Why Was Zora Neale Hurston So Obsessed With the Biblical Villain Herod the Great?

Ellen Wexler Assistant Editor, Humanities Near the end of her life, Zora Neale Hurston wrote to her editor at Scribner’s that she was “under the spell of a great obsession.” She had been working feverishly on the early chapters of a project, which, she assured him, “has EVERYTHING.” The all-consuming subject? “The life story of HEROD THE GREAT,” she wrote. “You have no idea the great amount of research that I…