The Boethusians: Herod took a woman named
Maria Her father was Simon ben Boethus from Alexandria. Hermne (II) to be his wife. Herod simply made him High Priest. This started the “Boethusian” line—a group of wealthy, Hellenized (Greek-thinking) priests who were essentially Herod’s employees. The Ananus (Annas) Family: This is the infamous family of Annas and Caiaphas that you see in the New Testament. They weren’t the “Old Guard” of Zadok; they were a wealthy political mafia appointed by the Herodian/Roman machine to keep the people in line.
In a final act of total humiliation and control, Herod took the High Priest’s Holy Garments and locked them up in the Fortress of Antonia (the Roman military barracks). The High Priest could not even perform the Day of Atonement unless the Edomite King gave him the keys to the closet. The Priest was no longer a servant of YAH; he was a Roman-Herodian puppet.
Herod didn’t just occupy the throne; he flooded the nation with his own people to drown out the voice of the “Old Guard” and the legitimate Israelites. This is where the term “Idumaean” (the Greek word for Edomite) becomes central to the historical record. Historical accounts, primarily from the historian Josephus, confirm that Herod systematically diluted the Israelite population with foreign settlers and his own Idumaean kin. Herod knew the Judeans in the countryside would never accept an Edomite king. To protect his flanks, he settled 3,000 Idumaeans in the region of Trachonitis (northeast of the Sea of Galilee). He effectively created a “buffer zone” of loyal Edomites to suppress any Israelite rebellion, and he was physically planting the “people of the curse” into the promised land, giving them land titles that belonged to the tribes of Israel.
Herod imported 500 Babylonian horsemen led by a man named Zamaris. He gave them a tax-free fiefdom in the north.They were called “Jews”because they practiced the Babylonian version of the religion, they were strictly loyal to Herod’s person, not the Law of Moses. They acted as his private secret police. He built entirely new cities, such as Caesarea Maritima and Sebaste (Samaria), and populated them with a mix of Greeks, Syrians, and “converted” Idumaeans, and he granted these foreigners equal citizenship to the Judeans. Over time, the line between a “Judean” (by blood) and a “Judean” (by Herodian citizenship) became blurred. This is how the Edomites began to “pass” as the people of the covenant. Even his contemporaries knew what was happening. Historical records show that the people called Herod a “Half-Jew”—not because he was half-Israelite, but because he was an Edomite convert.
The Jewish historian Josephus (Antiquities 14.403) records that Herod’s rival, Antigonus, mocked Herod before the Roman legions, shouting “…they would not do justly, if they gave the kingdom to Herod, who was no more than a private man, and an Idumean, i.e. a half Jew, whereas they ought to bestow it on one of the royal family…”