Know Your Herods III: Herod Agrippa, Superstar

In the middle of his novel, Claudius the God, the sequel to I, Claudius, writer Robert Graves interrupts his narrative about the Roman Emperor to tell the story of a friend of Claudius’, the son of a Jewish royal family whose career had more ups and downs than an epileptic yo-yo.  He is mentioned very briefly in the Book of Acts, but like the rest of his dysfunctional family, there is so much more to his life than that.  He was the rock star of the House of Herod:  Herod Agrippa I.

Agrippa was the son of Aristobulus IV, one of the children of Herod the Great, and one of the sons Herod had executed.  Little Agrippa was only three at the time, and therefore incapable of plotting against Grandpa Herod, so the family sent him to Rome.  Agrippa grew up at the Roman Imperial Court and became good friends with Claudius and with the Emperor Tiberius’ son, Drusus.

After his mother’s death, he came into some money, but quickly spent it all and dug himself deep into debt.  When his friend Drusus died, he had to flee Rome to escape his debts and he stayed for a while in Idumaea, where his grandfather’s family originally came from.

His uncle, Herod Antipas, gave him a minor administrative post in the city of Tiberius in Galilee, but that didn’t last very long.  He bounced around a bit after that, ending up in Alexandria in Egypt, where with the help of his wife, he was able to secure a loan to pay off his debts, enabling him to return to Rome.

Once again in Rome, he became close friends with Caligula, Tiberius’ designated heir.  For a while, these were good times for Agrippa; but on one occasion a servant heard him joking that he wished Tiberius would hurry up and die so that Caligula could ascend to the throne.

Word of Agrippa’s injudicious remark got back to Tiberius.  The Emperor did not find the joke terribly funny.  Not that many years before, Tiberius had discovered that his best friend, Sejanus, had practically taken over ruling the Empire and was using him as a figurehead.  Tiberius regained control of the situation, but the betrayal had left him justifiably paranoid about that sort of thing.  Herod Agrippa was sent to prison, and there was nothing Caligula could do to help.  If he had tried, Uncle Tiberius would have seen it as proof that Caligula really was plotting against him.  Which Caligula probably was.

So there Agrippa sat, until the old hedonist finally did croak, and Caligula took over.  Caligula did not forget his old pal.  He freed Agrippa and by way of restitution gave him a chain made of gold as heavy as the iron chain Agrippa had worn in prison.  Caligula also appointed him king of the province of Syria and the regions previously ruled by Agrippa’s late Uncle Philip, (the brother of Herod Antipas).  This rankled Antipas, who for years had coveted the title of king, but had to be content with being called a tetrarch.

On his way to Syria, Agrippa revisited Alexandria.  According to Philo, a First Century Jewish historian living in the city at that time, the honors the Emperor had bestowed upon Agrippa stirred up jealousy and resentment against the Jewish community amongst the populace.  Philo describes public insults to Agrippa made by rabble-rousers, and acts of violence against the Alexandrian Jews.  The provincial governor, a guy with the embarrassing name of Flaccus, was either too incompetent to curb the violence or, as Philo insists, complicit in it.  None of this seems to have been Agrippa’s fault, though, and Philo seems to have had a high opinion of him.

Philo wasn’t the only one who liked Agrippa.  Unlike the rest of the rulers in the House of Herod, Agrippa actually got along with his Jewish subjects.  Maybe enough generations had passed that Grandpa Herod’s Idumenan blood wasn’t that important anymore; maybe Agrippa was more observant than his hedonistic Uncle Antipas; maybe years of Roman rule had made people nostalgic for the glory days of Herod the Great.  Personally, I suspect that Herod Agrippa had a talent for schmoozing which his other family members lacked; but we don’t read much about that aspect of Agrippa’s personality from Josephus.

His Uncle Antipas didn’t like him, though.  You may remember that Herod Antipas was only a tetrarch, the ruler of one quarter of a province; but the Emperor appointed Herod Agrippa to be a basileus, (king).  Antipas tried lobbying the Emperor for an upgrade in his job title; and while he was at it, hint that Agrippa was doing a crappy job; (the same sort of rumors Antipas used to pass on about his rival Pontius Pilate).

Agrippa anticipated him, and sent Caligula accusations of his own against Uncle Antipas.  Guess  which one Caligula believed.  Antipas found himself exiled to Gaul and his former tetrarchy got added to Agrippa’s territories.  Agrippa now ruled over all of the Jewish territories in Palestine, except for the core provinces of Judea and Samaria, which remained for the time under Roman administrators.

Agrippa remained close buds with Caligula, which in itself was no small accomplishment.  He accompanied the Emperor on a military campaign to the Rhine Valley, not because he had any great military skill, but I think because Caligula wanted a drinking buddy on the trip to pal around with.

This relationship helped Agrippa in what was probably the biggest crisis of his career.  As Caligula slid further and further into the teacup, he issued a decree that statues of himself be placed in every temple in the empire.  This would not have gone down well in Jerusalem.

Some years earlier, Pontius Pilate had faced riots because he brought soldiers into the city whose regimental standard bore the Emperor’s likeness.  More importantly, the Maccabean wars of a century or two earlier when the Jews revolted against the Selucid Greeks and briefly established their independence, was triggered when the Selucid ruler, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, ordered sacrifices to Zeus in the Temple.

Agrippa was descended on his grandmother’s side from the Hasomean Dynasty of priestly kings who ruled Judea during this period of independence.  He could see how this would go:  the Jews would resist the edict, as they did in the days of Judah “the Hammer” Maccabeus; only this time, the Romans would be the ones doing the hammering.

With his considerable powers of flattery and diplomacy, Agrippa was able to intercede with Caligula – very likely at the risk of his own life – and persuade him to rescind the edict.  Jerusalem and the Temple were spared revolt and the crushing Roman retaliation for a generation.

Before Caligula could change his mind again, he was assassinated.  As luck would have it, Agrippa was once again in Rome when it happened.  Always one to know who his friends were, Agrippa glommed onto Claudius, his old school chum and Caligula’s uncle.

Claudius had always been considered too feeble-minded and bookish by his family to get involved in their Imperial power struggles; but with the death of Caligula, he was about the last male member of the House of Caesar available as a successor.  The Praetorian Guard, the Emperor’s elite bodyguards, declared their support for Claudius to be the new Emperor.  In Josephus’s book The Antiquities of the Jews, he describes Agrippa as being instrumental in persuading Claudius to seize the throne and challenge the Roman Senate.  His earlier book, The Jewish Wars, simply depict Agrippa as a messenger to Claudius.

When the dust cleared and all the blood mopped from the floor, Claudius was Emperor, and he granted his buddy the remaining Jewish provinces of Judea and Samaria.  Now Herod Agrippa truly was King of the Jews.

And, from the accounts of Philo, Josephus, and some of the rabbinical commentators on that period, he did pretty well as king.  His ringside seat in Rome witnessing the reigns of Tiberius and Caligula gave him an exemplary education in what not to do when you’re an absolute monarch and he seems to have taken those lessons to heart.

But you know he wouldn’t be a Herod if he didn’t execute someone somewhere along the line.  And that’s where he comes into the New Testament.

It was about this time that King Herod arrested some who belonged to the church, intending to persecute them.  He had James, the brother of John, put to death with the sword.  When he saw that this pleased the Jews, he proceeded to seize Peter also.  (Acts 12:1-3 NIV)

James the son of Zebedee, along with his brother, John and with Simon Peter, are described by the Gospels as the closest of Jesus’ disciples.  He took the three of them with him up on the mountain to witness his Transfiguration; and later on, he also took them along when he prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane. At one point, the mother of James and John lobbied Jesus to have him place her boys at his Right and Left Hand; an idea Jesus quashed, but which caused a bit of resentment among the other Disciples.  The Gospels say little of James actually doing much, and I’ve always gotten the impression that John was the one who was really close to Jesus and that James came along because the two brothers were inseparable.  I also have to wonder how much of the hostility in the Gospel of John towards “The Jews” stems from the execution of his brother.  I may be reading too much into this, though.

The James mentioned here, the brother of John, is a different guy from the James who appears later in Acts as an important leader in the Christian Community, and who is called “James the brother of Jesus.”  Unless the author of Acts did some major messing with the sequence of events, which is also a possibility.  But no, I think if the two Jameses had been the same man, the writer would have made this more clear.

Why did Agrippa have James arrested and executed?  He probably considered James’ wacko religious splinter group as disturbers of the peace.  Or perhaps, as the text darkly suggests, he did it solely to suck up to the Jewish religious authorities, who regarded them as blasphemers.  Or, most likely, I think, a little of both.

He had James executed by the sword, and not by crucifixion.  It seems to me that this is a telling point, but I’m not sure what it tells me.  Crucifixion was a Roman punishment for crimes against the Empire of Rome; Agrippa, I think, wanted to be seen acting on behalf of his own kingdom and not on behalf of the Emperor.  Or maybe he figured that since the Messiah these people followed had been crucified, that doing it to James too would just encourage them.

The poll numbers from his action were encouraging.  After all, no politician ever misses a chance to appear Tough on Crime, and being Tough on Heresy is even better.  So Agrippa also had Peter brought in during the Feast of Unleavened Bread, intending to put him to public trial once Passover ended.  The Book of Acts tells of how Peter miraculously escaped from prison in a jailbreak that was simultaneously awesome and a little bit creepy.  (And capped off with a bit of comedy, when Peter showed up at the house of some friends and they refused to believe it was him).  Presumably Peter laid low after that, because we get no mention of Agrippa trying to arrest him again.

He might not have had the chance; because after the Passover festival of AD 44, Agrippa returned to the city of Caesarea to preside over a series of games in honor of Claudius.  According to Acts, he had been quarreling with the people of the nearby provinces of Tyre and Sidon, and they had sent envoys to Agrippa to sue for peace.  Josephus, describing the occasion, makes no mention of the envoys and only says that Agrippa was presiding over a public festival.  The Book of Acts describes it this way:

On the appointed day Herod, wearing his royal robes, sat on his throne and delivered a public address to the people.  They shouted, “This is the voice of a god, not of a man.”   (Acts 12:21-22)

If this doesn’t sound like the kind of thing a crowd of Jewish subjects would say, you’re right.  But Caesarea was a predominantly Gentile city.  The author of Acts strongly hints that the envoys from Tyre and Sidon were the ones doing the flattery.  Josephus’ account says that the occasion was a a series of public games held in honor of the Emperor, which would likely draw a mostly Romanized crowd anyway.  And I suspect that after a couple of generations of Roman Emperors being declared gods after death, and of Caligula claiming godhood for himself while alive, the idea of granting divine attributes to a king had pretty much come to be considered one of the perks of the job.

Josephus gives a little more detail:

Now when Agrippa had reigned three years over all Judea, he came to the city Caesarea [...] There he exhibited shows in honor of the emperor [...] On the second day of the festival, Herod put on a garment made wholly of silver, and of a truly wonderful contexture, and came into the theater early in the morning; at which time the silver of his garment was illuminated by the fresh reflection of the sun's rays upon it. It shone out after a surprising manner, and was so resplendent as to spread a horror over those that looked intently upon him. At that moment, his flatterers cried out [...] that he was a god; and they added, 'Be thou merciful to us; for although we have hitherto reverenced thee only as a man, yet shall we henceforth own thee as superior to mortal nature.'

Upon this the king did neither rebuke them, nor reject their impious flattery. But as he presently afterward looked up, he saw an owl sitting on a certain rope over his head, and immediately understood that this bird was the messenger of ill tidings, as it had once been the messenger of good tidings to him; and he fell into the deepest sorrow.  [Flavius Josephus, Jewish Antiquities Book 19 ch.8]

The owl was a reference to the earlier occasion when Agrippa had been imprisoned by Tiberius.  He saw an owl perched above him while in prison and took it to be an omen of good fortune.  When he saw the owl again, he interpreted it as a sign that his luck was about to change.

A severe pain also arose in his belly, and began in a most violent manner. He therefore looked upon his friends, and said, 'I, whom you call a god, am commanded presently to depart this life; while Providence thus reproves the lying words you just now said to me; and I, who was by you called immortal, am immediately to be hurried away by death. But I am bound to accept of what Providence allots, as it pleases God; for we have by no means lived ill, but in a splendid and happy manner.'  After he said this, his pain was become violent. Accordingly he was carried into the palace, and the rumor went abroad that he would certainly die in a little time. But the multitude presently sat in sackcloth, with their wives and children, after the law of their country, and besought God for the king's recovery. All places were also full of mourning and lamentation. Now the king rested in a high chamber, and as he saw them below lying prostrate on the ground, he could not himself forbear weeping. And when he had been quite worn out by the pain in his belly for five days, he departed this life, being in the fifty-fourth year of his age, and in the seventh year of his reign.  (Josephus,  Jewish Antiquities Book 19.ch. 8)

The Author of Acts has little positive to say about the killer of James, and is much briefer: 

Immediately, because Herod did not give praise to God, an angel of the Lord struck him down, and he was eaten by worms and died.  (Acts 12:23)

What was this malady that took away the resplendent Agrippa in the vigor of his life?  Some have speculated that it might have been the same ailment that took his grandfather, Herod the Great; but since we don’t know what that ailment was, it doesn’t really help that much.  If it was the same cause of death, Agrippa was lucky he only suffered for five days instead of the years it took Grandpa Herod to die.

In his novel Claudius the God, Robert Graves has the Emperor, hearing about his friend’s death, muse that the Hebrew god must be pretty arbitrary and petty to strike Agrippa down like that for such a trifling offense.  And perhaps it was.  But in Josephus’ telling at least, Agrippa seems to have taken his fate philosophically.  He might well have said, with Job:  “The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away.”

He left behind a son, Agrippa II who was only 17 and considered too young to take over the throne; and so the restored Kingdom of the Herods once again fell to the rule of Roman administrators.  In the meantime, the fringe group following the crucified Messiah that Agrippa tried to crush grew.  And so did the tensions between the Jewish population of Judea and their Roman rulers.

Know Your Herods II: Herod Antipas, That Wily Fox

Of all of the numerous members of the dysfunctional House of Herod, the one who gets the most mention in the New Testament is Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great.  This is understandable, because the Ministry of Jesus took place during his reign, and for the most part in the territory Herod Antipas ruled.

Antipas spent much of his early years growing up at the court in Rome, as did many other members of his family.  His name, Antipas, was short for Antipater, the name of his grandfather and also of his oldest step-brother.

When Herod the Great died in the year 4 BC, he left his affairs in some disarray.  Originally, he had intended to leave his kingdom to Aristobulus and Alexander, his two sons by his second wife, his beloved Mariamne.  But late in his life, he suspected them of plotting treason and so disinherited them and had them killed.  Perhaps they even were.

He then named his first son, Antipater, the child of his first wife, Doris, as heir.  But Antipater was also accused of plotting to murder his father, and was tried before the Roman governor of Syria.  He was found guilty, and with the approval of the Emperor, executed.

You’d think Herod would be running out of heirs by this time, but no; he’d married ten times before he died, and still had plenty of spares.  This time he jumped ahead past the other other sons and named his youngest, Antipas, to succeed him as King of Judea.

But at the last minute, he changed his mind again, and wrote a new will, dividing Judea amongst Herod and a couple other sons.  The eldest of the remaining sons, Archelaus, got Judea proper, Idumea, (where Grandpa Antipater came from) and Samaria.  Philip got Gaulantis, Batanea and Trachontis, the northeastern portion of the province.  Their aunt, Herod’s sister Salome, was given a couple cities around the present-day Gaza region.

Antipas had to settle for Galilee, the territory on the western side of the Sea of Galilee, and Perea, a strip of land on the eastern side of the Jordan River.

He didn’t even get to be called king.  Archelaus got that honor.  Herod was named Tetrarch, meaning ruler of a quarter.  And don’t think that didn’t rankle.

In many ways, Herod Antipas followed the example of his father, Herod the Great.  He followed Jewish laws and customs… to a certain extent.  He observed the important Jewish holidays in Jerusalem and, as his father did, the coins issued under his reign bore no portraits, as was usual with Roman coins.  But he was a highly Romanized Jew, and his palace was decorated with statues in the Greco-Roman style.

Another way he followed his father was in building projects.  He rebuilt the fortress of Machaerus on the Dead Sea and expanded it into a city in which he had his palace.  He made civic improvements in many other cities in his territory as well, but his greatest achievement was the construction of the city of Tiberius, on the shore of the Sea of Galilee.  Like his father’s city of Caesarea, it was built according to Greco-Roman ideas of civic planning; and also like Caesarea, he made the city his capital.  He also named it after his patron, the Emperor Tiberius, and renamed the lake upon which it stood the Sea of Tiberius too, just to make sure the Emperor noticed.

Unfortunately, he had trouble at first getting his Jewish subjects to settle in his new city, because he had built it on a Jewish cemetery.  Eventually, though, the city became a center for rabbinic learning.

Early in his reign, he entered a strategic marriage with the daughter of King Aretas IV of Nabatea, a desert kingdom bordering Perea.  But soon he became interested in another girl, his niece Herodias, who happened to be married to his half-brother Herod Philip.

His wife caught wind that he was thinking of divorcing her, and realized that being Herod’s Ex-Wife was not a really tenable position to be in.  She asked and got permission to travel to Machaerus for a bit.  From there, she fled across the border with some of her father’s soldiers into her father’s territory.  Aretas, was angered by Herod’s treatment of his little girl, and some time later declared war on Herod, inflicting a rather humiliating defeat.

But for the time being, Herod didn’t care.  He was in love, and she loved him, and they both had practically the same names.    His stepbrother Philip permitted Herodias to divorce him with little fuss; (either Antipas paid him well to permit the divorce, or Philip knew Herodias better than Herod did and figured he’d be happier without her).  What more could a tetrarch ask for?

The problem was, there was this prophet.

John the Baptist, (or “the Baptizer”, as he’s known by people who don’t wish to name any specific Protestant denominations), began his ministry on the Jordan River, on the Perean border.  He called people to repentance and preached about the immanent coming of the Kingdom of God.  He also preached about the coming Messiah,  “…one more powerful than I … whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.”  (Luke 3:16)

Some scholars have speculated that John was an Essene, a member of a mystic and ascetic sect of Judaism which had a community at Qumram on the Dead Sea.  The Essenes also taught an imminent Messianic Age, and they were big on ritual cleansing ceremonies, like Baptism; but as a group they focused more inward, withdrawing away from the world.  I can easily imagine John studying for a time at Qumram, but then breaking with that community to  start his own ministry.

According to the Gospels, John had a considerable following as a populist preacher.  The members of the Religious Establishment weren’t too crazy about him, but then, he wasn’t shy about calling out their hypocrisies either.

When Jesus arrived, John kind of faded from the scene.  Which was okay with him; he believed Jesus was the Messiah, after all.  “He must become greater; I must become less.”  (John 3:30)  With the start of Jesus’ ministry, John shifted gears a bit and concentrated on calling people to repentance, urging a godly life, and – here is the important part – calling out corruption in High Places.

One of these High Places was Herod’s Palace at Machaerus, where Herod Antipas was cavorting with his new wife, who was not only his niece, but also his sister-in-law; two types of incest for the price of one.  A lot of people thought this showed considerable bad taste, but John was talking about it.  Loudly.  And Herodias didn’t like it.

At Herodias’ insistence, Herod had John arrested and imprisoned; some believe at the Machaerus palace itself.  And there he sat for a while, because although Herodias wanted him dead, her husband felt some scruples about killing a prophet.  “…Herod feared John and protected him, knowing him to be a righteous and holy man.”.  And, to a certain extent, Herod seems to have been fascinated by the man.  The text goes on to say, “… When Herod heard John, he was greatly puzzled; yet he liked to listen to him.” (Mark 6:20 NIV)

Eventually, though, Herodias got her wish. Herod have a banquet to celebrate his birthday, inviting many high officials and important men of the region.  Herodias’ daughter, Herod’s step-daughter came in and danced to entertain the party. The Gospel’s don’t give us the daughter’s name, but Josephus tells us it was Salome; probably after Great-Grandpa Herod’s sister. 

Although the Gospels don’t specify whether the dance involved seven veils or popping out of a cake or riding in on a wrecking ball, or anything like that; popular interpretation insists that her dance was a lascivious one. Herod certainly liked it, and the doting step-dad made her a rash promise:

The king said to the girl, “Ask me for anything you want and I’ll give it to you.”  And he promised her with an oath, “Whatever you ask I will give you, up to half my kingdom.”  (Mark 6:22-23)

(And yes, a pedantic point here.  Herod was not technically a king.  Thank you for reminding him.  Would you like to add some lemon juice to his paper cut while you’re at it?  Some have suggested that Mark was being sarcastic; I think it more likely that people just referred to him as a king because his father was one and because he acted like one.)

Salome went to her mom for advice on what to ask.  Not surprisingly, Herodias had her demand the head of John the Baptist.  “ON A PLATE!”

This put Herod in a bad position.  He did not want to kill the prophet, but he had made a very public promise in front of some important people.  If he went back on his vow, he would look weak.  And for what?  A filthy rabble-rouser who was always denouncing him anyway.  From his point of view, he really had no choice.  So Salome got her boon, and Herodias got her trophy.

Salome comes off as quite the bloodthirsty vixen in this story.  At very least, she is being used as a pawn in her mother’s schemes to manipulate her stepfather.  In Oscar Wilde’s stage dramatization of the story, he adds an intriguing twist; in Wilde’s version, Salome has the hots for John, and here demand for his head is retaliation because he spurns her love.  After John’s execution, Wilde has Salome kissing the lips of his severed head.

None of which is mentioned in Josephus’ account of Herod Antipas’ reign.  He does mention John and that Herod had him imprisoned fearing that his preaching would stir an insurrection.  He also states that many people at the time blamed Herod’s execution of John, a good man, for his later defeat by King Aretas. 

It wasn’t until after John’s death, it seems, that Herod heard reports of Jesus and his ministry.  And when he did, he got a creepy sense of déjà vu.

King Herod heard about this, for Jesus’ name had become well known.  Some were saying “John the Bptist has been raised from the dead, and that is why miraculous powers are at work in him.”

Others said, “He is Elijah.”

And still others claimed, “He is a prophet, like one of the prophets of long ago.”

But when Herod heard this, he said, “John, the man I beheaded, has been raised from the dead!”  (Mark 6:14-16)

Freaky.

Shortly after this, Jesus left Galilee to teach in the regions of Tyre and Sidon, to the north of Galilee, and swung around through the territories ruled by Philip.  This might well have been to stay under Herod’s radar.  The text doesn’t specifically say this.  But the Gospels do say that a couple members of Herod’s household became followers of Jesus, including Joanna, the wife of Herod’s major-domo, Cuza.  (Luke 8:3)

But later still, on an occasion when Jesus was passing through Perea, some Pharisees come to Jesus with some concern-trollish advice:  “Leave this place and go somewhere else.  Herod wants to kill you.”  Perhaps they’re afraid he’ll stir up trouble.  Perhaps they were genuinely concerned about him; although he and the Pharisees were often at odds, his teachings were not entirely incompatible with their own, and they were not always hostile to him.  Or perhaps they just wanted to get him out of their town.

He replied, “Go tell that fox, ‘I will drive out demons and heal people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will reach my goal.’  In any case I must keep going today and tomorrow and the next day – for surely no prophet can die outside Jerusalem!”  (Luke 13:32-33)

Herod has other things to worry about anyway.  One constant concern with him was his position as Tetrarch.  His brother Archelaus didn’t last long as King of Judea, and was yanked by Caesar for his incompetence.  Antipas lobbied hard to replace him, but instead the Emperor installed a series of Roman administrators to govern the province.  The best-known of these was a guy named Pontius Pilate, who actually held the position for a fairly long term, considering some of the problems he faced.

From the accounts of Pilate’s administration found in Josephus and Philo of Alexandria, we get the impression that every time Pilate faced a crisis, Herod Antipas would fire off a letter to Rome to let the Emperor know and to suggest that someone else ought to be put in charge of Judea.  Someone whose name begins with the letter “H”

Herod might have been pretty thoroughly Romanized, but he still made a point of going up to Jerusalem for the High Holidays.  Which is why he happened to be in town one particular Passover. He was probably as surprised as anybody when Jesus showed up on his doorstep with an armed guard and a note from Herod’s rival, Pilate.

We hear this story every year.  How Jesus, condemned to death by the Jewish Council on the charge of blasphemy, is brought before Pilate to authorize the death sentence.  According to the Gospels, Pilate is reluctant to do this, because he recognizes Jesus’ innocence; but he’s looking for a way to release the crazy Jewish prophet without having to take responsibility for doing so himself.  And then someone mentions that Jesus comes from the province of Galilee.

Upon hearing this, Pilate asked if the man was a Galilean.  When he learned that Jesus was under Herod’s jurisdiction, he sent him to Herod, who was also in Jerusalem at that time.  (Luke 23:6-7)

For the first time, Herod gets to see this prophet who seemed to be a reincarnation of John, whom he’d so long wanted to meet.  And…

…He’s disappointed.

He hopes to see wonders.  He hopes to hear wisdom.  He hopes to see John re-born.  Perhaps, he even hopes for the chance to ask John’s forgiveness.

He gets none of this.  Jesus says nothing.

But Herod is a philosopher.  At least his curiosity about this Jesus has been satisfied. And it occurs to him that it was quite decent of Pilate to give him that chance, especially the way they’d been plotting against each other all this time.  “That day Herod and Pilate became friends – before this they had been enemies.”  (Luke 23:12)

Shortly after this came the war between Aretas and Herod in which Herod was badly beaten.  The Emperor sent Vitellius, the governor of the neighboring province of Syria to come to Herod’s aid, but before the campaign got underway, Tiberius died, and Vitellius decided to withdraw pending further instructions from the new emperor.  He didn’t really like Herod much anyway.  Herod doesn’t seem to have gotten along with any of his neighbors.

They wound up working together again, though, when Vitellius was sent to negotiate with the King of the Parthians, and Herod helped with the negotiations.  The mission was a successful one, but Herod annoyed Vitellius by sending word quickly back to Rome, seeming to claim credit.

The death of Tiberius really marked the fall of Herod Antipas’ star.  His nephew/brother-in-law, Herod Agrippa, happened to be close school chums with Caligula, Tiberius’ successor.  And Antipas was becoming annoying with his frequent whinging to Rome and his pleas to be granted more authority.

When Agrippa was given Philip’s old tetrarchy and the title of king, Herodias nagged Antipas into asking Caligula to be granted the same title.  At the same time as he put in his request, Agrippa presented accusations before the Emperor that Antipas had conspired against Tiberius and was now stockpiling enough arms to supply a sizable army.

Antipas had to admit to the weapons stockpile, but he very likely had a perfectly innocent explanation for them… which Caligula wouldn’t listen to.

Caligula exiled Herod to the Roman city of Lugdunum in Gaul, the modern-day Lyons.  Considering what happened to some of Caligula’s later enemies, he got off lightly.  The Emperor offered to allow Herodias to keep her property, seeing as she was Agrippa’s sister; but she chose to follow her husband into exile.

Perhaps theirs was a dysfunctional marriage; but it seems that in the end she loved him after all.

Know Your Herods 1: Herod the Great, King of the Jews

For much of the period leading up to, and well into the First Century AD, the politics and the fortunes of Judea were dominated by a single family, the House of Herod.  The various rulers who bore that name get only occasional mention in the New Testament, and none of it terribly flattering.  This hardly does them justice; the story of House of Herod is as full of intrigue, sex, and bloodshed, albeit on a somewhat smaller scale, as their contemporaries, the Caesars.

The founder of the dynasty, and the most famous of the family, was called Herod the Great, and deservedly so.  He is probably best-known as the villain in the story of the Wise Men in the Book of Matthew, but there was far more to him than that.

Herod was not Jewish by birth.  His father, Antipater, was from Idumea, called Edom in the Jewish Scriptures, and regarded as the home of the descendants of Esau.  Idumea had been annexed by John Hyrcanus, king of Judea, in 125 BC, and its inhabitants forced to convert to Judaism.  Despite this, because of his Idumean blood, Herod was never considered to be a Real Jew.

For many years, Judea had been ruled by the Hasmonean dynasty, a priestly family which had come to power during the Maccabean Revolt in 164 BC and established an independent Jewish kingdom. This kingdom lasted for about a hundred years, until a civil war broke out.  The ruling King and High Priest, Hyrcanus II, was forced to resign his positions by his brothers, and the feuding sides asked the Roman general, Pompey, (who happened to be in the neighborhood putting down an uprising in Syrai), to arbitrate between them.

Pompey decided the issue by annexing Judea for Rome.  Because that’s how Pompey rolled.  He reinstated Hyrcanus as High Priest, but not as king; although later on Pompey granted him the position of ethnarch, which is Latin for, “Guy In Charge, But Not A King, So Don’t Get Funny Ideas.”  It would be another couple millennia before the Jews again had an independent state.

Antipater was a high-ranking official in Hyrcanus’ court and acted as the representative of Rome.  He was best buds with Julius Caesar, having once aided Caesar during his conflict with Pompey.  Antipater wrangled cushy administrative positions for both his sons; the elder, Phasael, became Governor of Jerusalem; (you can forget his name because I don’t mention him again), and the younger, Herod, was made Governor of Galilee.

Herod got along well with the Romans; less so with his subjects, who pressured Hyrcanus to put Herod on trial before the Sanhedrin for violating Jewish Law in executing an outlaw and his followers.  Herod won acquittal through a combination of sheer chutzpah and the pull of his influential Roman friends.

Herod married a woman named Mariamne, the granddaughter of Hyrcanus.  He was already married at this time, to a woman named Doris, but this second marriage made him a member of the Royal Family and heir presumptive to Hyrcanus’ throne.  It would not be his last marriage.

Also during this period, Julius Caesar was assassinated, and the rulers of Judea found themselves embroiled in upheaval in Rome.  Cassius, who as you’ll remember from Shakespeare, helped organize the plot to assassinate Caesar, seized the province of Syria, and appointed Herod to collect taxes for him.  Herod was very good at this sort of thing.  Then, when Cassius was defeated by Marc Anthony, Herod switched his loyalty to Anthony.  This is another thing Herod was good at.

The neighboring Parthians invaded Judea and installed a nephew of Hyrcanus named Antigonus on the throne.  Herod and his family and perhaps as many as 5,000 fighting men fled the city of Jerusalem.  Installing his family in the safety of the mountain fortress of Masada, Herod traveled to Rome to plead to the Roman Senate for help.  The Senate appointed him basileus, (“king’) over Judea and gave him aid to help re-take Jerusalem.

He built a palace for himself in Jerusalem which he named the Antonia, after his patron, Marc Anthony.  But when civil war broke out between the members of the Roman Triumvirate, and Octavius, later known as Caesar Augustus, defeated Anthony, Herod switched sides again.  He went directly to Octavius, admitted he had supported Anthony, and promised to serve Octavius as faithfully as had his previous patron.  Octavius was impressed by his audacity, and probably recognized him as an effective administrator in an unstable province, and so retained Herod in his position as king of Judea.

Herod undertook many building projects during his reign.  It has been said that Caesar Augustus found Rome a city of wood, and left it a city of marble; well, Herod did much the same to Palestine.  In addition to the Antonia fortress in Jerusalem, and the fortress at Masasa, he built a city and harbor on the coast which he named Caesarea, after Caesar Augustus, which became the administrative capital of the province.

One of his projects came about as a result of his nighttime flight from Jerusalem during the Parthian invasion.  His mother was almost killed when her wagon overturned in the flight.  Herod almost succumbed to despair, but when he saw that she was safe, he returned to the fight with a renewed vigor and won the battle.  Afterwards, he vowed that he would be buried at the site.  Since the site was a place of no importance in the middle of the desert, he made it important by first building a mountain, by cutting off the top of a nearby hill and piling it up on the site, and then building a new fortress palace, which he named the Herodium, in the “crater” of this man-made volcano.  Since he intended to be buried there, it was appropriate to name this one after himself.

His most famous building project, however, was his renovation and expansion of the Temple in Jerusalem.  This temple had been built by Zerubbabel following the return of the Jews from the Babylonian Captivity in the time of Ezra, on the site of the Temple of Solomon, which had been destroyed by the Babylonians.  This was a massive undertaking, because it involved building up the sides of the mountain to create a wide platform for the Temple complex.

In accordance with Jewish Law, the workers building the Temple were selected from the priestly tribe of Levi, and the construction process was organized so that daily sacrifices could proceed uninterrupted.

Herod did not live to see the completion of the whole project, although it’s possible that the Temple proper was finished sooner.  Work on the Temple complex was still going on at the time of Jesus, some 46 years later; and the final Temple was only in existence for a short time before the Romans destroyed it during the Jewish Rebellion of AD 70.  Today, only the Western Wall of the Temple remains standing.

You’d think that fixing up the Temple and all, he’d be a pretty popular guy, right?  No.  He paid for all his building projects with some heavy taxes; (he was good at levying taxes, remember?).  Those taxes didn’t just go to civic improvements, but also to a lavish lifestyle more suited to a Roman despot than to a sober priest-king like Hyrcanus.

He ruthlessly suppressed dissent, and kept a personal bodyguard of 2,000 soldiers.  Although the Temple in Jerusalem was his crowning achievement as King of Judea, he also built other temples to other religions in non-Jewish parts of his province, like in Samaria and in his city of Caesarea. In honor of his Roman patrons, he had a golden eagle erected over the gate to the Temple, something many Jews considered an outrageous blasphemy, and commanded that the priest perform special prayers and sacrifices in honor of the Roman Emperor, something which skirted awfully close to the heathen practice of emperor-worship.  And underneath it all, many would never really accept Herod because he was an Idumean and not a Real Jew.

He ruled Judea with an iron hand, and largely kept the Romans out of Jewish affairs as long as he reigned; but the order he maintained came at a great personal cost. He had to deal with constant plots and intrigues by his family, many of which were initiated by his sister, Salome.

Herod deeply loved his second wife, Miriamne; but has a funny way of showing it.  On a couple occasions where it looked like he might be executed, he left orders that if he died, Miriamne was to be killed as well, so that she would not become the property of another man.  When Miriamne found out about this, she did not take it well.  Did she really plot to poison her husband?  Herod’s sister planted rumors that she did, and Herod had her imprisoned based on these suspicions.  Eventually, under Salome’s persuasion, he ordered Miriamne’s execution.  He spent the rest of his life regretting his action and mourning her death.

Over his career he had a total of ten wives and several sons, most of which were either picked to succeed him at one point or other, or was plotting to do so.  He executed some of his sons for trying to kill him.  A couple of them actually were.  His buddy Augustus once joked that he would rather be Herod’s pig than Herod’s son.  Since Herod didn’t eat pork, the pig would be relatively safe.

Towards the end of his life, Herod developed an agonizing, lingering illness which ultimately killed him.  Modern medical scholars have speculated that it was severe diabetes, or perhaps chronic kidney disease complicated with a side order of Fournier’s gangrene.  Which is like regular gangrene, except not nearly as much fun.

It is at this point that Herod enters the Biblical narrative with the story of the Three Wise Men.

You know the story.  Matthew chapter 2 tells of how Magi from the East, sages who studied the stars, show up at Herod’s palace in Jerusalem asking where is he who was born King of the Jews.  Imagine how that must have sounded to a dying, paranoid old man who had spent the better part of the past few decades fighting off claimants to his throne.  Perhaps Herod thought this was another plot against him.  He certainly would have suspected that even if the Magi were genuine, that someone would seize on this baby they were looking for as an excuse to overthrow him; if not one of his ambitious sons, then maybe some rabble-rousing Pharisee or politicking Sadducee.

But Herod plays it cool.  He co-operates with the Magi and pretends to be interested in paying homage himself to this Newborn King.  He sends them to Bethlehem, where the Chief Priests assure him that the Messiah is supposed to be born, and waits for their report.

He has to wait a long time.  The Wise Men aren’t stupid.  Ominous dreams warn them that Herod is not to be trusted; and perhaps they got a creepy vibe off him from the very beginning.  Once they’ve found their baby, they return home by another route, bypassing Jerusalem and Herod.

What is Herod to do now?  Somewhere out there is a potential threat to him wrapped in swaddling clothes.  Well, he didn’t get to be Herod the Great by letting a bunch of babies walk all over him.  He orders the death of every male child in Bethlehem, two years of age or younger.  

Or did he?  The Gospel of Matthew is our only source for this story.  The Jewish historian Josephus, who writes about many of Herod’s other crimes, never mentions it.  On the other hand, given some of Herod’s other bloody acts, Matthew’s account isn’t really out of character for him; it’s the kind of thing Herod would have done under the circumstances.

Although Medieval interpreters liked to magnify the Massacre of the Innocents into a near-genocidal action, Bethlehem was not a terribly large town; and even if we add the surrounding countryside, the infants killed by the edict would have numbered maybe about a half dozen or so, maybe twenty tops.  Perhaps the death of a few babies in a small backwater town escaped Joesphus’ notice; or perhaps he felt it an insignificant crime compared with some of Herod’s flashier executions and assassinations.

Herod didn’t live to learn if his messiah-exterminating campaign was successful.  He died a couple years later in the year 4 BC.

Before his death, he ordered that prominent people from every city and every tribe of Judea be rounded up and held in the hippodrome he had built in Jericho.  At the moment of his death, the prisoners were to all be executed.  That way, Herod reasoned, his death would be an occasion for grief and mourning.  He didn’t want anybody dancing at his funeral. At the last moment, however, his sister Salome rescinded his order; perhaps the only decent thing she did in her life.

He was interred in the Herodium; and although archaeologists have found what they believe to be his crypt in the ruins, his body was not in it.  It is suspected that during the Jewish Revolt, when many rebels took refuge in the Herodium, as they did at Masada, some of them vented their anti-Roman feelings by despoiling Herod’s tomb.

Herod left four surviving sons, each of which had been named by him as a successor at one time or other.  Rather than making any single one of them king, the Romans divided Judea up among them.

Even though Herod was never a popular king with his Jewish subjects, there was a sizable faction which recalled his reign as a period of stability and of relative autonomy.  He was called Herod the Great with good reason, and the Herodians of Jesus’ time argued that Israel’s best hope for a political future was one united under a king from the house of Herod.