© 2006 Jan Herca (license Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0)
¶ His relationship with his father Herod
Herod Antipas was the son of Herod I and a Samaritan woman named Maltace, one of the many women that Herod I had. From a young age he had to live in an environment fraught with hostility between his father and his half-brothers, who often clashed with his father because of their mistrust, some of it well-founded. Both Antipas and his direct brother Archelaus seem to have stayed away from these domestic disputes, perhaps because they considered their half-brothers, being older than them, to have a greater right to their father’s succession.
¶ The Tumultuous Year 4 BC
The father, Herod I, died in March of 4 BC, shortly after a lunar eclipse that occurred on March 13. All the people, already aware of the monarch’s serious condition due to illness, anxiously awaited the news.
Herod was turning the end of his reign into an ordeal for the people. Unable to solve his domestic problems, he finally executed three of his sons: Alexander and Aristobulus in 7 BC, sons by his second wife, Mariamme, and Antipater in 4 BC, five days before his death, the only son by his first wife, Doris. This further paved the way for his remaining surviving sons to have a better chance of succession. Herod had already announced in a second will his intention to leave the throne to his son Antipas, but to his disappointment and to the surprise of his brother Archelaus, their father had made a third will, changing his will just days before his death, and bequeathing his kingdom to Archelaus.
He named Archelaus, the eldest son, king of his entire kingdom. But he also gave the title of tetrarch of Galilee and Perea to Antipas, and the title of tetrarch of the lands east and northeast of Galilee to Herod Philip, a half-brother of Antipas and Archelaus, the fruit of his father’s union with Cleopatra of Jerusalem, another woman.
Because Herod had died shortly before Passover in 4 BC, the crowds gathered for the feast, upon hearing the news, caused numerous riots and uproars. They demanded justice for two Pharisees whom Herod I had executed at the instigation of some of his advisors.
Archelaus sent a detachment of soldiers to the temple, but far from ending the demonstrations, many of his soldiers were killed and forced to retreat. In view of this situation, he gathered all his troops and, causing a terrible slaughter, put an end to the insurgents.
Archelaus, seeking swift confirmation in his position by Emperor Augustus, left his older brother Philip as administrator of the kingdom and traveled to Rome. Antipas also followed suit, traveling to Rome to claim the throne, in view of his brother’s poor management skills. Furthermore, many members of the Herodian family lived in Rome. Upon hearing the news of Herod’s succession, they opposed the appointment of Archelaus and petitioned the emperor to accept the kingdom under his direct rule.
For several days, Antipas and Archelaus conspired with each other in Rome to tip the balance against Augustus’s decision. The emperor convened a council in his palace to hear the justifications from each side. Antipas was defended by a certain Antipater, probably a close friend of the tetrarch, and Archelaus was defended by Nicholas of Damascus, a wise man of great erudition who had previously worked for his father. Each tried to win over the emperor, both by extolling his virtues and by highlighting the opponent’s defects. Finally, Augustus decided on Archelaus, although he did not make the decision immediately, and the council was initially dissolved without a verdict.
However, a few days later he leaned in favor of Archelaus, considering him more worthy to occupy the throne.
While Augustus was making his decision, a real rebellion was breaking out in Judea. After Herod’s death, and while Archelaus was on his way to Rome, a new revolt broke out. On this occasion, the governor of Syria, Varus, decided to go with his troops to Jerusalem to restore order. Once the revolt was suppressed, he left a detachment and returned to Antioch.
While Augustus was deciding who should succeed him, he sent Sabinus to Jerusalem as a temporary procurator. But this man oppressed the people so much and behaved so arbitrarily that no sooner had Varus left him with his troops than another rebellion broke out. It was the Feast of Weeks (Pentecost) in the year 4 BC, and there was a great crowd of pilgrims in Jerusalem. The people divided into several groups and attacked the Romans from several fronts: to the north of the temple, to the south near the hippodrome, and to the west of the city, near the royal palace. The fiercest battle took place around the temple. The Roman soldiers managed to push the Jews back to the temple atriums, but there they waged a fierce battle, climbing onto the roofs of nearby buildings and throwing stones at the infantry, who were forced to resort to fire. They set fire to several buildings and thus, finally, conquered the hill on which the temple stood. The sanctuary’s treasury fell into their hands as booty, and Sabinus himself seized 400 talents, a fortune.
But the Jews returned to the attack. They managed to enlist some soldiers from the Herodian guard to their cause, relaunching their attack and this time managing to embarrass Sabinus and his detachment, eventually surrounding them in the royal palace.
Meanwhile, in the vicinity of Sepphoris in Galilee, one Judas, son of Hezekiah, whom Herod had previously humiliated, organized a group around himself, seized the royal arsenal, distributed the weapons among his followers, and made Galilee a veritable battlefield, even aspiring to the kingship.
While these disturbances were going on, we must assume, as UB 123:0.6 tells us, that Jesus was still in Alexandria, Egypt. These events in Galilee took place around May and June of 4 BC, while we are told that Joseph, Mary, and the child returned to Nazareth in October of that year. It is evident that Joseph, in good prudence, did not return to Nazareth until everything had calmed down.
In Perea, a former slave of Herod I, named Simon, led a band and also had himself proclaimed king, but was soon defeated by the Romans and executed.
Finally, Josephus tells us about a shepherd named Atronges, who also assumed the royal crown and, along with his four brothers, embarked on a series of raids across the country.
As we can see, these were a truly turbulent couple of months, where the absence of a clear king fostered delusions of grandeur among many, especially among the common people, who were eager to be free of the hated Herodian monarchy.
Given the situation, Governor Varus returned from Antioch in haste with his two remaining legions to try to restore order. On his way, he was joined by Nabataean troops sent by his friendly king Aretas and other vassal kings from neighboring kingdoms who held the Jews in low regard and wished to curry favor with Rome. The
city of Sepphoris, where Judas the rebel had established his headquarters, was burned and completely destroyed, and its inhabitants, considered traitors, were all sold into slavery. From there, Varus continued toward Samaria, which he pardoned for not having taken part in the revolt. From there, he continued on to Jerusalem, where the legion stationed and commanded by Sabinus was cornered in the royal palace.
Varus did not have to suppress any resistance. As soon as the Jews saw the two legions approaching with all their machinery and troops, their spirits sank, and they fled in fear. Varus soon took control of the situation in Jerusalem. Once the city was reassured, Sabinus, as soon as he had the opportunity, said goodbye to Varus, safely secured his stolen fortune, and marched toward Rome.
Varus, not wanting to leave any loose ends this time, carried out a thorough inspection of the entire countryside and of those towns where he suspected some rebels might still be sheltered. As a warning to the people, he had two thousand Jews crucified, but pardoned the rest, eager to end the situation without further reprisals. Afterward, he returned to Antioch.
Aside from these terrible events in Judea, the contenders for the throne continued to argue in Rome, awaiting the imperial decision. During this time, a Jewish embassy even appeared before Augustus, requesting that he not ultimately grant authority to any of the Herodians, but rather that a Roman take charge of the region who would allow them, of course, to continue living under his laws. To make matters worse, the last of the brothers in the testament, Philip, arrived in Rome at that time to also assert his rights.
It is curious but remarkable to perceive that these facts fit very well with the parable of the talents that Jesus would later tell, as if his parable were inspired by these historical events: “A certain nobleman (Archelaus) went to a far country (Rome) to receive a kingdom (Judea) and then returned, and his subjects hated him and sent an embassy after him, saying, ‘We do not want this man to reign over us’” (Lk 19:12-27 and Mt 25:14-30). The Urantia Book goes into this subject in depth with very clarifying explanations (UB 171:8, “The Parable of the Pounds”).
Augustus, after listening to all parties and after much consideration, gathered them in the Temple of Apollo and finally made his decision, which basically confirmed the late Herod’s will. Archelaus would reign over Judea, Samaria, and Idumea, but the cities of Gaza, Gadara, and Hippos would be transferred to the Syrian jurisdiction, and Archelaus would not hold the title of king but rather the lesser title of ethnarch. Antipas would receive Galilee and Perea (a territory divided in two by the Decapolis wedge) with the title of tetrarch, and Philip would receive Batanea, Trachonitis, and Auranites. As obligations, Augustus imposed an annual income of 600 talents for Archelaus, 200 for Antipas, and 100 for Philip. Herod the Great’s sister Salome, who was also named in the will, received her rightful share, including the cities of Jamnia, Azotus, and Phaselis, plus 500,000 pieces of silver and the palace at Ascalon.
¶ The Reign of Antipas
Upon his return, while his brother Archelaus was off on his own, Antipas shrewdly took care not to cause too much unrest among his Jewish subjects. He set about rebuilding Sepphoris, which had been burned to the ground by Varus’s soldiers, and surrounded it with strong walls. This explains why The Urantia Book lists Joseph and Jesus as workers at Sepphoris. Joseph died in a work accident at Sepphoris while working on the construction of Antipas’s residence on Tuesday, September 25, 8 AD, when Jesus was 14 years old (UB 126:2). The claim for the money owed to his father at the time of his death led Jesus to experience Herod’s usury firsthand (UB 126:5.7) in 9 AD, which caused him to leave when he worked for a while at Sepphoris when his crew was ready to work on a public building (UB 128:2.6) in 16 AD.
To defend Perea, Antipas fortified Betaranta, a city where a palace belonging to Herod I had been destroyed during the revolt of 4 BC. He named it Livias in honor of the emperor’s wife, and later Julias when Augustus’s wife was admitted to the Julian family. Also, to curry favor with the Nabataeans, with whom he bordered, he agreed to marry the daughter of King Aretas. He was possibly dissuaded from this marriage by Augustus himself. But this union was not one of love, and this later caused problems for Antipas.
To fully deploy his architectural ambition, in the style of his father, Antipas designed a splendid new capital for his kingdom, Tiberias, or Tiberiades, named in honor of the new emperor Tiberius. He selected an enviable location on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee, next to the beaches of Amathus (Hammat). But the choice of location did not meet with the approval of the Jews. Apparently, during the clearing of rubble, several funerary monuments had been discovered. It was an ancient cemetery. This posed a problem for the Jews, since contact with places of the dead made them unclean for ritual celebrations.
But Herod was not willing to choose another location. He loved the chosen one, so he worked hard to bring in all kinds of foreigners and opportunists. In the end, perhaps, the less observant Jews began to give in, for over time it became a typical Jewish town. He squandered all his earnings on the construction of the city. He built a stadium, a royal palace (the latter apparently offensive to Jews because of its animal images, according to Josephus), and a very large proseuché, or Jewish synagogue. As for administrative buildings, these followed Hellenistic customs, with a 600-member boule, an archon and a council of décha protoi, as well as a hipparch and an agoranomos. The city was founded around 17-20 AD, and was under construction for the rest of Jesus’ life.
During Pilate’s prefecture (26-36 AD), Herod cunningly played the friendship-enmity game with Pontius. It was probably sometime between 27 and 29 AD that Pilate marched his troops into Jerusalem, bearing the insignia of the army, provoking a conflict with the Jerusalem authorities that ended with Pontius’s humiliating defeat at the stadium in Caesarea. Antipas likely sent ambassadors to discuss this matter with Pontius. After this incident, Pontius had the imperial coat of arms placed on Herod’s palace in Jerusalem, causing Jewish unrest. When the conflict escalated, Antipas and his half-brother Philip scored a point with the people by leading a procession to the emperor, along with two other half-brothers, to protest Pilate’s action (as Philo recounts). When Tiberius, outraged with Pilate, finally ordered the shields to be removed and taken to Caesarea Maritima, the event was seen as a triumph for the Jews and the tetrarchs. This may explain the initial enmity between Pilate and Antipas (Lk 23:12). Schürer holds a different opinion, suggesting that this event could not have occurred before 31 AD, that is, after Jesus had already died.
Although Antipas did not believe in the Jewish religion, he was very superstitious and, following his father’s example, tried not to anger his subjects too much. In this sense, he tried to behave outwardly as a pious Jew, going to Jerusalem during the Passover festivals (Lk 23:7), where he stayed in his father’s old royal palace, which the Romans did not usually occupy. These last conclusions are an assumption The Urantia Book (UB 185:4), because there is no historical data to confirm his usual residence in the city.
Before making a visit to Rome (the embassy to protest to Tiberius? or something else?), it is not clear when, he visited his half-brother Herod, son of Mariamme, the famous wife of Herod, daughter of a high priest, and who was the eventual successor of Herod I in his first testament. At his mansion, he met Herodias, daughter of Aristobulus, the rebellious son who had been executed by Herod I in 7 BC, and was captivated by her beauty. Her half-brother and Herodias must have been married for quite some time, as they already had a young daughter, Salome (probably born around 10 AD).
Herodias was an ambitious woman whose dreams of greatness had been dashed when Herod changed his will to the detriment of her husband. Therefore, when she discovered that Antipas had fallen madly in love with her, she did not hesitate to accept his plans for marriage upon his return from Rome.
While Antipas was on this journey, his wife, a Nabataean, had learned of all the tetrarch’s schemes. On her return, under the pretext of paying a visit to Machaerus, she asked to be allowed to go to the fortress. Antipas agreed. But as soon as she arrived there, she escaped to Petra, to her father’s house, to whom she informed of her husband’s devious schemes. From that time on, the Nabataean king Aretas was displeased with Antipas, waiting for an opportunity to avenge the affront to his daughter.
Two events that mark his reign and the history that interests us are Antipas’s relationship with John the Baptist and with Jesus. John began his preaching in 25 AD (according to The Urantia Book, UB 135:6.1). In the summer of 26 AD, because of the Baptist’s increasingly bitter criticism of Antipas, especially for his sinful marriage to Herodias, he is arrested and imprisoned at Machaerus (as we are told only by Josephus and not by the Evangelists). On Antipas’s birthday, January 10, 28 AD, John is executed by the tetrarch. Apparently, in the midst of the revelry and intoxicated by wine, the ruler is so pleased by a dance performed by his stepdaughter Salome (daughter of Herodias and her former husband Herod) that he grants her one wish, any one she wishes. Herodias uses this opportunity to manipulate her daughter into calling for the prophet’s beheading.
Antipas greatly regretted his concession but did not have the strength to back down and regretted his decision for the rest of the following years, so much so that when Jesus entered the scene in all his splendor after John’s death, Antipas, very superstitious, came to believe that he might be a reincarnation of the Baptist (Mt 14:1; Mk 6:14; Lk 9:7-9). Antipas tries to meet Jesus (Lk 9:9), but it seems that his intention was rather to arrest him (Lk 13:31). Finally, when Jesus was arrested in Jerusalem during Passover, Antipas, who was also there as usual, managed to meet him. Pilate, out of courtesy, sent him to him for trial, but Antipas did not want to be the executioner of yet another good-natured prophet, and after ridiculing Jesus, he returned him to Pilate. From that day on, Antipas and Pilate seem to have become friends and forgotten the incident with the shields and their rivalry for Tiberius’s favor.
¶ The end of his reign
We know from Josephus of other events that took place just before the death of the Emperor Tiberius on March 16, 37 AD. The chronology of these events, however, is unclear, and what is offered here is a possibility based on the available documentation.
Around 35 or 36 AD, the Parthian king, Artabanus, held repeated negotiations with the Romans. Rome’s representative was Vitellius, governor of Syria. Antipas seems to have also been present at these negotiations. Things seemed to be going well when Vitellius’ threats and the abandonment of Artabanus’s subjects forced him to flee to more remote provinces. Vitellius, taking advantage of this opportunity, in the summer of 36 AD, traveled to the Euphrates with Tiridates, a Roman pretender to the Parthian throne, and installed Tiridates as his sovereign.
It seems that during this summer of 36 AD, probably taking advantage of the fact that Antipas was on the Euphrates supporting Vitellius’ negotiations, King Aretas attacked Perea, supposedly due to a territorial dispute over a border area called Gabbalitis. The reality is that the Nabataean king was waiting for an opportunity to atone for Antipas’s outrage against his daughter.
Antipas must have received the declaration of war on the Euphrates, and he didn’t hesitate to send orders to repel the attack, but suffered a complete defeat. King Aretas, satisfied, took possession of the small area of conflict and retreated again. His honor had been satisfied. Antipas, upon receiving news of the defeat, begged Vitellius to help him by sending his troops against Aretas, but Vitellius’ mission was different, and he told Antipas that he would have to ask the emperor for permission to remove him from his current mission. Antipas sent messengers to Rome to report Aretas’s actions. While the message traveled to Rome, at the end of 36 AD Artabanus returned to his region, put Tiridates to flight, and regained power. Vitellius and Antipas set out again, setting up their tent on the Euphrates, and this time holding fruitful negotiations with Artabanus that culminate in success: a mutual non-aggression pact, with the Parthian king leaving his son Darius as collateral in the form of a hostage for the Romans.
Antipas, wanting to curry favor with the emperor so he would grant him revenge against Aretas, got ahead of Vitellius and communicated via messenger the success of the treaty with Artabanus. Vitellius, perceiving the tetrarch’s schemes, became angry with Antipas. Meanwhile, the emperor’s message was not long in coming: Aretas’s affront must be avenged. Tiberius’s orders were for Vitellius to send his troops against the Nabatean king, capturing him dead or alive. Vitellius reluctantly undertook the action, for he was at odds with Antipas. But since he could not disobey the emperor, he prepared to fight Aretas. After ordering his army to march against Petra, he requested a long detour around Judea to avoid inciting the Jews with military standards. Antipas, traveling with Vitellius and the legions, was surely impatiently urging the governor to hurry. But Vitellius, disgusted with Antipas, and to further unnerve him, behaving like a devout Jew, paused for several days to personally attend the Passover of 37 AD in Jerusalem, leaving his troops on the other side of the Jordan. While there, news of Tiberius’s death arrived from Rome. Vitellius then felt freed from carrying out imperial orders and returned with his army to Antioch to resume his negotiations with Artabanus. Antipas’s defeat, therefore, to the tetrarch’s disappointment and humiliation, remained unavenged.
The new emperor’s first gesture further humiliated Antipas. Caligula granted Agrippa, a brother of Herodias whom the tetrarch had apparently ignored, the royal title of Philip and his tetrarchy. Agrippa, who had been a nobody all his life, ignored by his brother-in-law Antipas, ended up in Rome and was fortunate enough to befriend Caligula. At first, Agrippa did not seem to take the idea of being a king very seriously, but around 38 AD he went to Palestine and presented himself as king there.
Herodias, instigating Antipas’s ambition, urged her husband not to lose credibility in the eyes of the new emperor, and the couple set out for Rome to solicit Caligula’s support and obtain the royal title at the expense of their relative. Following them, a freedman of Agrippa named Fortunatus also left for Rome with a list of charges against Antipas, accusing him of collusion with Sejanus (d. 31 AD) and Artabanus, and providing evidence of an arsenal of weapons that Antipas was keeping. The objections convinced the new emperor, who deposed Antipas from his tetrarchy in early summer 39 AD, granting Agrippa the title of king and all honors. According to Josephus, Antipas was exiled by Caligula to Lugdunum Convenarum, on the border between Gaul and Hispania, a city located on the northern slopes of the Pyrenees, in the territory of the Conventi. And there he died, because shortly afterward Caligula condemned him to death. The execution of exiles was common. This was the fruit of a man who aspired to a kingdom. An end that seems to tie in nicely with Jesus’ question: “What good is it for a man to rule the whole world if he is not able to rule himself?”
¶ References
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Emil Schürer, Historia del pueblo judío en tiempos de Jesús (History of the Jewish People at the Time of Jesus), Ediciones Cristiandad, 1985.
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Flavius Josephus, Obras completas, Antigüedades judías y Guerras de los Judíos (Complete Works, Jewish Antiquities and Wars of the Jews), Editorial Acervo Cultural, 1961.