Recent scholarship has been arriving at increasingly appreciative evaluations of Herod the Great. A generation ago the consensus about Herod could be summed up with words and phrases like "ruthless," "little more than a creature of cruelty," or "one of the most wicked of men ... ignorant [and] insensitive ... bent solely on the affairs of this world." (1) Although such views still persist--a widely used introductory NT textbook describes Herod as "renowned for his ruthless exercise of power"--more and more frequently we read that "Herod was not a monster," but rather a leader whose actions, within their historical context, were "reasonable." (2) He can now be described as "thoroughly in tune with the cultural developments of his age," and as a ruler who "wished to convey to his people a new self-confidence in the spirit of the age." (3) Ehud Netzer expressed the emerging new perspective well when he closed his magisterial book on Herod with these words: Herod the Great has been getting a makeover.
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