46 CHAPTER ONEthe patronage of the royal women and high priests and vying with each other
for a voice in temple affairs.^68
Herod exploited his connections at Rome on behalf of the Jews of the Dias-
pora. These Jewish communities were permitted by Roman law and conven-
tion to conduct their lives according to Jewish law, even when it came into
conflict with the laws of the cities in which the Jews resided, for example,
Jews could not be forced to come to court on the Sabbath. However, local
authorities did not always recognize the Jews’ rights, and Herod made a prac-
tice of intervening with imperial officials on behalf of these Jewish communi-
ties. His generous gifts to Gree kcities and institutions such as the Olympic
games may have been intended primarily to secure Gree kcities’ goodwill
from their Jewish residents.^69 Herod’s recruitment of high priests from the
Diaspora also indicates his desire to cultivate the support of the Diaspora
communities.
Josephus was perhaps right to thin kthat Herod undertoo khis public con-
struction projects for self-aggrandizement, but this was surely not his only
motivation. Herod built and refurbished fortresses across the country, restored
and fortified cities, and built a massive shrine at the cave of the Machpelah
in the old Idumaean town of Hebron. The Jews regarded this site as the tomb
of the biblical patriarchs and matriarchs, and the Idumaeans, also descendants
of Abraham and Sarah and Isaac and Rebecca, may have done the same, even
before they became Jewish. But Herod’s building projects had twin, closely
related, centerpieces. He completely rebuilt a tiny, declining old Greco-Phoe-
nician city called Strato’s Tower as a grand port city and named it Caesarea in
commemoration of Herod’s friendship with Augustus Caesar. Archaeologists
discovered in the 1980s and 1990s that Caesarea’s harbor, one of the largest
in the eastern Mediterranean, was built according to the most up-to-date prin-
ciples of Roman engineering. The city at once became the leading port of the
southern part of the east coast of the Mediterranean, easily crowding out such
competitors as Gaza, Ascalon, and Joppa, as well as the main point of entry
for the burgeoning Jewish pilgrim traffic from the Diaspora.^70
The other twin star of Herod’s construction was Jerusalem, which was re-
built from top to bottom. Although the amount of money flowing into the
temple treasury had increased tremendously under the Hasmoneans, they
(^68) For a full discussion of this issue, see L. Levine, “On the Political Involvement of the Phari-
sees under Herod and the Procurators,”Cathedra8 (1978): 12–28; also A. Saldarini,Pharisees,
Scribes, and Sadducees in Palestinian Jewish Society: A Sociological Approach(Wilmington, Del.:
Michael Glazier, 1988), pp. 95–106. For a denial of the significance of the phenomenon, see
G. Stemberger,Jewish Contemporaries of Jesus: Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes(Minneapolis:
Fortress, 1995), pp. 117–19.
(^69) On Herod’s benefactions, see Richardson,Herod, 174–96.
(^70) See Richardson, ibid., and in general, A. Raban and K. Holum,Caesarea Maritima: A
Retrospective after Two Millennia(Leiden: Brill, 1996).