Herod Who?
Which Herod was it? The New Testament is filled with references to a “Herod” as a king, in fact, about 45 times. However, it references on to the time of Jesus birth along with another who killed James and imprisoned Peter. Were they the same person? Why did they want to kill Jews and then followers of Christ? Lets take a dive into biblical history and find out. To lay out the current context in the New Testament, we first have to travel back to the Old Testament timeline. In 323 BC, Alexander the Great (who was a Macedonian Greek) died. This led to three of his generals fighting for his empire, (I will use the modern names of the places they took over for ease of reading). Seleucus took over Syria and Asia Minor, Ptolemy took control of Egypt and Israel, and Antigonus secured Greece itself. For 125 years, the Land of Israel was between a rock and a hard place with both the Seleucids and the Ptolemies battling for more land to include Israel. The Seleucids finally won in 1...