A paranoid ruler feels so threatened by manipulative forces around him that he suspects his children are trying to overthrow him, leading him to torture and execute them. No, it’s not the plot of some new TV show. It’s a piece of history about King Herod, the man who ordered the murder of all boys under age 2 after hearing from the Magi that the king of the Jews was born in Bethlehem.

Matthew’s Gospel only gives a taste of Herod’s evils. But now, his story — as well as a contrasting one about a model of holiness — is being told by television legend Kathie Lee Gifford in the new book “Herod and Mary: The True Story of the Tyrant King and the Mother of the Risen Savior,” co-authored with Dr. Bryan Litfin.

During a “Christopher Closeup” interview, Gifford told me that a trip to Israel a little more than 10 years ago changed her understanding of Scripture. She said, “Unless we study what the original languages of the Scriptures were and are — meaning Hebrew in the Old Testament, Greek in the New [Testament] — we are not hearing the word of God. We’ve been reading the King James version of the Bible and thinking that’s the only [one] … That’s where we all learned Jesus was a carpenter. Well, guess what? He was not a carpenter. There was no buildable wood in first century A.D. Everything was stone … So, when I started learning how to study the Hebrew … and the Greek … it lit a fire in my very bored and lukewarm faith.”

During that trip, Gifford first heard about Herod’s background. “He murdered anybody that was a true enemy or [that] he thought might become [one],” she explained. “He was a paranoid man, but incredibly gifted, probably the greatest architect that has ever lived … This man was so genius, he found a way to pour concrete 150 feet into the Mediterranean Sea and build a marina for Caesar’s ships. That’s the way Pontius Pilate got there.”

Despite Herod’s many sins, in his own mind, he believed he was favored by God. “Herod wanted to be his own god,” Gifford said. “He knew there was a God out there that he kind of needed, and he’d give money to everything. Every time he’d honor a Roman god or a Greek god, it would anger the Jews and the Zealots … It was a melting pot of disaster and chaos waiting to happen … How truly relevant his story is even now. People are doing this all over the world, still this kind of evil. So, it’s always been here, but God has always had a presence in the midst of it.”

God’s presence in “Herod and Mary” obviously comes from the second of those two names: Mary, the mother of Jesus. Kathie Lee included Mary as a contrast to the self-absorbed, power-hungry, violent way that Herod lived his life. She said, “I want to give people hope, and nobody represented hope more than a little Jewish virgin…Born into poverty…certainly not born into what the world would say would be greatness. But she found favor with God. Why? Because of her pure heart, because of her spirit, because of her goodness.”

Kathie Lee hopes that people who read “Herod and Mary” find it enlightening from a historical perspective, but that it also offers them light on the best way to live their lives. She concluded, “God himself became one of us so he could walk humbly with us. We’re all sinners saved by grace.”

For free copies of the Christopher News Note PRAY WITHOUT CEASING, write: The Christophers, 264 West 40th St., Room 603, New York, NY 10018; or email . Tony Rossi is Director of Communications for The Christophers.

Tony Rossi