Scripture. It was in the northern boundary of the country, beyond
Jordan, and in the territories which originally belonged to Og, king of
Bashan, Joshua xii, 5; xiii, 5. The Psalmist connects Tabor and Hermon
together, upon more than one occasion, Psalm lxxxix, 12; cxxxiii, 3;
from which it may be inferred that they lay contiguous to each other.
This is agreeable to the account that is given us by travellers. Mr.
Maundrell, in his journey from Aleppo, says that in three hours and a
half from the river Kishon, he came to a small brook near which was an
old village and a good kane, called Legune; not far from which his
company took up their quarters for the night, and from whence they had
an extensive prospect of the plain of Esdraëlon. At about six or seven
hours’ distance eastward, stood, within view, Nazareth, and the two
mountains Tabor and Hermon. He adds that they were sufficiently
instructed by experience what the holy Psalmist means by the dew of
Hermon; their tents being as wet with it as if it had rained all night,
Psalm cxxxiii, 3.
HEROD, surnamed the Great, king of the Jews, second son of Antipater the
Idumean, born B. C. 71. At the age of twenty-five he was made by his
father governor of Galilee, and distinguished himself by the suppression
of a band of robbers, with the execution of their leader, Hezekiah, and
several of his comrades. As he had performed this act of heroism by his
own authority, and had executed the culprits without the form of trial,
he was summoned before the sanhedrim, but, through the strength of his
party and zeal of his friends, he escaped any censure. In the civil war
between the republican and Cæsarian parties, Herod joined Cassius, and
was made governor of Cœlo-Syria; and when Mark Antony arrived
victorious in Syria, Herod and his brother found means to ingratiate
themselves with him, and were appointed as tetrarchs in Judea; but in a
short time an invasion of Antigonus, who was aided by the Jews, obliged
Herod to make his escape from Jerusalem, and retire first to Idumea, and
then to Egypt. He at length arrived at Rome, and obtained the crown of
Judea upon occasion of a difference between the two branches of the
Asmodean family. Hyrcanus had been for a considerable time prince and
high priest of the Jewish nation; but while the Roman empire was in an
unsettled state, after the death of Julius Cæsar, Antigonus, son of
Aristobulus, brother of Hyrcanus, made himself master of the city and
all Judea. In this state Herod found things when he came to Rome, and
the most that he then aimed at was to obtain the kingdom for
Aristobulus, his wife’s brother; but the senate of Rome, moved by the
recommendations of Mark Antony, conferred the kingdom of Judea upon
Herod himself. Having met with this unexpected success at Rome, he
returned without delay to Judea, and in about three years got possession
of the whole country. He had, however, to fight his way to the throne,
which, as we have seen, was in the possession of Antigonus. Though aided
by the Roman army, he was obliged to lay siege to Jerusalem, which held
out for six months, when it was carried by assault, and a vast slaughter
was made of the inhabitants, till the intercession and bribes of Herod
put an end to it. Antigonus was taken prisoner and put to death, which
opened the way to Herod’s quiet possession of the kingdom. His first
cares were to replenish his coffers, and to repress the faction still
attached to the Asmodean race, and which regarded him as a usurper. He
was guilty of many extortions and cruelties in the pursuit of these
objects. Shortly after this, an accusation was lodged against Herod
before Mark Antony by Cleopatra, who had been influenced to the deed by
his mother-in-law, Alexandra. He was summoned to answer to the charges
exhibited against him before the triumvir; and on this occasion he gave
a most remarkable display of the conflict of opposite passions in a
ferocious heart. Doatingly fond of his wife, Mariamne, and not being
able to bear the thought of her falling into the hands of another, he
exacted a solemn promise from Joseph, whom he appointed to govern in his
absence, that should the accusation prove fatal to him he would put the
queen to death. Joseph disclosed the secret to Mariamne, who, abhorring
such a savage proof of his love, from that moment conceived the deepest
and most settled aversion to her husband. Herod, by great pecuniary
sacrifices, made his peace with Antony, and returned in high credit.
Some hints were thrown out respecting Joseph’s familiarity with Mariamne
during his absence; he communicated his suspicions to his wife, who,
recriminating, upbraided him with his cruel order concerning her. His
rage was unbounded; he put Joseph to death for communicating the secret
entrusted to him alone, and he threw his mother-in-law, Alexandra, into
prison.
2. In the war between Antony and Octavius, Herod raised an army for the
purpose of joining the former; but he was obliged first to engage
Malchus, king of Arabia, whom he defeated and obliged to sue for peace.
After the battle of Actium, his great object was to make terms with the
conqueror; and, as a preliminary step, he put to death Hyrcanus, the
only surviving male of the Asmodeans; and, having secured his family, he
embarked for Rhodes, where Augustus at that time was. He appeared before
the master of the Roman world in all the regal ornaments excepting his
diadem, and with a noble confidence related the faithful services he had
performed for his benefactor, Antony, concluding that he was ready to
transfer the same gratitude to a new patron, from whom he should hold
his crown and kingdom. Augustus was struck with the magnanimity of the
defence, and replaced the diadem on the head of Herod, who remained the
most favoured of the tributary sovereigns. When the emperor afterward
travelled through Syria, in his way to and from Egypt, he was
entertained with the utmost magnificence by Herod; in recompense for
which he restored to him all his revenues and dominions, and even
considerably augmented them. His good fortune as a prince, was poisoned
by domestic broils, and especially by the insuperable aversion of
Mariamne, whom at length he brought to trial, convicted, and executed.
She submitted to her fate with all the intrepidity of innocence, and was
sufficiently avenged by the remorse of her husband, who seems never
after to have enjoyed a tranquil hour.
3. His rage being quenched, Herod endeavoured to banish the memory of
his evil acts from his mind by scenes of dissipation; but the charms of
his once loved Mariamne haunted him wherever he went: he would
frequently call aloud upon her name, and insist upon his attendants
bringing her into his presence, as if willing to forget that she was no
longer among the living. At times he would fly from the sight of men,
and on his return from solitude, which was ill suited to a mind
conscious of the most ferocious deeds, he became more brutal than ever,
and in fits of fury spared neither foes nor friends. Alexandra, whose
malignity toward her daughter has been noticed, was an unpitied victim
to his rage. At length he recovered some portion of self-possession, and
employed himself in projects of regal magnificence. He built at
Jerusalem a stately theatre and amphitheatre, in which he celebrated
games in honour of Augustus, to the great displeasure of the zealous
Jews, who discovered an idolatrous profanation in the theatrical
ornaments and spectacles. Nothing, it is said, gave them so much offence
as some trophies which he had set round his theatre in honour of
Augustus, and in commemoration of his victories, but which the Jews
regarded as images devoted to the purposes of idol worship. For this and
other acts of the king a most serious conspiracy was formed against him,
which he, fortunately for himself, discovered; and he exercised the most
brutal revenge on all the parties concerned in it. He next built
Samaria, which he named Sebaste, and adorned it with the most sumptuous
edifices; and for his security he built several fortresses throughout
the whole of Judea, of which the principal was called Cæsarea, in honour
of the emperor. In his own palace, near the temple of Jerusalem, he
lavished the most costly materials and curious workmanship; and his
palace Herodion, at some miles’ distance from the capital, by the beauty
of its situation, and other appropriate advantages, drew round it the
population of a considerable city.
4. To supply the place of his lost Mariamne, he married a new wife of
the same name, the beautiful daughter of a priest, whom he raised to the
high rank of the supreme pontificate. He sent his two sons, by the first
Mariamne, to be educated at Rome, and so ingratiated himself with
Augustus and his ministers, that he was appointed imperial procurator
for Syria. To acquire popularity among the Jews, and to exhibit an
attachment to their religion, he undertook the vast enterprise of
rebuilding the temple of Jerusalem, which he finished in a noble style
of magnificence in about a year and a half. During the progress of this
work he visited Rome, and brought back his sons, who had attained to
man’s estate. These at length conspired against their father’s person
and government, and were tried, convicted, and executed. Another act
deserving of notice, performed by Herod, was the dedication of his new
city of Cæsarea, at which time he displayed such profuse magnificence,
that Augustus said his soul was too great for his kingdom.
Notwithstanding the execution of his sons, he was still a slave to
conspiracies from his other near relations. In the thirty-third year of
his reign, OUR SAVIOUR was born. This event was followed, according to
the Gospel of St. Matthew, by the massacre of the children of Bethlehem.
About this time, Antipater, returning from Rome, was arrested by his
father’s orders, charged with treasonable practices, and was found
guilty of conspiring against the life of the king. This and other
calamities, joined to a guilty conscience, preying upon a broken
constitution, threw the wretched monarch into a mortal disease, which
was doubtless a just judgment of Heaven on the many foul enormities and
impieties of which he had been guilty. His disorder was attended with
the most loathsome circumstances that can be imagined. A premature
report of his death caused a tumult in Jerusalem, excited by the
zealots, who were impatient to demolish a golden eagle which he had
placed over the gate of the temple. The perpetrators of this rash act
were seized, and by order of the dying king, put to death. He also
caused his son Antipater to be slain in prison, and his remains to be
treated with every species of ignominy. He bequeathed his kingdom to his
son Archelaus, with tetrarchies to his two other sons. Herod, on his
dying bed, had planned a scheme of horrible cruelty which was to take
place at the instant of his own death. He had summoned the chief persons
among the Jews to Jericho, and caused them to be shut up in the
hippodrome, or circus, and gave strict orders to his sister Salome to
have them all massacred as soon as he should have drawn his last breath:
“for this,” said he, “will provide mourners for my funeral all over the
land, and make the Jews and every family lament my death, who would
otherwise exhibit no signs of concern.” Salome and her husband, Alexas,
chose rather to break their oath extorted by the tyrant, than be
implicated in so cruel a deed; and accordingly, as soon as Herod was
dead, they opened the doors of the circus, and permitted every one to
return to his own home. Herod died in the sixty-eighth year of his age.
His memory has been consigned to merited detestation, while his great
talents, and the active enterprise of his reign, have placed him high in
the rank of sovereigns.
HEROD ANTIPAS. See ANTIPAS.
HERODIANS, a sect among the Jews at the time of Jesus Christ, mentioned
Matt. xxii, 16; Mark iii, 6; viii, 15; xii, 13; but passed over in
silence both by Josephus and Philo. The critics and commentators on the
New Testament are very much divided with regard to the Herodians; some
making them to be a political party, and others a religious sect. The
former opinion is favoured by the author of the Syriac version, who
calls them the domestics of Herod; and also by Josephus’s having passed
them over in silence, though he professes to give an account of the
several religious sects of the Jews. The latter opinion is countenanced
by our Lord’s caution against “the leaven of Herod,” which implies that
the Herodians were distinguished from the other Jews by some doctrinal
tenets. M. Basnage supposes, that one thing meant by the leaven of the
Herodians might be a conformity to Roman customs in some points which
were forbidden the Jews: if this was the case, it is not strange that
they are not mentioned by Josephus among the Jewish sects. St. Jerom, in
his Dialogue against the Luciferians, takes the name to have been given
to such as owned Herod for the Messiah; and Tertullian, Epiphanius,
Chrysostom, and Theophylact, among the ancients; and Grotius, and other
moderns, are of the same sentiment. But the same St. Jerom, in his
Comment on St. Matthew, treats this opinion as ridiculous; and indeed it
must be highly improbable. He maintains that the Pharisees gave this
appellation, by way of derision, to Herod’s soldiers, who paid tribute
to the Romans; agreeably to which the Syriac interpreters render the
word by the domestics of Herod, that is, his courtiers. M. Simon, in his
notes on the twenty-second chapter of St. Matthew, advances a more
probable opinion. The name Herodian, he imagines to have been given to
such as adhered to Herod’s party and interest, and were for preserving
the government in his family, about which there were, at that time,
great divisions among the Jews. F. Hardouin will have the Herodians and
Sadducees to have been the same; nor is it at all improbable that the
Herodians were chiefly of the sect of the Sadducees; since that which is
called by St. Mark “the leaven of Herod,” is by St. Matthew styled “the
leaven of the Sadducees.”
2. Dr. Prideaux is of opinion that they derived their name from Herod
the Great, and that they were distinguished from the other Jews by their
concurrence with Herod’s scheme of subjecting himself and his dominions
to the Romans, and likewise by complying with many of their Heathen
usages and customs. In their zeal for the Roman authority they were
diametrically opposite to the Pharisees, who esteemed it unlawful to
submit or pay taxes to the Roman emperor; an opinion which they grounded
on their being forbidden by the law to set a stranger over them, who was
not one of their own nation, as their king. The conjunction of the
Herodians, therefore, with the Pharisees, against Christ, is a memorable
proof of the keenness of their resentment and malice against him;
especially when we consider that they united together in proposing to
him an ensnaring question, on a subject which was the ground of their
mutual dissension; namely, whether it was lawful to pay tribute to
Cæsar. And provided he answered in the negative, the Herodians would
accuse him of treason against the state; and should he reply in the
affirmative, the Pharisees were as ready to excite the people against
him, as an enemy of their civil liberties and privileges. Herod had
introduced several Heathen idolatrous usages; for, as Josephus says, he
built a temple to Cæsar, near the head of the river Jordan; he erected a
magnificent theatre at Jerusalem, instituted Pagan games, and placed a
golden eagle over the gate of the temple of Jehovah; and he furnished
the temples, which he reared in several places out of Judea, with images
for idolatrous worship, in order to ingratiate himself with the emperor
and the people of Rome; though to the Jews he pretended that he did it
against his will, and in obedience to the imperial command. The
Herodians probably complied with, acquiesced in, or approved these
idolatrous usages. This symbolizing with idolatry upon views of interest
and worldly policy, was probably that leaven of Herod, against which our
Saviour cautioned his disciples.
HERON, אנפה, Lev. xi, 19; Deut. xiv, 18. This word has been variously
understood. Some have rendered it the kite, others the woodcock, others
the curlieu, some the peacock, others the parrot, and others the crane.
The root, אנפ, signifies _to breathe short_ through the nostrils, _to
snuff_, as in anger; hence to be angry; and it is supposed that the word
is sufficiently descriptive of the heron, from its very irritable
disposition. Bochart, however, thinks it the mountain falcon; the same
that the Greeks call ἀνόπαια, mentioned by Homer; and this bears a
strong resemblance to the Hebrew name.
HESHBON, a celebrated city beyond Jordan, twenty miles eastward of that
river, according to Eusebius. It was given to the tribe of Reuben, Josh.
xiii, 17. It was probably made over to Gad, since we meet with it among
the cities which were given to the Levites, Joshua xxi, 39.
HETERODOX, formed of the Greek ἑτερόδοξος, a compound of ἕτερος,
_alter_, and δόξα, _opinion_, something that is contrary to the faith or
doctrine established in the true church. Thus, we say, a heterodox
opinion, a heterodox divine, &c. The word stands in opposition to
orthodox.
HETEROUSH, HETEROUSIANS, composed of ἕτερος, and οὐσία, _substance_, a
sect or branch of Arians, the followers of Aëtius, and from him
denominated Aëtians. They were called Heterousii, because they held, not
that the Son of God was of a substance like, or similar to, that of the
Father, which was the doctrine of another branch of Arians, thence
called Homoousians, Homoousii; but that he was of another substance
different from that of the Father.
HETH, the father of the Hittites, was the eldest son of Canaan, Gen. x,
15, and dwelt southward of the promised land, probably about Hebron.
Ephron, who was an inhabitant of that city, was of the race of Heth; and
in the time of Abraham the whole city were of the family of Heth.
HEXAPLA, formed of ἕξ, _six_, and ἁπλόω, _I open_, or _unfold_, a Bible
disposed in six columns, containing the text, and divers versions of it,
compiled and published by Origen, with a view of securing the sacred
text from future corruptions, and to correct those that had been already
introduced. Eusebius relates that Origen after his return from Rome
under Caracalla, applied himself to learn Hebrew, and began to collect
the several versions that had been made of the sacred writings, and of
these to compose his _Tetrapla_, and _Hexapla_: others, however, will
not allow him to have begun till the time of Alexander, after he had
retired into Palestine, about the year 231. To conceive what this
_Hexapla_ was, it must be observed that, beside the translation of the
sacred writings called the Septuagint, made under Ptolemy Philadelphus,
above 280 years B. C., the Scripture had been since translated into
Greek by other interpreters. The first of those versions, or, reckoning
the Septuagint, the second, was that of Aquila, a proselyte Jew, the
first edition of which he published in the twelfth year of the Emperor
Adrian, or about A. D. 128; the third was that of Symmachus, published
as is commonly supposed, under Marcus Aurelius, but, as some say, under
Septimius Severus, about the year 200; the fourth was that of
Theodotion, prior to that of Symmachus, under Commodus, or about the
year 175: these Greek versions, says Dr. Kennicott, were made by the
Jews from their corrupted copies of the Hebrew, and were designed to
stand in the place of the LXX, against which they were prejudiced,
because it seemed to favour the Christians. The fifth was found at
Jericho, in the reign of Caracalla, about the year 217; and the sixth
was discovered at Nicopolis, in the reign of Alexander Severus, about
the year 228: lastly, Origen himself recovered part of a seventh,
containing only the Psalms. Now, Origen, who had held frequent
disputations with the Jews in Egypt and Palestine, observing that they
always objected against those passages of Scripture quoted against them,
and appealed to the Hebrew text, the better to vindicate those passages
and confound the Jews, by showing that the LXX had given the sense of
the Hebrew, or rather, to show, by a number of different versions, what
the real sense of the Hebrew was, undertook to reduce all these several
versions into a body, along with the Hebrew text, so as they might be
easily confronted, and afford a mutual light to each other. He made the
Hebrew text his standard; and, allowing that corruptions might have
happened, and that the old Hebrew copies might and did read differently,
he contented himself with marking such words or sentences as were not in
his Hebrew text, nor the later Greek versions, and to add such words or
sentences as were omitted in the LXX, prefixing an asterisk to the
additions, and an obelisk to the others. In order to this he made choice
of eight columns: in the first he gave the Hebrew text in Hebrew
characters; in the second, the same text in Greek characters: the rest
were filled with the several versions above mentioned; all the columns
answering verse for verse, and phrase for phrase; and in the Psalms
there was a ninth column for the seventh version. This work Origen
called Ἑξαπλα, _Hexapla_, that is, _sextuple_, or a work of six columns,
as only regarding the first six Greek versions. Indeed, St. Epiphanius,
taking in likewise the two columns of the text, calls the work
_Octapla_, as consisting of eight columns. This celebrated work, which
Montfaucon imagines consisted of fifty large volumes, perished long ago,
probably with the library at Cæsarea, where it was preserved, in the
year 653; though several of the ancient writers have preserved us
portions of it, particularly St. Chrysostom on the Psalms, Philoponus in
his _Hexameron_, &c. Some modern writers have earnestly endeavoured to
collect fragments of the _Hexapla_, Flaminius Nobilius, Drusius, and
especially Montfaucon, in two folio volumes, printed at Paris in 1713.
In his edition, Montfaucon has prefixed prolegomena, explaining the form
and detailing the history of the _Hexapla_.