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Herod the Great Becomes King of Judea

40 BC to 37 BC, estimated dateEstimated date

The Roman senate names Herod, son of the Idumean Antipater, king of the Jews. Three years later he takes Jerusalem with a Roman army, and the last Hasmonean king is executed. Herod rules as Rome’s client until his death.

Herod the Great was the son of Antipater, an Idumean and the friend and adviser of the high priest Hyrcanus II (Josephus, Antiquities 14.8–9). Mark Antony, who controlled the Roman East, appointed Herod and his brother Phasael tetrarchs and put the public affairs of the Jews in their hands (Josephus, Antiquities 14.324–326).

In 40 BC a Parthian army overran Syria. It brought with it Antigonus, the son of Aristobulus II, who had promised the Parthians money in return for the throne (Josephus, Antiquities 14.330–332). Hyrcanus and Phasael were seized. Antigonus had Hyrcanus’s ears cut off, which barred him from the high priesthood, and Phasael killed himself. Herod escaped from Jerusalem by night with his family (Josephus, Antiquities 14.348–353, 365–367). He made his way by Egypt and Rhodes to Rome (Josephus, Antiquities 14.374–380).

There Antony and Octavian, the future Augustus, both took his side. The senate declared Antigonus an enemy of Rome, because he had accepted the kingdom from the Parthians, and voted to make Herod king. Herod left the senate house walking between Antony and Octavian, and the decree was laid up on the Capitol with a sacrifice (Josephus, Antiquities 14.381–389) (Josephus, Jewish War 1.282–285). Josephus says that Herod had not expected it: he had meant to ask for the throne for his wife’s young brother, who was of the Hasmonean family (Josephus, Antiquities 14.381–389).

It took three years to make the decree good. In the spring of the third year Herod laid siege to Jerusalem (Josephus, Antiquities 14.465–481) together with Gaius Sosius, whom Antony had made governor of Syria (Cassius Dio, Roman History 49.22–23). During the siege he married Mariamne (Josephus, Jewish War 1.343–353), a granddaughter of both Hyrcanus and Aristobulus (Josephus, Antiquities 14.348–353, 365–367). The city fell after some five months, and the Roman soldiers killed without regard to age or sex. Antigonus surrendered to Sosius (Josephus, Antiquities 14.465–481) (Josephus, Jewish War 1.343–353). Herod kept the foreign troops out of the sanctuary and paid them from his own money to stop the looting (Josephus, Antiquities 14.482–486). Antigonus was taken in chains to Antony and beheaded (Josephus, Jewish War 1.357). Cassius Dio adds that he was first bound to a cross and flogged, which no king had suffered before at Roman hands (Cassius Dio, Roman History 49.22–23). “And thus”, Josephus writes, “did the government of the Asamoneans cease”, and it passed to a man “of no more than a vulgar family” (Josephus, Antiquities 14.487–491).

Herod owed his crown to Rome and kept it by loyalty to whoever ruled there. Tacitus sums it up: Antony gave him the throne, and Augustus enlarged his power (Tacitus, Histories 5.9). He is the King Herod of the Gospels: Matthew sets the birth of Jesus in his days (Matthew 2:1), and Luke begins his account of the births of John the Baptist and Jesus in them (Luke 1:5).

How this is dated

Estimated date. A scholarly estimate from primary evidence, with a margin of years.

Josephus dates the senate’s decree to the consulship of Domitius Calvinus and Asinius Pollio, which is 40 BC (Josephus, Antiquities 14.381–389). He dates the capture of Jerusalem to the consulship of Marcus Agrippa and Caninius Gallus, which is 37 BC, and says that the siege began in “the third year” after the decree (Josephus, Antiquities 14.465–481) (Josephus, Antiquities 14.487–491). These are the dates generally accepted: see Emil Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ, revised by G. Vermes and F. Millar, vol. 1 (1973), section 14.

His other figures do not all agree with them. He places the decree in the 184th Olympiad, which ended in the summer of 40 BC (Josephus, Antiquities 14.381–389), and he says that Jerusalem fell twenty-seven years to the day after Pompey took it, which counted exactly gives 36 BC (Josephus, Antiquities 14.487–491). Cassius Dio puts the capture under the consuls of 38 BC (Cassius Dio, Roman History 49.22–23). W. E. Filmer, “The Chronology of the Reign of Herod the Great”, Journal of Theological Studies 17 (1966), pp. 283–298, and Andrew E. Steinmann, “When Did Herod the Great Reign?”, Novum Testamentum 51 (2009), pp. 1–29, argue from such details for 39 and 36 BC. The question bears on the date of Herod’s death; see the Death of Herod and the Division of His Kingdom.

Josephus is the only full source. He wrote more than a century later and drew on Nicolaus of Damascus, whom he accuses of shaping his account to gratify Herod (Josephus, Antiquities 14.8–9).

Primary sources

Scripture

Links open the passage in the NRSVUE at BibleGateway.

Jewish Antiquities

Flavius Josephus · AD 93–94 · Greek

The Jewish War

Flavius Josephus · c. AD 75–79 · Greek

Roman History

Cassius Dio · c. AD 200–235 · Greek

Histories

Tacitus · c. AD 100–110 · Latin

Every citation on this page was independently checked against its source on 3 October 2026.

In context

Grows out of

  1. 63 BC, firm date
    Pompey Takes Jerusalem

Leads to

  1. 20/19 BC, estimated date
    Herod Rebuilds the Temple
  2. c. 6–4 BC, estimated date
    The Birth of Jesus
  3. 4 BC, estimated date
    The Death of Herod and the Division of His Kingdom

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