, Benjamin joins for something a little different. It's Christmas Day today, which marks a story that happened in a very familiar land more than 2,000 years ago. For this holiday season, we wanted to go back and learn about the Jewish world that defined the year 1 AD in Jerusalem. The story of that period is one of factionalism, religious and political tensions, civil war, and geopolitical drama. But ultimately, says Benjamin, it's a story that will very much resonate with all of our listeners especially, but not only our Jewish listeners. So with that, here's Benjamin Beerley on Year one in Jerusalem. Before our conversation, here's a word from our sponsor. Let me take you on a thought experiment. You're standing at the edge of a forest holding two seeds. One grows fast and bright, but within 10 years, the soil is depleted. The other grows quietly, becoming the tree that will shelter and nourish generations to come. Which seed would you plant? Most of us would plant both if we could. But real life doesn't always make it that simple. And yet somehow, Birthright Israel does both planting for today and for tomorrow, developing a generation of young Jews who feel joy in being Jewish, who host Shabbat dinners, who lead, who speak up, who build community wherever they go. Right now and far into the future, Birthright is now taking its boldest vision yet, bringing 200,000 young Jews to Israel over the next five years. But the forest doesn't Grow without planters. If you believe in the future, if you want those trees to stand tall, support Birthright Israel today at onetripchangeseverything.com or click the link in the show notes.
- [03:30]
Dan Senor
And I'm pleased to welcome back to the Call Me Back podcast Benjamin Bearly, who joins us from Jerusalem and who was last on a few weeks ago when he talked to us about what was happening in Italy, which was an illuminating and shocking conversation. And this conversation may not be shocking, but will certainly be educational, and I'm really looking forward to jumping into it. Benjamin joins us from Jerusalem. Hi, Benjamin.
- [03:56]
Benjamin Beerley
Hi, Dan. It's great to be back.
- [03:57]
Dan Senor
Well, I want to get into this history we're getting into, because you are where it all began right now. So I want to just jump right into it and set the stage. Christmas is obviously the story of the birth of Jesus Christ, but it is very much a Jewish world where this story is set. So I want you to begin just by describing the world Jesus was born into.
- [04:24]
Benjamin Beerley
So this was very much a Jewish world, and this is very much a Jewish story. The historical Jesus was born a Jew to Jewish parents, and he was born Jew to Jewish parents in Jewish Judea, which in one AD his family, like every other Jewish family in Judea, had lived through generation after generation of Jews fighting against Jews about what it means to be Jewish and what Jewish sovereignty and independence, what a Jewish state should be in the land of Israel. Now, just a quick side note, Dan, to position ourselves in terms of time, we have to understand what is this year one. And the world right now is celebrating Christmas 2025. So we should be 2020 five years after the birth of Jesus. But this calendar, this numbering that we're using, was actually invented in the 6th century by a Scythian monk named Dionysius. And he used the historical sources that were available to him. But we know that there's a problem, and he was off about four years because according to the Christian story, Jesus was born during the reign of Herod the Great, and Herod the Great most likely died in 4 BCE so if we are literally numbering the years from the birth of Jesus as it appears in the Christian story, in the book of Matthew, the book of Luke, then we're actually going into 2030, and we're at least celebrating Christmas 2029. Now, to understand this, Judea that Jesus was born into, Judea was not only the political and religious center of the Jewish people in the land of Israel, but it was an epicenter of a Jewish world with a vast Diaspora that extended east to Babylonia, modern day Iraq, and west throughout the entire Roman Mediterranean. In year one, we know that there were hundreds of thousands of Jews in Egypt. There were Jewish communities throughout what is today Turkey, Greece, Rome. Exactly. In Rome itself, there were tens of thousands of, of Jews. And this is so important because this Jewish Jesus, born in a very Jewish Judea, is in a very Roman context. In year one we would be just halfway through the reign of Augustus Caesar, the first Roman Emperor, who had inaugurated a new imperial period throughout the Roman world. And this Judea was not just some backwater and the periphery of the Roman Empire. It was right on the buffer zone and the fault line between, between the Roman west and the Parthian or Iranian east. And it's this Judea that was so divided politically, religiously, culturally that Jesus was born into.
- [07:16]
Dan Senor
So Benjamin, the Jews in Judea in year one are divided into what we would call today political camps. Which Jews being divided into political camps. Sounds familiar. It's a familiar theme throughout Jewish history. So what is this sharp divide really about? What catalyzed it?
- [07:34]
Benjamin Beerley
So in year one we have three or four camps or political factions. We have Sadducees, Pharisees, Essenes, the beginning of Zealots. But to understand all of these terms and who the groups are, which by the way, we're all deeply invested in being Jewish, in Judaism and in Jewish sovereignty and independence, we need to go back to where the Hanukkah story left us 150 years previous, prior to year one. And in Hanukkah we have this triumph of Jewish self determination, Jewish independence, this triumph of Jewish identity and Judaism over Hellenism. But with all triumphs and victories, especially military victories, the aftermath is a lot messier. And what we might have understood as a really clear break with Hellenism in the long run turns out not to be such a break. To understand this, we need to go to Judah Maccabees nephew, Yohanan. And Yohanan also goes by the Greek name John Hyrcanus. Pay attention to the Greek names. And he inherits from his father and his uncles a rebellion. And he needs to take that rebellion and build a state, build a dynasty. And that doesn't happen overnight. This takes decades over decades. John is fighting the Seleucids, the Hellenized Syrians that the Maccabees revolt against. And he is securing the place of this new Jewish state in a sea of Greek kingdoms and the wider Greek world. And he does this by militarily expanding to the north of Judea. He conquers the Samaritans, annexes Samaria to Judea, destroys the Samaritan temple on Hargrezim outside of Shechem, above Nablus of today. And in doing so, John Hyrkanos is saying there's only going to be one state religion here, and there's only going to be one temple and one high priest, and that's me to the south. He conquers the Idumeans, who in the Jewish tradition we call Edomites. And this is very important because he forcibly converts the Edomites to Judaism. And one of the people that's forcibly converted to Judaism will end up being the grandfather of. Of a king of Judea. So he's expanding this new Hasmonean state. He's expanding and consolidating power, but he's doing it as high priest, which is setting the Jewish people on an explosive trajectory, because in Judaism, the high priest is not supposed to be the political leader. The high priest is not supposed to be king. There's this very clear distinction in Judaism between high priest, temple and king or state. And as he's doing this, there are already different groups among Jews. There is a group that is more centered around the Temple and the Temple system, and there's a group that's more centered around the scribes and the teaching of Torah and the transmission of Torah and the transmission of an oral tradition that goes along with Torah. But as John Hyrcanus is consolidating power, this divide becomes political, because naturally, the group that is centered around the temple is now consolidating around his rule. And the group that is consolidated around the scribes and the Torah learning is finding this to be very, very problematic because they know the sources, and they know very clearly that the political leader of Israel is not supposed to be the high priest. And this is where we really can start talking about the beginning of the Sadducees and the Pharisees. And the Pharisees. In Jewish tradition, we call the rabbis or the sages. But we have this split between these.
- [11:15]
Dan Senor
Two groups, just so our listeners understand. Can you provide a little more definition to these two groups and, you know, provide a couple of examples of names people may be familiar with of the Pharisees or the Sadducees.
- [11:25]
Benjamin Beerley
Sure. So the Sadducees are centered around the Temple. And we have to think of the Temple as not just this religious place where people go to pray. It's an entire economy. There are daily sacrifices. There are thousands of priests. There's a whole system. There's a temple bureaucracy, a temple administration, and there are families that make all their money around the system of the Temple. And that's where we can really locate the Sadducees, this group of Temple elites. Now we don't have a lot of famous names of Sadducees because we don't have any sources from the Sadducees. We don't know what they would have said about themselves. Now the Pharisees, or the sages as we call them in Jewish tradition, this group, as I said, is centered around the scribes and they're more embedded in the everyday life of Jews living in Jerusalem, living throughout Judea. And we have some names that a lot of people would know. For example, anyone who's learned Gemara, Shimon Ben Shattach is a very famous rabbinic figure from this period that belongs to this group of Pharisees.
- [12:28]
Dan Senor
For our listeners, the Gemara is, it's studying the Talmud. This is what Benjamin's referring to, right?
- [12:32]
Benjamin Beerley
And the Talmud is a product of this oral tradition that the Pharisees are curating and grappling with throughout this period.
- [12:40]
Dan Senor
Which is hundreds of years of debates. These, what we would now call Rabbinic leaders are having these debates interpreting Jewish laws, how one should think about and comply with various Jewish laws.
- [12:51]
Benjamin Beerley
Which makes the Pharisees the more innovative group or the more progressive group of the two. Because the Pharisees are wrestling with questions of Jewish law, Jewish ethics. They're looking at a Judaism that's on based beyond just the Temple sacrifices, but culturally, because they're embedded with the everyday average Jew, they're much more populist, they're much more connected to what the people are saying in the marketplace, what the people are saying day to day in the study hall or the synagogue. Whereas the Sadducees are focused around the Temple, which again is a very lucrative economic system. So these are urban, but what does.
- [13:27]
Dan Senor
That mean, focused on the Temple? So you're basically saying the Pharisees are focused on ideas, debates, interpretation of laws. They're basically focused on words, ideas and a way of life. But I can't quite visualize the Sadducees. So help us understand better what they're actually doing.
- [13:45]
Benjamin Beerley
So you need to visualize the Temple. And the Temple has daily sacrifices. This isn't just something that takes 20 minutes to do or 30 minutes to do. There's a whole ritual system that has to be kept up. And so you have priests, being a priest, being a Cohen is a full time job. And so when we think of the temple complex. We can't just think of a synagogue where people go to the temple and they pray. There is a complex system of administration, of sacrifices. And the Sadducees are running this, and they're running it according to what it says in the Torah. They're carefully following the letter of the law and not having these debates about ethics and everyday living. They've got their hands full figuring out how do we sacrifice the animals in the right way, how do we bring the incense in the right way, Temple vestments, how do we keep the temple clean, how do we keep the temple purified? They're dealing with all this bureaucracy and upkeep of a very complicated ritual system, which for Judaism at the time and at the core of our texts, our entire existence depends on this system, because the temple is the meeting place between the divine God and the Jewish people. So we need a temple system to very meticulously and carefully run the show, because it's kind of the source of everything, which the Pharisees don't disagree with. The Pharisees aren't saying the temple isn't important. Those Sadducees are caught up in rituals that we don't need. The Pharisees acknowledge the centrality of the temple.
- [15:14]
Dan Senor
Okay, so now talk to me about what's going on now with the Hasmonean kingdom.
- [15:19]
Benjamin Beerley
So in the period of John Hyrcanus, who inherits this from his uncles, and he's taking this rebellion and turning it into a state that can survive and consolidating power. As high priest, he's in charge of this temple system, this division between what we call the Sadducees and the Pharisees or the Sadducees and the sages, becomes politicized because those that are centered around the temple system are aligning with John Hyrcanus. They're aligning with the Hasmonean king. They're supporting him, they're backing him. And the Pharisees, who are focused on the text and the law, they can't accept so easily this consolidation of power, because they know that a king cannot be high priest. High priest cannot be king. Now, John Hyrkanus never declares himself king, but when he dies and his oldest son, Aristobulus, again Greek name Aristobulus, is born Judah, but he goes by the Greek name of Aristobulus. He takes power, and he only reigns for a year, but he declares himself king. So the great grandson of Matitiao, who starts this rebellion against Hellenism and this rebellion against the Greek world is now declaring himself a king. And he's not just saying he's a king, he's declaring himself by Basileus. So he's a Greek king.
- [16:41]
Dan Senor
Okay. This whole topic of Hellenization, which is a central theme in the story, and it is something we talked about at length in our conversation, our episode with Rachel Goldberg, Poland on Hanukkah. I mean, we got into it with Rachel, as was appropriate for the Hanukkah episode. But if we're doing a deep dive into history here, it's more complex, I think, than people tend to think. It's certainly more complex than I realized. So can you talk about that and how the short reign of Aristobulus illustrate that theme of Hellenization and its complexity?
- [17:14]
Benjamin Beerley
So there's a big difference between rebellion or revolutionary movement and a sustainable state or a sustainable kingdom. And we have to remember that even though the Maccabean revolt was successful, the Jews are still living in a Greek world. And this new Jewish state, this new Jewish kingdom run by the Hasmoneans, has to survive in a wider region that is Greek. And they can't just live as some kind of isolated island state that's disconnected economically, strategically, militarily from the wider region. And the Hasmoneans find themselves surrounded by a world of Greek kings. Hellenism isn't something that can be totally rejected. It's too pervasive, it's too international, it's too global. There's no way to hold out, especially no way to hold out politically. So when Aristobulist declares himself king, according to the sources that we have, we have a completion of this process that is saying, okay, we've rebelled, but we have to survive. And you can't rebel from an extreme position of rejectionism and rejecting the outside world. You have to have a sustainable model to rule, and that's by becoming a Greek king. But another important thing that I want to add is when we think of Hellenization, sometimes in the Hanukkah story, we think of the Hellenizers as the assimilators, the innovators, those who are adopting something new. But when we fast forward to where we are with Aristobulus, just a century before the birth of Jesus, Hellenism and conservatism are going hand in hand in Judea, because, remember, again, Aristobulus is firmly rooted in this Sadducee camp, and he is backed by the Sadducees, who are all working around this temple system which is the core of traditional Judaism. And it is The Pharisees, the rabbis, the sages that are innovating with new ideas. So we have this fascinating kind of contradiction that the king is now saying he's a Greek king, he's fully Hellenized, but he's coming from this family that rebelled against the Greek empire. But it's specifically them who are being more conservative, and it's the rabbis or the sages who are being more innovative when it comes to Judaism, who are holding down the cultural traditionalism and starting to criticize how Hellenized Hasmoneans have become.
- [19:43]
Dan Senor
So, Benjamin, what you're saying right now is a little confusing to me because we tend to think. And again, the level of my knowledge about this topic is really centered around the study of the Hanukkah story. So it may be limited in that sense, but we tend to think of those who are Hellenized as not particularly traditional or Jewishly observant people. So where's the disconnect here?
- [20:07]
Benjamin Beerley
So I think two things. One, we can all relate to this idea of what was revolutionary or non traditional in one generation becomes the conservatives of the next generation. To really understand what this means is when we look at Aristobulus, he was born into a family of rebels, and they were rebelling against Hellenism. But in order to rule, they need Hellenism, and so they become Hellenized themselves. That's how they can politically and culturally survive. And but they're the same people that have the power economically, politically and religiously, and they want to conserve and preserve that power. So if you're a priest or come from a priestly family in Jerusalem in 100 BCE, 100 years before Jesus, and your families have become increasingly Hellenized, you're actually preserving the system as it is. You're the conservative that wants to hold on to the institutions that your parents and grandparents have built, whereas the Pharisees or the sages that are more embedded with the common people, they're not as invested in the institutions, so they have more room to challenge the institutions and to be more what we might think of as innovative or progressive or subversive, because they're not as invested in the institutions where all the power is concentrated.
- [21:31]
Dan Senor
Okay, so, Benjamin, I just want to take a short detour here and talk about Shlom Tzion, who is the wife of Ars de Bolus. So why is she significant?
- [21:42]
Benjamin Beerley
Shlom Tion Malka, or her Greek name that she also went by. Salome Alexandra, and she most likely called herself Alexandra, is one of the most fascinating Jewish women in history. And she really doesn't get the attention that she deserves. Like a lot of women, and I'm sure a lot of women listening right now. Shlom Tion found herself as a kind of island of moderation and sanity in a sea of a lot of crazy men, causing a lot of problems. She comes from a Pharisaic family. And Shimon Ben Shattach, who I mentioned earlier as a name of one of these Pharisees that we might recognize today, that's her brother. So she comes from a good Pharisee family, a good family of sages, of rabbis. And she's married to this Hasmonean king, Aristobulus, who declares himself Basileus. So we have this fascinating merger that we can maybe guess was intentional to bridge these two groups and try to deal with the tension that was rising in the society with a queen who's from the Pharisee world, from a Pharisee family, and a king who is from the Sadducee world or the Hasmonean world that is centered around the temple. Now, what's interesting is that Aristobulus dies after only a year, and his brother Alexander Yanai marries his widow, Shlom Tion. So we have Alexander is married Alexandra, the two quintessential Greek names, male and female. And Alexander Yanai will now reign for the next 30 years with Shlom Tion, Malka or Alexandra reign right by his side.
- [23:23]
Dan Senor
And as Rachel talked to us about in that Hanukkah episode, this is why we tend to think of Alex as a Jewish name. And in fact, it's not a Jewish name at all, but it is viewed as a very common Jewish name, and this is the origin of that. So I want to talk about Alexander and Alexander's reign and also the role, as you said, as Shlomo Zion plays during that time at his side. So walk us through that, because this is a very important phase.
- [23:46]
Benjamin Beerley
So Alexander takes control after his brother dies, and he runs with the title of king, no question about it. And he mints coins under the title of Basileios. So he's not even bothering to call himself high priest anymore. He's focusing on Basileios. I'm a Greek king. And over the next three decades, he will rule over one of the most divisive and violent periods of intra Jewish conflict, full on Jewish civil war. And of course, he's backed by the Sadducees. He's. He's backed by those families that are centered around the temple. And he becomes this famous or infamous persecutor of the Pharisees, his wife's world. So we can imagine Shlom Tion Malka, who comes from this famous and prominent rabbinic family or Pharisaic family, married to this king who is persecuting her family, persecuting the world that she comes from. Now our sources about this period are later, but we have some really gruesome details of Alexander crucify. Hundreds of rabbis really trying to stamp out the Pharisee opposition to this consolidation of power and this framing themselves as Greek kings. But he's also expanding and he brings the Hasmonean state to its greatest size and it's now from the coast to the Jordan. He conquers Gaza, which is very significant because at that time Gaza was an independent Greek speaking city that was really the seaport of Nabatean trade. Now this is important to note because the Nabataeans, with their capital in Petra, were an Arab nomadic people that became Hellenized and Gaza was their access to the Mediterranean world. Remember the Nabataeans, because a Nabataean princess will feature prominently as we continue to speak. But in conquering Gaza now, Alexander has dominated and annexed the Mediterranean coastline. So we have in his rule both a king who is expanding, but also a king who is fiercely persecuting the Pharisees.
- [25:58]
Dan Senor
Can you describe this war a little more just again, to help us visualize it?
- [26:02]
Benjamin Beerley
Civil war breaks out precisely around this issue of him being king. Because we've now gotten to a point where the Hasmoneans aren't just saying they're in charge of, they're saying they are kings. So they're squashing any hopes of a Davidic king, a king from the line of King David from the tribe of Judah, which is who is supposed to rule Israel. They're squashing any hopes or dreams of that happening. And the Pharisees can't accept this. The rabbinic world or the world of sages can't accept this. And it gets violent. There are massacres, Sadducees massacring Pharisees, Pharisees massacring Sadducees. We can imagine these kinds of and armed groups fighting each other in the marketplace, fighting each other at the entrance of the temple. We're talking about full on civil war. So Alexander wins, the Sadducees win, and the Sadducees clamp down on the Pharisees and Alexander dies. But he does something very significant in that he doesn't hand over rule to one of his sons, who would be the natural heir. He hands over Power to shlom tion. And now she reigns in her own right for a decade. And this is so important because following the civil war, she is this perfect solution because as a woman, she can't be high priest and she can't be king, so she can rule this hasmonean state that's merged the two without being either. And so she represents this kind of compromise between the defeated Pharisees and the victorious Sadducees by ruling this state and steering this mess forward, but without having to be king or high priest herself. And when she dies, we have two brothers, her son Aristobulus II and her son John Hyrcanus ii. And they go to civil war because one is backed by the Sadducees and one is backed by the Pharisees. So we're seeing generation after generation of this divide that's leading to civil war. And that civil war is. Is what's inconclusive because neither brothers can win. So what they do, they both do simultaneously, is they turn to the major Western superpower, Roman Empire, and they ask Rome to get involved.
- [28:19]
Dan Senor
And for listeners to understand at that point, Rome is. We often talk about, like today, America as the world's, you know, police force. Whether people want America to play that role or not to play, or they're opposed to America playing that role, that's the metaphor that's used, and that's how the Roman Empire was perceived at the time. Right. They were the dominant player around the world that had reach all over the place.
- [28:39]
Benjamin Beerley
Absolutely. And remember that in my opening remarks, I said that Judea was not just some backwater. Judea is on the fault line on the frontier zone between the Roman west and the Iranian East. Judea is located right on this fault line between two superpowers. So in turning to Rome, both brothers are aligning themselves with the Western superpower and not the Eastern superpower.
- [29:02]
Dan Senor
Okay, so now I want to go through Rome now getting involved in Judea following the civil war. So everybody in the region is looking to Rome to step in. So what happens?
- [29:11]
Benjamin Beerley
You can imagine Rome looking at this conflict between brothers and not being impressed, because Rome is not interested in stamping out Judaism, oppressing Jews, or getting rid of traditional Jewish religion or culture. Rome wants order. Rome wants influence. Rome wants revenue. And so when Pompey gets involved, Pompey is the statesman and the Roman general who's calling shots in the region. And he gets these requests from both brothers to get involved. What does he do? He backs the weaker brother because this is smart for Rome, who Rather have a vassal state or a client state run by a weaker king than a more dominant, problematic king. So they back the weaker brother, send troops and invade Jerusalem. And this invasion and siege of Jerusalem in 63 BCE is brutal. It's violent. Pompey comes in with tens of thousands of troops, enters the streets of Jerusalem and he enters the temple himself. So we have this Roman general going into the Holy of Holies, which when we talk about this, there's a famous adage that once Pompey entered the temple, Rome would never leave until the temple was destroyed. So we have this dramatic conquest of Jerusalem and this backing of the younger brother. But this isn't going to work because the Hasmoneans are highly divided, problematic. Just because Rome backs one of the brothers, that doesn't mean that the average Jew living in Judea that's now been invested in this sectarian and divisive conflict for the last two generations is just going to accept this foreign superpower calling the shots. Rome quickly starts to realize that there needs to be an alternative. And here we have the rise of someone by the name of Antipater, who was an Idymian, a local bureaucrat that is an upstart, very shrewd, very, very smart. And he's reading the room and understands that the Romans are looking for an alternative. And he makes himself very useful, he makes himself very friendly to the Romans and he pushes forward his son, Herod.
- [31:27]
Narrator/Host Intro and Outro
Let's take a short break to hear a word from our sponsor.
- [31:32]
Gabe Silverstein
Hi, it's Gabe Silverstein from the ARC Media team.
- [31:36]
Dan Senor
You may know me from research by Gabe Silverstein.
- [31:39]
Gabe Silverstein
This summer I participated in a Birthright trip. So I can tell you exactly what they mean when they say one trip changes everything. Birthright didn't just connect me with my Israeli brothers and sisters in a spiritual and lasting way. Birthright gave me a deeper understanding of what it means to be a Jew and where I fit into the Jewish story. It's incredible to me that this organization exists. And I know that behind every one of these trips are generous people who made it happen. People like you. Birthright Israel's goal is to inspire and empower a new generation of Jewish young adults to help make that happen and to create more life changing experiences like mine. Please visit BirthrightIsrael Foundation. Callmeback. One trip changes everything.
- [32:27]
Dan Senor
Benjamin, can you tell me a little bit more about Herod?
- [32:30]
Benjamin Beerley
So Herod, with this well connected father, is becoming more influential and becoming very useful to the Romans. And when the Romans realize that the Hasmoneans aren't the way to go. They are looking for someone to keep Judea in line, keep Judea under control, and also someone that can function as a king, so they can't bring someone that's completely random. And Herod, as the descendant of converts to Judaism, is Jewish enough. He's Jewish enough for the Romans. Now, his mother is a Nabataean princess. And the Nabataeans were the Arabs that I mentioned earlier that had their main port or their main connection to the Mediterranean in Gaza. A Nabataean princess is his mother. So on one side he's Nabataean, and on the other side he is a descendant of Edomites that are forcibly converted. In 37 BCE, the Romans name him King of Judea, effectively ending the Hasmonean dynasty. Now, Herod has a big problem because he's not Hasmonian, his mother's not Jewish, his father comes from converts. So for critics, potentially his father might be questionably Jewish. What we have here is someone with a really big legitimacy problem. So what he needs to do is marry in to the Hasmonean family. He needs a Hasmonean wife. And he marries a Hasmonean princess, the granddaughter of one of the two brothers that was fighting in the last civil war, the granddaughter of Aristobulus ii. And in some of the sources she's not named, but in other sources she's named as Miriam. And Herod marries Miriam to legitimize his claim to the throne, which is purely just for optics with the Jewish people because the Romans have already backed him. The Romans have already decided Herod is going to run the show. Now, the problem is that depending on the source, either he has her executed because he's so paranoid about this Hasmonean threat and that she might be scheming against him, or in the rabbinic tradition in the Gemara, she is remembered as having committed suicide and preferred jumping to her death than rather marry Herod, who had no right to be king.
- [34:55]
Dan Senor
According to Jewish and Christian tradition. He's at least the description of him is that he's a very bad character, but it's more complex than that. So can you just dig into that a little bit?
- [35:08]
Benjamin Beerley
So it's one of the few things that both Christian and Jewish tradition agree on is that Herod is a bad guy, that he is this brutal, bloodthirsty figure in the Book of Matthew, in the Christian tradition, he's responsible for the massacre of innocence. So when Jesus is born, he gets word that a Messiah is born and he orders the murder of all baby boys under 2 years old in Judea. In the Jewish tradition, he's remembered as a murderer of rabbis. He executes hundreds of rabbis who oppose his rule precisely because he lacks legitimacy. How can this be a Jewish king? He might not even really be Jewish. But it is much more complex than that, because at the same time that he is being remembered as this brutal and bloodthirsty leader, he sets out on a massive project of renovation, construction, public works projects. He rebuilds the Temple in Jerusalem, which is remembered in our tradition in the Gemara. It says in Bava Batra that anyone who has not seen the Temple of Herod has never seen a beautiful building. So even though we remember him as this bloodthirsty bad guy, he renovates the Temple. And every single one of us, every single Jew listening right now who has been to Jerusalem has intimately come in touch with one of these projects, the Western Wall. The Western Wall is a Herodian retaining wall that might not have been finished during Herod the Great's lifetime, but it was built as a part of his expansion of the Temple Mount. Masada, the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, the Port of Caesarea or Caesarea. These are all Herod's building projects. So we have this really fascinating dissonance between this allegedly brutal and murderous king who is backed by a Western superpower who has a very tenuous claim to kingship. And there's massive discontent, a very profound discomfort with this figure. But at the same time, he's on a state building project that's really impressive. So what Herod was doing was he was setting out on a campaign to make Judea great again, to rival the entire Hasmonean dynasty that he took over from, and say, I am going to make this kingdom as it was supposed to be, greater than ever.
- [37:39]
Dan Senor
Okay? But people at this time there are looking for a solution that goes beyond.
- [37:43]
Benjamin Beerley
Politics precisely because of this dissonance.
- [37:45]
Dan Senor
Right, so what's the political mood now in this region, Benjamin, as we get towards the end of Herod's reign?
- [37:52]
Benjamin Beerley
So the political mood is hopeless, frustrated, because we have this superpower from the west that is calling the shots. We're now part of Rome, not officially and not technically, but the reality is that a foreign superpower is running the show. And we have these incredible building projects. We have this magnificent temple that's described in the Gemara as being made of blue and. And green and white marble that looks like the sea from a distance. We have these incredible public works projects and aqueducts theaters, new marketplaces and streets. But there's this feeling that the system is corrupt. The system isn't what it's supposed to be. We're at the end of a very long reign of a king that might not even really be Jewish. So there's this feeling that the solution, both politically and religiously, can only come from a dramatic, drastic event, divine intervention, or a type of figure, a messiah, that will shake everything up beyond the normal politics of the day.
- [39:05]
Dan Senor
Okay, so now this brings us to.
- [39:06]
Narrator/Host Intro and Outro
1 AD in Jerusalem.
- [39:08]
Dan Senor
This is the world that Jesus is born into. Let's talk about this messianism and how it fits into it. You say that there's this understanding, there's this view, there's a search for Messiah. Only a messiah can solve all of this. So what's the. Just talk a little bit about this role of messianism into this period we're in.
- [39:29]
Benjamin Beerley
So if we were walking around the streets of Jerusalem or walking between the villages of the Galilee in year one, there would be all of these figures, these men that were attracting crowds. And some of them would sound more political, meaning some of them would sound more revolutionary, speaking against the injustices of Roman taxation or the injustices of the bureaucratic system, the political system calling for open rebellion, armed rebellion. Some would sound more esoteric, telling us that there's no solution through violence, there's no solution through uprising, or we need to wait for a miraculous intervention, the same kind of intervention that took us out of Egypt. We now need to wait for a similar event, or we would have these figures that kind of combined all these roles. There would be a political call to throw off Roman rule, but there would also be this idea that we're going to enter a new era that's going to involve divine intervention. So we would be listening to these different figures today. We can look at them and call them messianic figures. And it's exactly one of these figures that Jesus would become. And these figures are not institutional figures. These are not prominent priests from the temple system. They're not coming from the world of Sadducees. They're not coming from the urban elites that are now very closely aligned with Herod's family and with the Roman system. These are figures that are coming from the smaller villages. These are figures that are coming from the poorer classes of people. And we have figures in the Christian texts as well as Jesus. We have John the Baptist, who is calling people to the Jordan river and telling them that something imminent is coming, someone's going to come after him that's going to change all of this. Josephus, who is our main historical source for all of this writing a generation after this happened, he describes figures like Judah of the Galilee, who wages this kind of violent rebellion against the Romans, as Josephus describes it, over taxation. And we also have the Essenes, who is now another group to add to the Pharisees and the Sadducees, who said both the Pharisees and the Sadducees corrupt. They're too worldly. We need to wait for an apocalyptic end of world scenario to get us out of this mess. And the Essenes set up centers in the desert. Josephus describes them also in small towns throughout Judea, where they are attracting people and they are talking about this kind of apocalyptic scenario where the children of light and the children of darkness, meaning them versus the rest of the world, are going to enter into this apocalyptic battle. And there's going to be these messiahs that come into the picture and liberate the Jewish people. But these figures are coming from outside of the institutional mainstream and also from outside of the temple system, which is concentrated around the Sadducees.
- [42:42]
Dan Senor
Okay, so Jesus the man is born into this reality of Jewish messianism. So what do we actually know about Jesus as a historical figure? And why does he. Of all these messiahs, some of which you've given us examples of, there's all these messiahs, you know, hundreds of these messiahs roaming around. Why is he the one that winds up being remembered?
- [43:04]
Benjamin Beerley
Yeah, it's a very good question. Because very few people have heard of Judah of Galilee, but everyone's heard of Jesus, right? We note the historical Jesus was born to a Jewish family and lived a very Jewish life. And he started preaching or working around the age of 30 in a way that countless other Jewish men were doing at the same time. And he was frustrated with the elites. He was not inclusive in the way that we think of inclusivity today. But he was pushing boundaries. He surrounded himself with social outcasts. In the Christian narrative. We find him with prostitutes, with tax collectors. He's on the edge of society like many other similar figures were. He's very angry at the perceived injustices of this social order. And he's speaking in parables, he's speaking in stories that would be very familiar to Jews who have learned Gemara or Jews who have learned the Talmud. So we have this figure that is very Jewish in his wider political, social context. But he's kind of combining different elements of, of the groups that we've been discussing. He's speaking about ethics in a way that feels rabbinic, feels Pharisaic, coming from the world of the Pharisees. But he's talking about this imminent ending, this urgent need to repent and reform before the kingdom comes, a new kingdom waiting for this apocalyptic shift to happen. He's sounding politically radical, which is ultimately why the Romans execute him. And this might help us understand why his memory caught on and became so popular and ultimately transformed the course of the Roman Empire is because he wasn't just a Pharisee. He wasn't just an Essene. He wasn't just a political rebel. He's using rhetoric, at least from the Christian narrative that we have access to. He seems to be combining different parts of these worlds and in a way that allows everyone to project what they want to hear onto him.
- [45:15]
Dan Senor
Okay, so then where does all this lead? What came of all these messiahs and the Pharisees and the Sadducees?
- [45:22]
Benjamin Beerley
So where are we now with Herod's death? We're now set on a trajectory that's not going anywhere good. Herod's kingdom essentially collapses, and the Romans divided up. His son was also named Herod. Archelaus that takes control of Judea is such a massive failure that the Romans completely cancel the kingdom of Judea and declared a province, instituting a Roman governor, which is why we have Pontius Pilate in the story of Jesus, who orders his execution. So we see a collapse of this political system that Herod built up, and this exacerbates the division that that is already boiling throughout Herod's reign, because these questions of legitimacy, these questions of power, this gap between the rabbis and the temple elite. And now we have this wave of messianic expectation and these messianic figures, this is all creating a perfect storm that is going to explode. So you have Jews that are becoming more apocalyptic, more divided. And as Jewish autonomy continues to disintegrate.
- [46:31]
Dan Senor
And there's more and more zealots, right? I mean, they're really defining the time, right?
- [46:35]
Benjamin Beerley
So when we think of the zealots who will become super prominent after the death of Jesus, the decades following, who are very political, they're not waiting for divine intervention. They're not waiting for a messiah to show up and lead the children of light against the children of darkness. And they're not worried about debating ethics and Jewish law with the rabbis, and they're certainly not interested in the temple system. They want a political solution. They want a rebellion. They want a Maccabean revolt. They want to take us back to where we started. But this time, they're not up against the Seleucid, Hellenized Syrians. They're up against the superpower of the world, the Roman Empire.
- [47:16]
Dan Senor
And where were the Pharisees in all of this? Were they staying out of politics, the Pharisees?
- [47:21]
Benjamin Beerley
Or again, we can call them rabbis. They are doing their best to stay apolitical, at least as much as we can tell, meaning that they are still focused on preserving a Judaism that is based around Torah, Torah learning and an oral tradition that has been passed down from Pharisee generation to Pharisee generation. So we don't know how apocalyptic they might have been or if they were tapping into a lot of the Messianic energy. But we know that they had a very complicated relationship with the Zealots, because from the sources we have available to us, the Pharisees were kind of looking at the Zealots as extremists. They were looking at the Zealots saying, this is not going to end well. Yes, we see the problems. We see this disintegration of Jewish autonomy and independence. We see that we're now a part of Rome. Judea is a province. The Temple is now paying taxes to the Roman Empire. But a violent uprising is not in our interests. And ultimately the Pharisees were right, because the rise of the Zealots is what sets us on the trajectory for the destruction of the temple in 70 CE.
- [48:35]
Narrator/Host Intro and Outro
So, Benjamin, in closing, how would you.
- [48:37]
Dan Senor
Characterize this period, what this period meant and where this period ends and what's about to begin?
- [48:42]
Benjamin Beerley
So this period is defined by Jewish division and sectarianism going all the way back to John Hyrkonus, who consolidates his Hasmonean power 120 years before the birth of Jesus. This division in the Jewish people is setting us on a trajectory for disaster. But ultimately, I think the most important thing to remember is that none of this was inevitable. None of this was fate. Throughout this entire story, the division, the civil war intervention of Rome, and ultimately the division we have with the rise of the Zealots, none of this was inevitable. So the very Jewish story behind Christmas is a story of a Jew shaped by very Jewish conflicts that you can't understand without understanding the Jewish conflicts that he was born into.
- [49:33]
Dan Senor
All right, Benjamin, we will leave it there. Thank you for this. It was a tour de force and I think provides a whole other context and scene setting for so many people, whether they celebrate Christmas or not, about what was happening in the world. It's just extremely important context and you left us with a little bit of a cliffhanger, so we will at some point have to do the sequel. Not today. We've given our listeners a lot of material here, so look forward to having you back soon.
- [49:57]
Benjamin Beerley
Fantastic. Thank you. Dan.
- [50:03]
Gabe Silverstein
Foreign.
- [50:08]
Dan Senor
That's our show for today.
- [50:09]
Narrator/Host Intro and Outro
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- [50:10]
Dan Senor
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- [50:12]
Narrator/Host Intro and Outro
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- [50:15]
Dan Senor
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- [50:21]
Narrator/Host Intro and Outro
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- [50:30]
Dan Senor
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- [50:32]
Narrator/Host Intro and Outro
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- [50:33]
Dan Senor
To arc media.org that's ark media.org call.
- [50:38]
Narrator/Host Intro and Outro
Me back is produced and edited by Lon Benatar. Arc Media's Executive producer is Adam James Levin Aretti. Our Production manager is Brittany Cohn. Sound and video editing by Liquid Audio. Our Associate producer is Maya Rockoff. Community management by Gabe Silverstein. Our music was composed by Yuval Semo. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor. We all know the challenges facing the Jewish world today. Anti Semitism on campus. Misinformation on social media. Young Jews feeling isolated, discouraged and disconnected. And we're all searching for answers. Well, one answer just might be staring us in the face. Birthright Israel for over 25 years, research has shown that a 10 day trip to Israel strengthens Jewish identity, pride and resilience in young adults. The Birthright model works. The impact is real. What they need now is our support. It costs $5,000 to send one Jewish young adult on a trip to Israel, but the return on investment is extraordinary. Today's Birthright participants are among tomorrow's Jewish leaders, educators, parents, pro Israel activists and philanthropists. They are the backbone of the next generation and we need more of them. So if you want a stronger, brighter future for the Jewish people, make a gift to Birthright Israel today. Visit onetripchangeseverything.com or just follow the link in the show notes.