The life of Herod the Great : a novel Cover Image

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The life of Herod the Great : a novel / Zora Neale Hurston ; edited and with commentary by Deborah G. Plant.

ISBN: 9780063161009
ISBN: 0063161001
Physical Description: xxvii, 334 pages ; 24 cm
Edition: First edition.
Publisher: New York, NY : Amistad, 2025.

Hurston, Zora Neale, (author.). Plant, Deborah G., 1956- (editor.).

Summary:

"In the 1950s, as a continuation of Moses, Man of the Mountain, Zora Neale Hurston penned a historical novel about one of the most infamous figures in the Bible, Herod the Great. In Hurston’s retelling, Herod is not the wicked ruler of the New Testament who is charged with the “slaughter of the innocents,” but a forerunner of Christ—a beloved king who enriched Jewish culture and brought prosperity and peace to Judea. From the peaks of triumph to the depths of human misery, the historical Herod “appears to have been singled out and especially endowed to attract the lightning of fate,” Hurston writes. An intimate of both Marc Antony and Julius Caesar, the Judean king lived during the first century BCE, in a time of war and imperial expansion that was rife with political assassinations and bribery, as the old world gave way to the new." --Provided by publisher.