The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (983 page)

BOOK: The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions
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Herod
.
Several rulers of Jud(a)ea bore this name.
1 Herod I (73–4 BCE, the Great) was appointed by his father to be governor of Galilee and, after his father's death, was appointed initially tetrarch by the Romans and, by 37 BCE, king. During his reign he embarked on an extensive building campaign including the
Temple
in Jerusalem. Despite this he was regarded by his Jewish subjects as a foreign agent and a destroyer of their institutions.
2 Herod II, grandson of Herod I and Mariamne, ruled as king of Chalcis, 41–8 CE. During this period, he had the right to appoint
high priests
.
3 Herod Antipas, son of Herod I and Malthace, ruled as tetrarch of Galilee, 4 BCE–39 CE, until he was exiled by the Romans.
4 Herod Philip I, son of Herod I and Cleopatra of Jerusalem, ruled as tetrarch of Transjordan, 4 BCE–34 CE.
‘That fox Herod’ (Luke 13.32) is thus Herod Antipas.
Herodians
(Jewish party)
:
Heruka
(Skt.; Tib.,
khrag. ’thung
, ‘Blood Drinker’). A class of
wrathful deity
in Tibetan Buddhism who presides over
Tantric ritual
. According to the texts, the Heruka serves not to ‘protect’ the ritual, but is rather a meditational ‘tool’ by which the
yogin
, through identification with the Heruka, attacks his own egotistical grasping.
Hervomde Kerk
(Christian (Protestant) Church)
:
Herzl, Theodor
(1860–1904).
Founder of the Jewish World
Zionist
Organization. As a newspaper correspondent, he attended the
Dreyfus
trial in 1895 and became convinced that the only solution to the problem of
anti-Semitism
was establishing a Jewish national homeland. In 1896 he published
Der Judenstaat
(The Jewish State) which went through eighty editions in eighteen languages. Although he himself was prepared to consider a homeland in Argentina, he began to realize from Jewish reaction to his book that only
Erez Israel
had sufficient attraction as a Jewish state. In 1897, the first Zionist Conference was held in Basle. Herzl was in the chair and was elected president of the new World Zionist Organization. Herzl held the fourth Congress in London and tried to gain the support of the British Government for Jewish settlement in the British terrotories of Cyprus and the Sinai Peninsula. Again no support was forthcoming, but instead Uganda in E. Africa was suggested. The Uganda scheme was rejected by the Zionist General Council in 1904. Herzl died of pneumonia later that year. After the foundation of the State of Israel, his remains were reburied in Jerusalem, and the anniversary of his death, 20 Tammuz, is kept as a national memorial day.
Herzog, Isaac Halevi
(1888–1959).
First
Ashkenazi
Chief Rabbi
of Israel (though not of Palestine). After the Second World War, he travelled widely to try to find and rescue Jewish children who had been hidden with
gentile
families. Besides several volumes of
responsa
, he published
Main Institutions of Jewish Law
(1936, 1939). His son, Chaim Herzog, was 6th President of Israel.

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