The Death of Herod: An Essay in the Sociology of Religion

This study demonstrates how fruitful the relationship between the social sciences and Biblical studies can be if sociological method is imaginatively applied to an account of Palestinian society during the first century. It seeks to show how a sociologist, in examining Josephus' account of the struggle for succession within the Herodian household, would set about asking certain questions about Palestinian society as a whole. The author identifies a succession-crisis that affects every level of Palestinian society, which leads him to ask how that crisis may threaten Israel's capacity to reproduce itself from one generation to the next. As an introduction to the peculiar craft of sociology, this book will be of particular interest to students of antiquity and of the New Testament.