New book on Queen Julia Berenice

THE BIBLE AND INTERPRETATION:

The Troubled Memory of Rome’s Jewish Queen

Berenice—Herod the Great’s great-granddaughter—was far more than the silent royal cameo in Acts: she was a devout Jewish political actor who took a Nazirite vow, publicly confronted the Roman governor Gessius Florus to defend Jerusalem and the Temple, and later rose to extraordinary influence through her relationship with Titus. Both Jewish and Roman male sources distorted her memory through misogyny, political bias, and slander, so recovering her story sheds new light on Judaism, early Christianity, and the nature of female power in the first-century Roman world.

See also Berenice: Queen in Roman Judea (Yale University Press, 2026).

By Bruce Chilton
Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Religion
Bard College
March 2026

Cross-file under New Book.

For more on Julia Berenice (Berenike), see here and links, plus here. In the recent ancient-Rome Prime series Those About to Die, her troubled relationship with Titus was a major plot element.

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