Religion & Spirituality. King Herod the Great was the villain in the Christmas story, a wicked king who saw the baby Jesus as a threat and wanted to murder him. Although he ruled over the Jews in Israel in the time before Christ, Herod the Great was not completely Jewish. He was born in 73 B.C. to an Idumean man named Antipater and a woman named Cyprus, who was the daughter of an Arab sheik. King Herod was a schemer who took advantage of Roman political unrest to claw his way to the top.