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| | Jonathan Reed on Excavating Jesus |
 | | The wealth flowing into Herod’s treasury and the coffers of his ruling elite funded the construction of a lavish urbanism at Caesarea, and the initial investment of the port paid dividends by realigning trade routes from the East through his kingdom and by tapping into the lucrative Mediterranean sea routes. |
 | | Herod’s son Antipas (4 BCE — 39 CE) inherited Galilee, but Caesar Augustus refused to give Herod’s title, King of the Jews, to Antipas, naming him instead a tetrarch, “ruler of a fourth.” One suspects, however, that he always hoped to become King of the Jews by Roman appointment. |
 | | The first coins Herod Antipas struck at Sepphoris and Tiberias show the tightrope he walked between trying to build a Jewish kingdom in the Roman world: they eschewed his image while containing appropriately Jewish symbols such as reeds, palm branches, and palm trees, but which were not necessarily foreign to the wider Graeco-Roman world. |
| www.bibleinterp.com /articles/excavating_Jesus.htm (2330 words) |
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