Herod’s Contribution to Judean Architecture

Herod, the client of Rome who ruled Judea from 37 to 4 BCE, was both a brutal king and an enthusiastic builder, and his ambitious architectural projects can be found throughout Israel. Orit Peleg-Barkat explains his impact on Judean architecture:

While the Hasmoneans, Herod’s predecessors, made only restricted use of classical architectural decoration in their palaces at Jericho and elsewhere, Herod made much more extensive use of it. . . . The new forms of decorations that Herod introduced into the local architecture were mostly of particularly Roman origin, such as the stucco ceilings in the “coffer-style” and the console cornice. Other changes, such as Herod’s increased reliance on the Corinthian rather than the Doric order preferred by the Hasmoneans—probably reflecting [the contemporary Roman emperor] Augustus’ choice of the Corinthian order as representing the new Roman taste—also manifest strong Roman influence. . . .

However, the Roman influence on Herod’s architecture went deeper than what was sufficient to satisfy his Roman patrons. Building techniques, such as the use of underwater concrete for the harbor of Caesarea, . . . were introduced by Herod into local architecture, providing some of the first examples of such Roman traits in the East. This makes Herod a trendsetter. . . .

Herod’s decorative program had an impact . . . on the tastes of many of his subjects; the architectural decoration in cities such as Jerusalem demonstrates how the innovations introduced by Herod to the local architecture were embraced by the elites of those cities.

Read more at ASOR

More about: Ancient Israel, Ancient Rome, Architecture, Herod, History & Ideas, Jewish architecture

Donald Trump’s Plan for Gaza Is No Worse Than Anyone Else’s—and Could Be Better

Reacting to the White House’s proposal for Gaza, John Podhoretz asks the question on everyone’s mind:

Is this all a fantasy? Maybe. But are any of the other ludicrous and cockamamie ideas being floated for the future of the area any less fantastical?

A Palestinian state in the wake of October 7—and in the wake of the scenes of Gazans mobbing the Jewish hostages with bloodlust in their eyes as they were being led to the vehicles to take them back into the bosom of their people? Biden foreign-policy domos Jake Sullivan and Tony Blinken were still talking about this in the wake of their defeat in ludicrous lunchtime discussions with the Financial Times, thus reminding the world of what it means when fundamentally silly, unserious, and embarrassingly incompetent people are given the levers of power for a while. For they should know what I know and what I suspect you know too: there will be no Palestinian state if these residents of Gaza are the people who will form the political nucleus of such a state.

Some form of UN management/leadership in the wake of the hostilities? Well, that might sound good to people who have been paying no attention to the fact that United Nations officials have been, at the very best, complicit in hostage-taking and torture in facilities run by UNRWA, the agency responsible for administering Gaza.

And blubber not to me about the displacement of Gazans from their home. We’ve been told not that Gaza is their home but that it is a prison. Trump is offering Gazans a way out of prison; do they really want to stay in prison? Or does this mean it never really was a prison in the first place?

Read more at Commentary

More about: Donald Trump, Gaza Strip, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict