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282 Roman colony, ruled first from headquarters in Syria, then by local governors. The Roman governor, called Procurator, made sure that the Jews chose as Ethnarch (“Head of the Jewish Council”) to serve as the Temple’s High Priest, and at first also a “King of the Jews” (not “King of Judea” as a country), whomever Rome preferred. From 36 to 4 B.c.E. the king was Herod, descended of Edomite converts to Judaism, who was the choice of two Roman generals (of Cleopatra fame): Mark Anthony and Octavian. Herod left a legacy of monumental structures, including the enhancement of the Temple Mount and the strategic palace-cum-fortress of Ma- sada at the Dead Sea; he also paid heed to the governor’s wishes as a de facto vassal of Rome. It was into a Jerusalem enlarged and magnified by Hash- monean and Herodian constructions, thronged with pilgrims for the Passover holiday, that Jesus of Nazareth arrived—in A.D. 33 (according to the accepted scholarly dating). At that time the Jews were allowed to retain only a religious author- ity, a council of seventy elders called the Sanhedrin; there was no longer a Jewish king; the land, no longer a Jewish state but a Roman province, was governed by the Procurator Pontius Pilate, ensconced in the Antonia Citadel that ad- joined the Temple. Tensions between the Jewish populace and the Roman masters of the land were rising, and resulted in a series of bloody riots in Jerusalem. Pontius Pilate, arriving in Jerusa- lem in A.D. 26, made matters worse by bringing into the city Roman legionnaires with their pole-mounted signae and coinage, bearing graven images forbidden in the Temple; Jews showing resistance were pitilessly sentenced to cruci- fixion in such numbers that the place of execution was nick- named Gulgatha—Place of the Skulls. Jesus had been to Jerusalem before; “His parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of Passover, and when he was twelve years old they went up to Jerusalem after the cus- tom of the feast; and when they had fulfilled the days, as they returned, the child Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem” (Luke 2: 41-43). When Jesus arrived (with his disciples) this time, THE END OF DAYS