Herod Antipas

Domain given to Herod Antipas, as Tetrarch of Galilee and Perea, by Augustus in 4 BC

After the death of Herod the Great in 4 BC, Augustus confirmed the testament of the dead king by making Antipas tetrarch of Galilee and Perea, a region he would rule for the next forty-two years.[15] The two territories were separated by the region of the Decapolis, with Galilee to the north and Perea to the south (see map). Threats to stability in both areas would have been clear to Antipas when he took office. While he had been making his case to Augustus in Rome, dissidents led by Judas, son of Hezekiah, had attacked the palace of Sepphoris in Galilee, seizing money as well as weapons which they used to terrorize the area.[16] In a counterattack ordered by Quinctilius Varus, Roman governor of Syria, Sepphoris was destroyed by fire and its inhabitants sold as slaves.[17] Perea, meanwhile, bordered on the kingdom of Nabatea, which had long had uneasy relations with Romans and Jews.[18]

Part of Antipas' solution was to follow in his father's footsteps as a builder. He rebuilt and fortified Sepphoris, while also adding a wall to Betharamphtha in Perea.[19] The latter city was renamed Livias after Augustus' wife Livia, and later Julias after his daughter.[20] However, the tetrarch's most noted construction was his capital on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee, Tiberias, so named to honour his patron Tiberius, who had succeeded Augustus as emperor in 14 AD.[21] Residents could bathe nearby at the warm springs of Emmaus, and by the time of the First Jewish-Roman War the city's buildings included a stadium, a royal palace and a sanctuary for prayer.[22] It gave its name to the sea and later became a centre of rabbinic learning after the Jewish-Roman wars.[23] However, pious Jews at first refused to live in it because it was built atop a graveyard and therefore a source of ritual impurity. Antipas had to colonize it with a mixture of foreigners, forced migrants, poor people, and freed slaves.[24]

At other times Antipas was more sensitive to Jewish tradition. His coins carried no images, which would have violated Jewish prescriptions against idolatry.[25] When Pontius Pilate, governor of Judea from 26 AD to 36 AD, caused offence by placing votive shields in the Antonia palace at Jerusalem, Antipas and his brothers successfully petitioned for their removal.[26]

Early in his reign, Antipas had married the daughter of King Aretas IV of Nabatea. However, on a visit to Rome he stayed with his half-brother Herod II and there he fell in love with his wife, Herodias, granddaughter of Herod the Great and Mariamne I, and the two agreed to marry after Herod Antipas had divorced his wife.[27] Aretas' daughter learned of the plan and asked permission to travel to the frontier fortress of Machaerus, whence Nabatean forces escorted her to her father. With his daughter safe in his custody, Aretas now could declare war on Herod.[28] Josephus says that Aretas was joined in this war by 'fugitives from the tetrarchy of Phillip',[29] whereas Moses of Chorene says that Aretas was joined by the Edessan army.[30] It is said that the joint Petra-Edessan army prevailed over the forces of Herod Antipas.

It is generally agreed that the war, in which Herod was defeated, occurred in 36 AD, a year before the death of the emperor Tiberius. A point of contention today is how long before this date Herod's marriage to Herodias took place. Some surmise that the marriage of Antipas and Herodias took place shortly before the war in about 34 AD, after the death of Philip,[31] but others have pointed to Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews (Book 18, chapter 5, paragraph 4) comment that Herodias "divorced herself from her husband while he was alive" to argue that it took place before Herod II's death, in about 27 AD, thus making it possible for Jesus to have been born in the reign of Herod the Great (as indicated by the Gospel of Matthew) and to have died in his early 30s (as indicated by the Gospel of Luke).[32]

Antipas faced more immediate problems in his own tetrarchy after John the Baptist, in 28/29 AD according to the Gospel of Luke[33] (or 27 AD, if the co-regency of Augustus and Tiberius is included in Luke's reckoning of time, for which there is some evidence), began a ministry of preaching and baptism by the Jordan River, which marked the western edge of Antipas' territory of Perea. The Gospels state that John attacked the tetrarch's marriage as contrary to Jewish law (it was incestuous, as Herodias was also Antipas' niece, but also John criticized the fact that she was his brother's wife (Mark 6:18), (lending credence to the belief that Antipas and Herodias married while Herod II was still alive), while Josephus says that John's public influence made Antipas fearful of rebellion.[34] John was imprisoned in Machaerus and executed.[35] According to Matthew and Mark, Herod was reluctant to order John's death but was compelled by Herodias' daughter (unnamed in the text but named by Josephus as Salome), to whom he had promised any reward, up to half his kingdom, she chose as a result of her dancing for guests at his birthday banquet.[36]

Among those baptized by John was Jesus of Nazareth, who began his own ministry in Galilee, causing Antipas, according to Matthew and Mark, to fear that John had been raised from the dead.[37] Luke alone among the Gospels states that a group of Pharisees warned Jesus that Antipas was plotting his death, whereupon Jesus denounced the tetrarch as a "fox" and declared that he, Jesus, would not fall victim to such a plot because "it cannot be that a prophet should perish away from Jerusalem".[38] Luke also credits the tetrarch with a role in Jesus' trial. According to Luke, Pilate, on learning that Jesus was a Galilean and therefore under Herod's jurisdiction, sent him to Antipas, who was also in Jerusalem at the time. Initially, Antipas was pleased to see Jesus, hoping to see him perform a miracle, but when Jesus remained silent in the face of questioning, Antipas mocked him and sent him back to Pilate. Luke says that these events improved relations between Pilate and Herod despite their earlier enmity.[39]

The reason for Antipas' involvement has been debated. Theodor Mommsen argued that the normal legal procedure of the early Roman empire was for defendants to be tried by the authorities of their home provinces.[40] A. N. Sherwin-White re-examined the relevant legal texts and concluded that trials were generally based on the location of the alleged crimes, but that there was a possibility of referral to a province of origin in special cases.[41] If Pilate was not required to send Jesus to Antipas, he may have been making a show of courtesy to the tetrarch[42] and trying to avoid the need to deal with the Jewish authorities himself.[43] When Jesus was sent back, Pilate could still have represented Antipas' failure to convict as support for his own view (according to Luke) that Jesus was not guilty of a capital offence,[44] thus allowing him to avoid responsibility for Jesus' crucifixion.[45]

Due to the lack of historical evidence, it has been suggested that Jesus' trial by Herod Antipas is unhistorical.[46] For example, Robin Lane Fox, an English historian, alleges that the story was invented based on Psalm 2, in which "the kings of the earth" are described as opposing the Lord's "anointed", and also served to show that the authorities failed to find grounds for convicting Jesus.[47]

Herod (Hérode), by French painter and Bible illustrator James Tissot, in the Brooklyn Museum

Between 34 and 36 AD[48][49] the conflict with Aretas of Nabatea, caused by Antipas' divorce from Aretas' daughter and the rulers' disagreement over territory, developed into open war. Antipas' army suffered a devastating defeat after fugitives from the former tetrarchy of Philip sided with the Nabateans, and Antipas was forced to appeal to Tiberius for help. The emperor ordered Lucius Vitellius, governor of Syria, to march against Aretas and ensure that he was captured or killed.[50] Vitellius obediently mobilized two legions, sending them on a detour around Judea while he joined Antipas in attending a festival at Jerusalem. While staying there he learned of the death of Tiberius (16 March 37 AD), concluded he lacked the authority to go to war, and recalled his troops.[51]

Josephus implies that Vitellius was unwilling to cooperate with the tetrarch because of a grudge he bore from an earlier incident. According to his account, Antipas provided hospitality at a conference on the Euphrates between Vitellius and King Artabanus III of Parthia, and after Vitellius' diplomatic success anticipated the governor in sending a report to Tiberius.[52] However, other sources place the meeting between Vitellius and Artabanus under Tiberius' successor Caligula,[53] leading some historians to think that Josephus misdated it to the reign of Tiberius or conflated it with an earlier diplomatic meeting involving Antipas and Vitellius.[54]