Calne Methodist Church Presents

plus Drama

ECLIPSE

A One Act Play set in the time of the Nativity

Synopsis – Herod ‘the Great’ has always been the villain of the Nativity story, but he was also a prolific builder whose achievements included the second Temple in Jerusalem, the new harbour of Caesaria and even relief housing for earthquake victims.

He died aged 70 in Jericho in 4BC soon after a partial eclipse and around the time of the reputed ‘Star of Bethlehem’. His self-made reputation as a bloodthirsty madman who murdered his relations made it easy to believe that he had instigated the Massacre of the Innocents.

This play brings together secular and Biblical history in a fictionalised account of Herods’s last days when his name became a byword for cunning and cruelty in the Christian story.