Music: An American Idol

If there are problems with music and the church in today’s culture, it’s not about the latest, newest, strangest, most secularized music, or picking on this or that style in the name of sanctified otherness. It’s about the egregious errors that are regularly anointed by pastors and so-called worship leaders and ecclesiastical analysts. We have become paganized, in mirroring a post-Romanticist, culture-wide addiction to music. We’re talking idolatry, but not just the kind where music is reputed to have the power to change lives—this alone is refutable—but where music, any music, any style, anywhere, becomes indispensable to doing anything and everything, including so-called Christian worship. Far too often, music means worship and worship means music. This is a blatant hook-up between things of the Spirit and mere handiwork. And this hook-up takes us down the road to idolatrous pantheism sprinkled with holy water. --Harold Best

Noah, not the Biblical figure

Sympathy For The Devil by Dr Brian Mattson

In Darren Aronofsky’s new star-gilt silver screen epic, Noah, Adam and Eve are luminescent and fleshless, right up until the moment they eat the forbidden fruit.

Such a notion isn’t found in the Bible, of course. This, among the multitude of Aronofsky’s other imaginative details like giant Lava Monsters, has caused many a reviewer’s head to be scratched. Conservative-minded evangelicals write off the film because of the “liberties” taken with the text of Genesis, while a more liberal-minded group stands in favor of cutting the director some slack. After all, we shouldn’t expect a professed atheist to have the same ideas of “respecting” sacred texts the way a Bible-believer would.

Both groups have missed the mark entirely. Aronofsky hasn’t “taken liberties” with anything. 

The Bible is not his text. 

In his defense, I suppose, the film wasn’t advertised as such. Nowhere is it said that this movie is an adaptation of Genesis. It was never advertised as “The Bible’s Noah,” or “The Biblical Story of Noah.” In our day and age we are so living in the leftover atmosphere of Christendom that when somebody says they want to do “Noah,” everybody assumes they mean a rendition of the Bible story. That isn’t what Aronofsky had in mind at all. I’m sure he was only too happy to let his studio go right on assuming that, since if they knew what he was really up to they never would have allowed him to make the movie.

Let’s go back to our luminescent first parents. I recognized the motif instantly as one common to the ancient religion of Gnosticism. Here’s a 2nd century A.D. description about what a sect called the Ophites believed:

“Adam and Eve formerly had light, luminous, and so to speak spiritual bodies, as they had been fashioned. But when they came here, the bodies became dark, fat, and idle.” –Irenaeus of Lyon, Against Heresies, I, 30.9

It occurred to me that a mystical tradition more closely related to Judaism, called Kabbalah (which the singer Madonna made popular a decade ago or so), surely would have held a similar view, since it is essentially a form of Jewish Gnosticism. I dusted off (No, really: I had to dust it) my copy of Adolphe Franck’s 19th century work, The Kabbalah, and quickly confirmed my suspicions:

“Before they were beguiled by the subtleness of the serpent, Adam and Eve were not only exempt from the need of a body, but did not even have a body—that is to say, they were not of the earth.”

Franck quotes from the Zohar, one of Kabbalah’s sacred texts:

“When our forefather Adam inhabited the Garden of Eden, he was clothed, as all are in heaven, with a garment made of the higher light. When he was driven from the Garden of Eden and was compelled to submit to the needs of this world, what happened? God, the Scriptures tell us, made Adam and his wife tunics of skin and clothed them; for before this they had tunics of light, of that higher light used in Eden…”

Obscure stuff, I know. But curiosity overtook me and I dove right down the rabbit hole.

I discovered what Darren Aronofsky’s first feature film was: Pi. Want to know its subject matter? Do you? Are you sure?

Kabbalah.

If you think that’s a coincidence, you may want a loved one to schedule you a brain scan.

Have I got your attention? Good.

The world of Aronofsky’s Noah is a thoroughly Gnostic one: a graded universe of “higher” and “lower.” The “spiritual” is good, and way, way, way “up there” where the ineffable, unspeaking god dwells, and the “material” is bad, and way, way down here where our spirits are encased in material flesh. This is not only true of the fallen sons and daughters of Adam and Eve, but of fallen angels, who are explicitly depicted as being spirits trapped inside a material “body” of cooled molten lava.

Admittedly, they make pretty nifty movie characters, but they’re also notorious in Gnostic speculation. Gnostics call them Archons, lesser divine beings or angels who aid “The Creator” in forming the visible universe. And Kabbalah has a pantheon of angelic beings of its own all up and down the ladder of “divine being.” And fallen angels are never totally fallen in this brand of mysticism. To quote the Zohar again, a central Kabbalah text: “All things of which this world consists, the spirit as well as the body, will return to the principle and the root from which they came.” Funny. That’s exactly what happens to Aronofsky’s Lava Monsters. They redeem themselves, shed their outer material skin, and fly back to the heavens. Incidentally, I noticed that in the film, as the family is traveling through a desolate wasteland, Shem asks his father: “Is this a Zohar mine?” Yep. That’s the name of Kabbalah’s sacred text. 

The entire movie is, figuratively, a “Zohar” mine. 

If there was any doubt about these “Watchers,” Aronofsky gives several of them names: Semyaza, Magog, and Rameel. They’re all well-known demons in the Jewish mystical tradition, not only in Kabbalah but also in the book of 1 Enoch.

What!? Demons are redeemed? Adolphe Franck explains the cosmology of Kabbalah: “Nothing is absolutely bad; nothing is accursed forever—not even the archangel of evil or the venomous beast, as he is sometimes called. There will come a time when he will recover his name and his angelic nature.”

Okay. That’s weird. But, hey, everybody in the film seems to worship “The Creator,” right? Surely it’s got that in its favor!

Except that when Gnostics speak about “The Creator” they are not talking about God. Oh, here in an affluent world living off the fruits of Christendom the term “Creator” generally denotes the true and living God. But here’s a little “Gnosticism 101” for you: the Creator of the material world is an ignorant, arrogant, jealous, exclusive, violent, low-level, bastard son of a low level deity. He’s responsible for creating the “unspiritual” world of flesh and matter, and he himself is so ignorant of the spiritual world he fancies himself the “only God” and demands absolute obedience. They generally call him “Yahweh.” Or other names, too (Ialdabaoth, for example).

This Creator tries to keep Adam and Eve from the true knowledge of the divine and, when they disobey, flies into a rage and boots them from the garden.

In other words, in case you’re losing the plot here: The serpent was right all along. This “god,” “The Creator,” whom they are worshiping is withholding something from them that the serpent will provide: divinity itself.

The world of Gnostic mysticism is bewildering with a myriad of varieties. But, generally speaking, they hold in common that the serpent is “Sophia,” “Mother,” or “Wisdom.” The serpent represents the true divine, and the claims of “The Creator” are false.

So is the serpent a major character in the film?

Let’s go back to the movie. The action opens when Lamech is about to bless his son, Noah. Lamech, rather strangely for a patriarch of a family that follows God, takes out a sacred relic, the skin of the serpent from the Garden of Eden. He wraps it around his arm, stretches out his hand to touch his son—except, just then, a band of marauders interrupts them and the ceremony isn’t completed. Lamech gets killed, and the “villain” of the film, Tubal-Cain, steals the snakeskin. Noah, in other words, doesn’t get whatever benefit the serpent’s skin was to bestow.

The skin doesn’t light up magically on Tubal-Cain’s arm, so apparently he doesn’t get “enlightened,” either. And that’s why everybody in the film, including protagonist and antagonist, Noah and Tubal-Cain, is worshiping “The Creator.” They are all deluded. Let me clear something up here: lots of reviewers expressed some bewilderment over the fact there aren’t any likable characters and that they all seem to be worshiping the same God. Tubal-Cain and his clan are wicked and evil and, as it turns out, Noah’s pretty bad himself when he abandons Ham’s girlfriend and almost slays two newborn children. Some thought this was some kind of profound commentary on how there’s evil in all of us. Here’s an excerpt from the Zohar, the sacred text of Kabbalah: 

“Two beings [Adam and Nachash—the Serpent] had intercourse with Eve [the Second woman], and she conceived from both and bore two children. Each followed one of the male parents, and their spirits parted, one to this side and one to the other, and similarly their characters. On the side of Cain are all the haunts of the evil species; from the side of Abel comes a more merciful class, yet not wholly beneficial -- good wine mixed with bad."

Sound familiar? Yes. Darren Aronofsky’s Noah, to the “T.”

Anyway, everybody is worshiping the evil deity. Who wants to destroy everybody. (By the way, in Kabbalah many worlds have already been created and destroyed.) Both Tubal-Cain and Noah have identical scenes, looking into the heavens and asking, “Why won’t you speak to me?” “The Creator” has abandoned them all because he intends to kill them all.

Noah had been given a vision of the coming deluge. He’s drowning, but sees animals floating to the surface to the safety of the ark. No indication whatsoever is given that Noah is to be saved; Noah conspicuously makes that part up during an awkward moment explaining things to his family. He is sinking while the animals, “the innocent,” are rising. “The Creator” who gives Noah his vision wants all the humans dead.

Many reviewers thought Noah’s change into a homicidal maniac on the ark, wanting to kill his son’s two newborn daughters, was a weird plot twist. It isn’t weird at all. In the Director’s view, Noah is worshiping a false, homicidal maniac of a god. The more faithful and “godly” Noah becomes, the more homicidal he becomes. He is becoming every bit the “image of god” that the “evil” guy who keeps talking about the “image of god,” Tubal-Cain, is.

But Noah fails “The Creator.” He cannot wipe out all life like his god wants him to do. “When I looked at those two girls, my heart was filled with nothing but love,” he says. Noah now has something “The Creator” doesn’t. Love. And Mercy. But where did he get it? And why now?

In the immediately preceding scene Noah killed Tubal-Cain and recovered the snakeskin relic: “Sophia,” “Wisdom,” the true light of the divine. Just a coincidence, I’m sure.

Okay, I’m almost done. The rainbows don’t come at the end because God makes a covenant with Noah. The rainbows appear when Noah sobers up and embraces the serpent. He wraps the skin around his arm, and blesses his family. It is not God that commissions them to now multiply and fill the earth, but Noah, in the first person, “I,” wearing the serpent talisman. (Oh, and by the way, it’s not accidental that the rainbows are all circular. The circle of the “One,” the Ein Sof, in Kabbalah, is the sign of monism.)

Notice this thematic change: Noah was in a drunken stupor the scene before. Now he is sober and “enlightened.” Filmmakers never do that by accident.

He’s transcended and outgrown that homicidal, jealous deity.

Let me issue a couple of caveats to all this: Gnostic speculation is a diverse thing. Some groups appear radically “dualist,” where “The Creator” really is a different “god” altogether. Others are more “monist,” where God exists in a series of descending emanations. Others have it that the lower deity “grows” and “matures” and himself ascends the “ladder” or “chain” of being to higher heights. Noah probably fits a little in each category. It’s hard to tell. My other caveat is this: there is no doubt a ton of Kabbalist imagery, quotations, and themes in this movie that I couldn’t pick up in a single sitting. For example, since Kabbalah takes its flights of fancy generally based on Hebrew letters and numbers, I did notice that the “Watchers” appeared to be deliberately shaped like Hebrew letters. But you could not pay me to go see this movie again so I could further drill into the Zohar mine to see what I could find. (On a purely cinematic viewpoint, I found most of it unbearably boring.) 

What I can say on one viewing is this:

Darren Aronofsky has produced a retelling of the Noah story without reference to the Bible at all. This was not, as he claimed, just a storied tradition of run-of-the-mill Jewish “Midrash.” This was a thoroughly pagan retelling of the Noah story direct from Kabbalist and Gnostic sources. To my mind, there is simply no doubt about this.

So let me tell you what the real scandal in all of this is.

It isn’t that he made a film that departed from the biblical story. It isn’t that disappointed and overheated Christian critics had expectations set too high.

The scandal is this: of all the Christian leaders who went to great lengths to endorse this movie (for whatever reasons: “it’s a conversation starter,” “at least Hollywood is doing something on the Bible,” etc.), and all of the Christian leaders who panned it for “not following the Bible”…

Not one of them could identify a blatantly Gnostic subversion of the biblical story when it was right in front of their faces.

I believe Aronofsky did it as an experiment to make fools of us: “You are so ignorant that I can put Noah (granted, it's Russell Crowe!) up on the big screen and portray him literally as the ‘seed of the Serpent’ and you all will watch my studio’s screening and endorse it.”

He’s having quite the laugh. And shame on everyone who bought it.

And what a Gnostic experiment! In Gnosticism, only the "elite" are "in the know" and have the secret knowledge. Everybody else are dupes and ignorant fools. The "event" of this movie is intended to illustrate the Gnostic premise. We are dupes and fools. Would Christendom awake, please?

In response, I have one simple suggestion:

Henceforth, not a single seminary degree is granted unless the student demonstrates that he has read, digested, and understood Irenaeus of Lyon’s Against Heresies.

Because it's the 2nd century all over again.

Postscript

Some readers may think I'm being hard on people for not noticing the Gnosticism at the heart of this film. I am not expecting rank-and-file viewers to notice these things. I would expect exactly what we've seen: head-scratching confusion. I've got a whole different standard for Christian leaders: college and seminary professors, pastors, and Ph.Ds. If a serpent skin wrapped around the arm of a godly Bible character doesn't set off any alarms... I don't know what to say.

Why Is This Issue Different?

I know of no Christian leader or Christian community promoting theft or championing idolatry as a special blessing from God. --Kevin DeYoung http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/kevindeyoung/2014/03/27/why-is-this-issue-different/

“But God Made Me This Way!”

by John M. Frame

Homosexuals today commonly claim that they cannot help being homosexual. Homosexuality, they argue, is innate: perhaps genetically determined, in any case so deeply ingrained in their very being that it is, for them, an inescapable condition. Therefore, they conclude, church and society should accept homosexuality as natural and normal. Surely, they insist, it is unfair to condemn people for what they cannot help doing.

Indeed, those homosexuals who want recognition as Christians interpret the “inescapability” of their condition theistically: “God made me this way.” How can Christians, then, condemn a condition that God himself created?

This question comes up in many areas of discussion other than homosexuality.

The rapid progress of genetic science has led to lively discussions concerning whether some behavior patterns are innate.  Some years ago, it was learned that an abnormally high proportion of boys with a double “y” chromosome engages in anti-social or criminal behavior. Does this discovery imply that criminality, in some cases, at least, is an innate and inescapable condition? What then?  Should we abort children who have this genetic combination? Should we test children early for this condition and take special pains to steer xyy boys into constructive paths? Should we seek ways to change the genetic makeup of such children?

Later came the discovery that a certain gene is associated with a relatively high percentage of alcoholics. And still more recently, Simon LeVay, a gay activist and neuroscientist, published a paper in Science(253:1034-1037) arguing that there are some minute but statistically significant differences between heterosexual and homosexual men in the size of the “INAH-3″ region of the anterior hypothalmus, part of the brain. Some have argued that this discovery tends to establish what gay activists have long been saying, namely that homosexuality is an innate condition rather than a “choice,” that it cannot be helped, and therefore it should be accepted as normal.

I am not competent to evaluate LeVay’s research. I do think that we are wise to suspend judgment until LeVay’s work is corroborated by others who are more objective on the question. However, we should note as others have that there is an unanswered “chicken and egg” problem here: how do we know that this condition (or perhaps the larger unexplored physical basis for it) is the cause, and not the result, of homosexual thought and behavior?

And of course we must also remember that these discoveries were made through studies of the brains of people who were exclusively homosexual, compared with brains of people who were presumed to be exclusively heterosexual.1 But there is a wide spectrum between these two extremes. The exclusively homosexual population seems to be between 1% and 3% of the population (the widely used Kinsey figure of 10% is now largely discredited). But many more people have bisexual inclinations, and still others are largely heterosexual but willing to enter homosexual relationships under certain circumstances (experimentation, prison, etc.) Is there a genetic basis for these rather complicated patterns of behavior? Neither LeVay nor anyone else has offered data suggesting that.

But let’s assume that there is an innate physical basis for homosexuality, and for alcoholism, and indeed for general criminality. I suspect that as genetic science develops over the years there will be more and more correlations made between genetics and behavior, and that will be scientific progress. What ethical conclusions should we draw?

For one thing, we certainly should not draw the conclusion that gay activists want to draw, namely that any “innate” condition must therefore be accepted as natural and normal. Innateness has nothing to do with normality. Many diseases, for example, are genetically determined. But we don’t consider Tay-Sachs or Sickle-Cell Anemia to be “normal” or desirable conditions, let alone to possess some ethical virtue. Nor do we consider alcoholism or “xyy” anti‑social behavior to be normal and natural. Rather, we do all we can to fight them. Genetic discoveries, indeed, open up more possible weapons for this fight. Some have suggested, indeed, that the discovery of a “gay gene” would give us the opportunity, through abortion or genetic manipulation, of eliminating homosexuality (or at least one impulse toward homosexuality) from society altogether. That is precisely what gay activists don’t want to hear.

Further, we must keep these discoveries in perspective. Not everyone who has the xyy gene becomes a criminal, and not everyone with a genetic risk factor for alcoholism actually becomes an alcoholic. Similarly, it is quite unlikely that a “gay gene,” should it exist, would actually determine people to be homosexual. Although studies of twins do show a correlation between genetics and homosexuality, half of all twin brothers of homosexuals are heterosexual. So the data suggest something less than genetic determinism. Indeed, they suggest that it is possible for someone to resist patterns of behavior to which he is genetically predisposed. Genes do determine eye color, sex, blood type and so on; but patterns of behavior, although influenced by genetic make-up, do not seem to be controlled by it. The typical behavioral differences between males and females, for example, have a genetic basis; but (as feminists are quick to point out) that genetic basis does not exhaustively determine how we will behave in every situation. Women sometimes behave in ways more typical of men, and vice versa. Genes may impel, but they don’t compel.

Indeed, other sorts of influences are often more compelling than genetic inheritance. A unsigned editorial in National Review (Aug. 9, 1993, p. 17) points out that “the effects of childhood brutalization can restrict one’s freedom far more than does a physiological preference for sweets; and many purely biological impulses pale in strength before the smoker’s need of a cigarette.” So if we excuse homosexuality on the basis of genetic predisposition, we should equally excuse all acts resulting from environmental influence and from bad choices in the past. Whether a compulsion has a genetic basis is ethically irrelevant.

Nor do we in other cases excuse acts committed on the basis of genetic predispositions. One who has a genetic propensity to alcoholism cannot excuse his alcoholism on that basis; nor can an xyy man excuse his criminality. These conditions do not force people to do anything contrary to their desires. In that sense, they do not compromise moral freedom.  They do create moral challenges, venues for moral temptation. But that too should be seen in perspective: all of us have moral “weak spots,” areas where we are especially vulnerable to the Devil’s enticements. These areas of temptation have many sources; heredity among them. Others would be environment, experiences, and our own past decisions. Thus some have a particular problem with temptation to alcohol abuse; others, because of their early training, personal taste, or social attachments, are not often tempted to commit that particular sin. But these will certainly have other areas of temptation. This is true even for those who are most mature in the Christian faith: such maturity opens one to the temptation of spiritual pride. Thus the person whose special moral challenges have a genetic component is not in a totally unique situation. We all face such challenges; they are never entirely under our control. For all of us, this world is a spiritually dangerous place. Truly, “your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour” (I Pet. 5:8 [Open in Logos Bible Software (if available)] ). But thanks to God’s grace, we may “resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings” (verse 9).

Would a genetic basis for homosexuality eliminate the element of “choice?” Certainly not. A person with a genetic propensity for alcoholism still makes a choice when he decides to take a drink, and then another, and then another. Same with an xyy male who decides to punch somebody in the nose. If we assume the existence of a genetic propensity for homosexuality, it is true as we said that those with that makeup face greater temptation in this area than others. But those who succumb to the temptation do choose to do so, as do all of us when we succumb to our own besetting temptations. Homosexuals certainly choose not to remain celibate, and they choose to have sexual relations. They are not forced to do this by their genes or by anything contrary to their own desires.

Is it possible for a homosexual to repent of his sin and, by God’s grace, to become heterosexual? Christian ministries to homosexuals claim that this is possible and that it has happened, though they admit that this is a particularly difficult sin to deal with. (Sexual orientation is something that goes very deeply into human personality, and we have an instinct to keep it relatively private. That instinct is a good one, but it does make counseling in this area especially difficult.) Gay activists claim that this is impossible, and they dispute alleged “ex-gay” testimonies. Indeed, some people who have professed deliverance from homosexuality have later returned to homosexual relationships. And many “ex-gays” have candidly admitted that they continue to experience homosexual attraction, attraction which they now perceive as a moral and spiritual challenge. Pro-gay advocates argue that this lingering homosexual temptation proves that homosexuality is ineradicable.

I believe on faith that God can deliver homosexuals, because Scripture teaches that His grace can deliver his people from all sin. (See especially 1 Cor. 6:9-11 [Open in Logos Bible Software (if available)] .) I haven’t done first-hand research on the results of various ministries to homosexuals. It would certainly not surprise me to learn that many people who struggle by God’s grace to overcome their homosexuality still experience homosexual temptations. People who have been addicted to alcohol often face continuing temptations in this area long after they have stopped drinking to excess. Similarly those who have overcome the impulses of hot tempers, drugs, or heterosexual promiscuity. If that were true in regard to repentant homosexuals, it would not cast the slightest doubt on the power of God’s grace to heal such people. Recurrent temptation is a problem for all of us, and will be until glory. One may not judge the fruits of Christian ministries on a perfectionist criterion, namely the assumption that deliverance from sin must remove all temptation toward that sin in this life.

The bottom line is that the genetic element in sin does not excuse it. To see that, it is important to put the issue into an even wider perspective.  Christianity forces us again and again to widen our angle of vision, for it calls us to see everything from the perspective of a transcendent God and from the standpoint of eternity. Such perspective helps us to see our trials as “light and momentary” (II Cor. 4:17 [Open in Logos Bible Software (if available)] ) and our sins as greater than we normally admit. From a biblical perspective, the difficult fact is that in one sense all sin is inherited. From Adam comes both our sin and our misery. We are guilty of Adam’s transgression, and through Adam we ourselves inherit sinful natures. If a genetic predisposition excuses sodomy, then our inheritance from Adam excuses all sin! But that is clearly not the case. Of course, Reformed theology construes our relationship to Adam as representative, rather than merely genetic, and that is important.  But Adam represents all who are descended from him “by natural generation;” so there is also an inevitable genetic element in human sin.

Is that fair?  Consider that Adam contained all the (genetic!) potentialities of all of us, and lived in a perfect environment save one source of temptation. None of us could or would have done any better. And, American individualism to the contrary notwithstanding, the human race is one in important senses, and God is right to judge it as a single entity. The bottom line, of course, is that we are His creations. He defines what is “fair,” and he has the right to do as he pleases with the work of his hands.

In this broad context, however, the argument that one sin should be declared normal on the basis of its genetic component or because of some other kind of “inevitability” is entirely self-serving.

1 I am not sure that this presumption was adequately verified in the experimentation.

History of Herod, King of the Jews

--by Rev G. F. Maclear, D.D.

Antipater appointed his eldest son, Phasael, Governor of Judea, and conferred the tetrarchy of Galilee on his youngst son, Herod.  Herod, soon began to display uncommon abilities and the most unbounded ambition.  Though only twenty-five years of age, the new governor of Galilee turned his energies at once to the efficient management of his province.  Numerous robber-bands, which infested the confines of Syria, were resolutely attacked; their chief, Hezekias, was put to death, and security was restored.  Such decision won the praises of multitudes in the towns and cities of Syria.

Two years later, B.C.44, Caesar was assassinated at Rome, and Antipater addressed himself to the task of meeting the new situation, unexpected even by his sagacity.  Cassius, the chief conspirator in the murder of Caesar, became pro-consul of Syria, and arriving in Judea, enforced upon the country the enormous tribute of seven hundred talents of silver.  Antipater commissioned Herod to collect the quota from Galilee, while Malichus, a powerful Jew, and an adherent of Hyrcanus, was directed to obtain the rest.  Herod, with characteristic energy, employed himself in raising two hundred talents for Galilee, and so gained the favour of Cassius, while the people of Lydda, Gophna, and Emmaus, being backward in their contributions, were sold into slavery; but so incensed was the pro-consul at Malichus for his dilatoriness, that he would have put him to death, had it not been for the intervention of Antipater, who advanced one hundred talents on his account.  Herod was now confirmed in the government of Coele-Syria, and Cassius even promised him the kingdom of Judea, if the arms of the Republic proved triumphant.

An unexpected power appeared in the country, and Judea became the victim of the strife for empire between Rome and Parthia.  While Antonius was wasting his time in the society of Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, the Parthians, under Pacorus, having been bribed by Antigonus, advanced through Syria, and made themselves masters of Sidon, Ptolemais, and all the coast except Tyre.  Hence, a division of the Parthian forces marched against Jerusalem, and their leader, admitted within the walls, proposed to act as umpire between the rival claimants for the throne of Judea.

Meanwhile the Parthians had obtained possession of Jerusalem.  Antigonus was made king, and Hyrcanus and Phasael were delivered into his power.  The latter, knowing his death was certain, beat out his brains against the walls of his prison.  Thus Jerusalem was left in the hands of a foreign army, who committed the greatest excesses.

Herod in the meantime had not been idle.  On arriving at Rome he found Antonius at the summit of power.  The triumvir received him with the utmost distinction, and introduced him to Octavius, who at once recalled the services which the Idumean had rendered to the great Julius.  A Parthian campaign was at this time being diligently planned by Antonius, and he found in Herod a useful ally.  Within seven days, therefore, he procured a decree of the senate, nominating him king of Judea, and Herod, successful beyond his most sanguine hopes, walked in procession between Octavius and Antonius, preceded by the consuls and other magistrates, to the Capitol, where the usual sacrifices were offered, and the decree investing him with royal power was enrolled.

Herod did not remain long at Rome.  Everything depended on the celerity of his movements.  The close of the week, therefore, saw him appointed king, and hurrying to Brundusium.  Thence he took ship for Ptolemais, and arrived there after an absence of barely three months.  Collecting a body of troops, he speedily won over all Galilee, where the recollection of his energy as governor was still fresh.  Then he set out to attack Antigonus, who had unsuccessfully laid siege to Masada, in the hope of obtaining possession of Mariamne.  Joppa next fell into his hands; and having raised the siege of Masada, and liberated his relatives, he proceeded, in conjunction with the Roman general Silo, to lay siege to Jerusalem, B.C. 37, and recommenced the siege, aided by Sosius, at the head of 50,000 troops.

But his progress was still slow.  Forty days were spent in taking the first wall, fifteen in taking the second.  Then the outer court of the Temple and the lower city were reduced.  At last the signal for the assault was given, and an indiscriminate massacre ensued.  Multitudes were cut down in the narrow streets, many more while crowded together in their houses.  The fury of the legions was roused, and the massacre was only stayed by the repeated solicitations of Herod, who stood with a drawn sword before the entrance of the Holy of Holies, and threatened to cut down any one of the Roman soldiers who attempted to enter.

Herod had now attained the highest object of his ambition.  By Roman aid, and under the influence of Roman supremacy, he had become sole ruler of Palestine, and he maintained his power unchallenged until his death.  The eventful year, B.C. 31, was drawing on. The rival potentates of Judaea and Egypt had long been watching and fencing with each other, when the battle of Actium ended all their intrigues, and both found themselves obliged to petition for existence from the conqueror.  Herod had raised a body of troops to assist Antonius, but the designs of Cleopatra had involved him in a war with Malchus, an Arabian prince.  In the first campaign he had been signally defeated, owing to the unwillingness of the Jews to undertake a war against a nation with whom they had no quarrel.  But in the spring of B.C. 31, a sudden earthquake convulsed the cities of southern Palestine, and the Arabs, taking advantage of the consternation slew the Jewish ambassadors who had come to treat for peace.  The news of their barbarity roused the whole people, and enabled Herod to win a decisive victory over his foes at Philadelphia, and to gain something like popular favour from his subjects.  Thus, successful beyond all his expectations, Herod returned to Jerusalem with greater power secured to him than he had ever enjoyed before.

Herod’s return to his capital was the signal for fresh cruelties.  The secret orders entrusted to the guardian of Mariamne had been a second time divulged; she persisted in refusing the monarch’s affection, and reproached him bitterly with his cruelty towards her family.  At length, carried away by rage and jealousy, Herod executed not only Mariamne’s guardian, Soemus, but his queen herself.  Mariamne submitted to the axe of the executioner with calmness and intrepidity, B.C. 29, and showed herself in death worthy of the noble race of which she came.  The horrible reality of the deed, and a sense of his own loss, wrung his spirit to madness.  It was long before he recovered fully from the mental derangement which came on.

By the tribute he paid to Rome year by year he acknowledged the tenure on which he held his power.  He filled Jerusalem with edifices built in the Greek taste.  He inaugurated public exhibitions, and spectacles of all kinds.  A theatre rose within, an amphitheatre without, the walls of Jerusalem.  Quinquennial games were celebrated on a scale of the utmost magnificence.  Shows of gladiators and combats of wild beasts were exhibited within the City of David itself.

He had already built two castles in the southern part of Jerusalem, erected a palace on the impregnable hill of Sion, restored and enlarged the Baris, and called it Antonia, in memory of his former patron.  He now converted other places into strong fortresses.  South-western Galilee needed a defence against Phoenicia, and his kingdom required a naval harbor and a maritime city.  Thirty miles south of Mount Carmel a convenient point offered itself for the latter purpose, at a spot called Strato’s Tower.  This he converted into a magnificent city, called Caesarea, with a harbor equal in size to the Piraeus at Athens.  West of Mount Tabor he built Gabatha; east of the Jordan he fortified the ancient Heshbon; while Samaria, which had been destroyed by John Hyrcanus, rose once more from its ruins, not only considerably increased, but also adorned with a new and magnificent temple, and called Sebaste or Augusta, in honour of the Roman Emperor.

While thus rebuilding the ruined cities of his kingdom, Herod repeatedly endeavoured, by acts of munificence and liberality, to conciliate the good-will of his subjects.  Thus, when in B.C. 24, the crops in Palestine failed for the second time, he not only opened his own private stores, but sent to Petronius, the Roman governor of Egypt, a personal friend, and obtained permission to export corn from that country, with which he not only supplied the wants of his own people, but was even able to send seed into Syria.  In this way, and by remitting more than once a great part of the heavy taxation, he earned for himself general gratitude, both from his heathen and Jewish subjects.

At length he resolved to take a step which should ingratiate himself with all classes.  He determined to rival Solomon, and rebuild the Temple.  Since the restoration of the second Temple by Zorobabel, that structure had fallen in many places into ruin, and had suffered much during the recent wars.  He announced his intention, about the year B.C. 20, on the occasion of the Feast of the Passover.  But his proposition roused the greatest mistrust, and he found himself obliged to proceed with the utmost caution, and to use every means to allay suspicion.  Two years were spent in bringing together the materials, and vast preparations were made before a single stone of the old building was touched.  At last, in the year B.C. 18, the foundations of the Temple of Zorobabel were removed, and on those laid centuries before by Solomon, the new pile arose, built of hard white stones of enormous size.  Eighteen months were spent in building the Porch, the Holy Place, and the Holy of Holies.  Eight years more elapsed before the courts and cloisters and other extensive and splendid buildings around the sacred structure were completed.

On the highest level of the rocky platform of Moriah rose the Naos, or Temple proper, erected solely by priestly hands, divided, as in the days of Solomon, into a Holy Place and a Holy of Holies by a veil or curtain of the finest work.  “No figures, no sculpture, as in Persian and Egyptian temples, adorned the front.  Golden vines and clusters of grapes, the typical plant and fruit of Israel, ran along the wall; and the greater and lesser lights of heaven were wrought into the texture of the veil.  The whole façade was covered with plates of gold, which; when the sun shone upon them in the early day, sent back his rays with an added glory so great that gazers standing on Olivet had to shade their eyes when turning towards the Temple mount.”

The pavement was inlaid with marble of many colours.  The most beautiful gateways led into this court, of great height, and ornamented with the utmost skill.  One of these, on the eastern side, looking towards the Mount of Olives, was known as “Solomon’s Porch;” close by it was another, the pride of the Temple area, as one writer says, “more like the gopura of an Indian temple than anything we are acquainted with in architecture.”  This in all probability, was the one called the “Beautiful Gate” in the New Testament.

The Sanctuary was completed in the year B.C 16, the anniversary of Herod’s inauguration, and was celebrated with a magnificent feast and the most lavish sacrifices.  Immediately afterwards Herod undertook a journey to Rome to fetch home his two sons, Alexander and Aristobulus.  He was received with every mark of attention by Augustus, and returned to his capital about the spring of B.C 15.  Agrippa was now on a visit to Asia, to inspect these provinces of the empire for his master.  Herod thereupon invited him to visit Judaea.  Agrippa consented, and escorted by Herod, passed through his new cities of Sebaste and Caesarea.

Returning from Asia Minor, B.C. 14, Herod landed at his new port of Caesarea, and proceeding to Jerusalem, recounted the privileges he had secured for the nation, and remitted a fourth of the year’s tribute.  It might have been hoped that the close of his reign would make some atonement for the atrocities of earlier years; but a scene of bloodshed was now to be enacted far more awful than any which had darkened his reign, as if to show that the “spirit of the injured Mariamne hovered over Herod’s devoted house, and, involving the innocent as well as the guilty in the common ruin, designated the dwelling of her murderous husband as the perpetual scene of misery and bloodshed.”

On the return of the young princes, Alexander and Aristobulus, they were received by the populace with the utmost enthusiasm, in spite of their education in a foreign land.  Their grace and beauty, their engaging manners, above all their descent from the ancient Asmonean line, made them objects of hope and joy on the part of the nation.  But the keenest hatred of Pheroras and Salome was now aroused, and they began to whisper into Herod’s ear that the young men were bent on avenging their mother’s death.  The king had given them in marriage, Alexander to Galphyra, the daughter of Archelaus, king of Cappadocia; Aristobulus to Mariamne, a daughter of Salome.  Proud of the popularity his sons had acquired, Herod for some time refused to attach any credence to these vile insinuations.  At length he adopted an expedient which led to the most disastrous results.  By an earlier wife, named Doris, he had a son Antipater.  After his alliance with the Asmonean princess he had put Doris away.  Now he recalled her and her son, and made the young man a sort of spy over his two step-brothers.  Cunning, ambitious, and unscrupulous, Antipater threw himself heart and soul into all the plots of Pheroras and Salome, and continued to make the two princes objects of more and more suspicion to their father.

The arrival at Jerusalem of Archelaus, king of Cappadocia, and father-in-law of Alexander, caused a temporary lull.  This monarch succeeded in reinstating the young prince in his father’s favour; but the reconciliation was only on the surface.  His brother Pheroras, Salome, and, worst of all, Antipater, again filled Herod’s mind with apprehensions and suspicions, and he determined once more to seek the advice of Augustus.  Accordingly he set out for Rome in B.C. 8, and preferred his complaints against his sons before the emperor.  Augustus advised that he should hold a court of arbitration, and recommended Berytus, in Phoenicia, as the place of meeting.  There one hundred and fifty princes therefore assembled together, with Saturninus and Volumnius, the prefects of Syria.  Before this tribunal Herod laid his complaints, pleaded his cause, and publicly accused his sons.  After hearing the charge Saturninus advised that mercy should be extended towards the young men; Volumnius and the majority urged their condemnation, and eventually they were strangled at Samaria, at the very same place where their father had celebrated his marriage with their mother.

But the execution of those unfortunate princes did but little towards removing the elements of discord in Herod’s household.  Repeated dissensions had arisen between him and his brother Pheroras, who was at length ordered to retire to his own tetrarchy of Peraea.  There he sickened and died, and his widow was accused of having poisoned him.  The investigation that ensued revealed a new and still more formidable conspiracy, which Antipater and Pheroras had formed against Herod’s life.  Antipater was absent at Rome, but he was allowed to return to Caesarea, and on reaching Jerusalem was instantly seized, and brought to trial before the Roman governor of Syria, Quintilius Varus.  The charge was proved, and he was condemned to death, but his execution was respited till the will of the emperor could be ascertained.

Herod was now upwards of seventy years of age, and already felt the approach of his last mortal malady.  Removing for change of air to Jericho, he resolved to make the final alterations in his will.  Passing over Archelaus and Philip, whom Antipater had accused of treachery, he nominated Antipas, a son by Malthace, a Samaritan, his successor in the kingdom; and left magnificent bequests to Caesar, to Caesar’s wife Julia, to her sons, and to the members of his own family.

Before Herod left for Jericho, and while he was still residing in the magnificent palace he had built on Zion, his fears and suspicions were still further increased by the visit to his capital of certain magi from the East, bearing the strange intelligence that they had seen in the East the star of a new-born King of the Jews, and had come to worship Him. 

The inquiry respecting an hereditary King of the Jews roused the alarm of the Idumean tyrant, and, hastily convening an assembly of the chief priests and scribes, he inquired where, according to their prophetical books, the long-expected Messiah was to be born.  Without any hesitation they pointed to the words of the prophet Micah, which declared that Bethlehem, in Judaea, was the favoured spot.  Concealing his wicked intentions, the monarch therefore bade the magi repair to Bethlehem bidding them let him know as soon as they had found the young child, that he, too, might come and do Him reverence.

Thus advised, the magi set out, and at Bethlehem they found “the young Child, and Mary his Mother, and they fell down and worshipped Him.”  For true it was that while Herod’s blood-stained reign was drawing near its close, and when, after a life of tyranny and usurpation, he was sinking “into the jealous decrepitude of his savage old age,” a lowly Virgin had at Bethlehem brought “forth her first-born Son, and wrapped Him in swaddling clothes, and laid Him in a manger.”  The advent of this true King of kings, “in great humility,” had moved all heaven to its centre; and while Herod’s palaces were the scenes of jealousies, suspicion, and murders, and his subjects were groaning under the yoke of his iron rule, the heavenly song had floated over the hills of Bethlehem, and shepherds keeping watch over their flocks had heard the words, breaking the stillness of the night, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men.”

After they had offered their homage and their gifts to the heavenly Child, the magi would naturally have returned to Herod; but warned of God in a dream of peril awaiting them if they did so, they returned to their own land another way.  Thus foiled, the jealousy of Herod assumed a more malignant aspect, and, unable to identify the royal Infant of the seed of David, he issued an edict that all the children of Bethlehem and its neighbourhood, from two years old and under, should be slain.

“Herod’s whole career was red with the blood of murder.  He had massacred priests and nobles; he had decimated the Sanhedrin; he had caused the high priest, his brother-in-law, the young noble Aristobulus, to be drowned in pretended sport before his eyes; he had ordered the strangulation of his favourite wife, the beautiful Asmonean princess Mariamne, though she seems to have been the only human being whom he passionately loved.  His sons Alexander, Aristobulus, and Antipater; his uncle Joseph; Antigonus and Alexander, the uncle and father of his wife; his mother-in-law Alexandra; his kinsman Cortobanus; his friends Dositheus and Gadias were but a few of the multitudes who fell victims to his sanguinary, suspicious, and guilty terrors.  His reign which was so cruel that, in the energetic language of the Jewish ambassadors to the Emperor Augustus, ‘the survivors during his lifetime were even more miserable than the sufferers.’”

Herod’s disorder increased with the utmost violence.  He lay in the magnificent palace which he had built for himself under the palm-trees of Jericho, racked with pain, and tormented with thirst.  Still cherishing hopes of recovery, he now caused himself to be conveyed across the Jordan to Callirrhoe, not far from the Dead Sea, hoping to obtain relief from its warm bituminous springs.  But the use of the waters produced no effect.  He was conveyed back to Jericho, where he ordered the chiefs of the nation, under pain of death, to assemble.  As they arrived they were shut up in the Hippodrome, and Herod charged Salome and Alexas, immediately upon his decease, to put them to death.  Scarcely had he given these orders when a dispatch arrived from Rome, announcing the ratification by the emperor of the sentence pronounced upon Antipater.  Thereupon the tyrant’s desire for life instantly returned, but a paroxysm of racking pain coming on, he called for an apple and a knife, and in an unguarded moment tried to stab himself. His cousin Achiab stayed his hand, and Antipater, hearing the clamour from a neighbouring apartment, and thinking his father was dead, made a determined effort to escape by bribing his guards.  No sooner did Herod hear of this, than, though almost insensible, he raised himself on his elbow, and ordered one of the spearmen to dispatch his son on the spot.  Thus Antipater paid the penalty of his life of treachery and hypocrisy.  Herod now once more amended his will, nominating his eldest son Archelaus as his successor on the throne, and appointing Herod Antipas tetrarch of Galilee and Peraea; Herod Philip, tetrarch of Auranitis, Trachonitis and Batanaea; and Salome mistress of Jamnia, Azotus, and some other towns.

Five days more of excruciating agony remained for the miserable monarch, and then, “choking as it were with blood, devising massacres in its very delirium, the soul of Herod passed forth into the night.”  Archelaus at once assumed the direction of affairs at Jerusalem, and proceeded to give his father a magnificent funeral.  First, clad in armour, advanced a numerous force of troops with their generals and officers; then followed five hundred of Herod’s domestics and freedmen, bearing aromatic spices.  Next came the body, covered with purple, with a diadem on the head, and a scepter in the right hand, and lying on a bier of gold studded with precious stones.  After the bier, which was surrounded by Herod’s son and relatives, came his body-guard; then his foreign mercenaries, men from Thrace, Germany, and Gaul, “whose stalwart and ruddy persons were at this time familiar in Jerusalem.”  In this order the procession advanced slowly from Jericho to Herodium, not far from Tekoa, a distance of about twenty-five miles, where the late monarch had erected a fortress.  Here, in the tower-crowned citadel to which he had given his name, and not far from the spot where He was born whom the Idumean king had sought to cut off with the innocents of Bethlehem, Herod was buried.