(Three years after King Herod has completed his

turbo–charged version updating of the Second Temple)

At this point, two–thirds of the nearly eight million Jews of the ancient world lived outside of Judea, but primarily in the
Mediterranean area.

By any standard, Herod’s Temple was an extraordinary achievement. It was a construct of triumphant splendor. To the Jews,

who were wary of Herod on multiple levels, the completion of the extraordinary Temple project could not but have impressed.  Others talked; Herod had acted. As noted in the text, aside from its beauty, Herod’s version of Temple II was 5–10 times larger than the original Temple II (constructed in the 500s BCE).

As noted as well, Herod’s Idumaen ancestors had been (forcibly) converted to Judaism only two generations earlier. Herod’s father was technically 100 percent Jewish, but his mother was Idumaen. She was Idumaen nobility, but nevertheless pure Idumaen, and not Jewish. Thus, to many, if not most, Herod was not Jewish.

And Herod had been busy full-time playing to Rome, as well. Recently, Herod had built an entire city on the Mediterranean from scratch, an engineering marvel. Conceptualized from the get–go as an engineering triumph with an integral artificial harbor, the Mediterranean port of Caeserea Maritima, was constructed, built and named in honor of Herod’s Roman patron, Augustus Caesar.