1 Whose King is He Anyways? What Herod Tells Us about Matthew Wayne Baxter 1. INTRODUCTION It has become axiomatic to speak of Matthew as a Jewish Gospel. While commentators throughout the history of biblical studies have long recognized the Jewishness of the First Gospel, at one level the statement says very little. Paul, for example, was Jewish and, although his heart remained steadfast for his people—even wishing to be cursed if it might result in their salvation (Rom 9:1-3; 10:1)—he devoted his life to the Gentile mission. The contributors to the present volume believe that to say Matthew is Jewish means (at least) that he thinks more like a Jew in many ways than scores of his contemporaries in the Jesus movement. While his Jewish way of thinking comes to expression diversely throughout his Gospel, this study examines how Matthew’s portrayal of Jesus as Israel’s king in the birth and infancy traditions, particularly in close juxtaposition to Herod, reveals the Evangelist’s “Jewish-traditionalist” socio-religious orientation. 1 The study will commence by assessing the figure of Herod in the Synoptic Gospels and in the writings of Josephus. 2 The analysis will focus more on Herod’s function within the respective narratives than on his characterization. 3 Because of the literary significance of how 1 A Jewish-traditionalist socio-religious orientation manifests in a variety of beliefs and practices that would not be so frequently maintained amongst the Gentile constituency of the Jesus movement; for example, close adherence to the Torah and belief in eschatological salvation for national Israel. For an in-depth delineation of this type of Jewish expression, see W. Baxter, Israel’s Only Shepherd: Matthew’s Shepherd Motif and His Social Setting, LNTS 457 (London: T & T Clark, 2012), 181-195. 2 The story of Jesus spans four decades. Thus, “Herod” has three different referents in the Gospels: Herod the Great; Herod Achelaus, and Herod Antipas. The present study follows the position persuasively argued by F. Dicken, Herod as a Composite Character in Luke-Acts, WUNT 2/375 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013). By “composite character” Dicken means “an amalgamation of multiple historic people that appears as a single character in a literary work” (Herod, 2). That ancient writers employ composite characters can be seen in Second Temple Jewish writings like, for example, Judith, where “Nebuchadnezzar” is identified as the king of Assyria—an obvious conflation of the Assyrian and Babylonian empires expressed in the one, infamous figure. 3 In Luke-Acts Dicken observes that “Herod” embodies “political opposition towards the protagonists of Luke-Acts as an outworking of Satanic attempts to hinder the proclamation of the gospel” ( Herod, 3). The other Synoptic Gospel writers, given their smaller size—i.e., compared to Luke-Acts—and their different emphases