Biblical Archaeology Audio Podcast with Dr. Kenneth Hanson · Dr. Kenneth Hanson

Digging Up Herod #12

September 9, 2020·31 min

Dr. Ken Hansen opens with a theatrical invitation into the past. He frames the episode as an exploration of Herod the Great and the buildings that still shape the archaeological imagination in Israel. Herod's rise to power is placed in the year 37 before the Common Era, with Roman support and the conquest of Jerusalem. Hansen then sketches the king as a ruler whose violence and insecurity seem to sit right beside an appetite for monumental construction. The episode moves briskly from biography into architecture. Herod's eastern fortresses appear as both military strategy and a way to control his own people. Alexandria and Cyprus are named for his mother. Machaerus appears as a stronghold east of the Dead Sea and a site linked by tradition with the execution of John the Baptist. The narrative then shifts to Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. Hansen describes the enormous platform, the subterranean vaults, and the court of the Gentiles that expanded the original hill of Mount Moriah. He points to a Greek inscription discovered in 1871 warning foreigners away from the inner sanctuary. The shrine itself is presented as a building completed quickly, while the wider courtyard and surrounding complex stretched on for decades. Attention then turns to the external walls, the massive ashlars, and the visible traces of Herodian construction still readable today. The Western Wall is introduced as the holiest place in Judaism because of its link to the remembered location of the Temple. Archaeological finds beneath the wall are used to argue that Herod himself did not finish the compound. Hansen cites coins dated to around 17 of the Common Era and connects them to Josephus's claim that completion came later, under Herod's great-grandson Agrippa II around 50 CE. The episode also follows underground excavations into a 600-meter drainage channel linked to the Jerusalem Archaeological Garden. The account keeps widening into the evidence of later conflict. Hansen reaches the Great Revolt against Rome and describes coins bearing the phrase For the Freedom of Zion. He also highlights a rare silver coin with pomegranates, the words Holy Jerusalem, and a half-shekel inscription used for the Temple tax during the Revolt. The final turn is to Masada. It is presented as the great and melancholy monument of the Herodian age, a rocky stronghold whose name still carries the weight of defiance and tragedy across the centuries.

As heard by us

Herod's legacy is traced in stone, coin, and ruin, with enough momentum to keep the history moving.

This episode treats Herod as more than a name in history and instead frames him through the stonework of power: border fortresses, the Temple Mount compound, the Western Wall, and the Great Revolt all sit inside one connected story. Dr.

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Why you'd press play

Follow Herod from fortress walls to the stones below the Temple Mount.

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