Antipas—The Herod Jesus Knew

042

Herod the Great gets all the press. His son Herod Antipas is known mostly, as the preceding article explains, as the Herod for whom Salome danced and who ordered John the Baptist to be beheaded.

Many people mistakenly think it was Herod the Great for whom Salome danced. This is understandable because the Gospels refer to Herod Antipas simply as “Herod,” or occasionally as “Herod the tetrarch” or even as “King Herod” (Mark 6:14), but never by his common name Antipas (see How Many?).

Herod Antipas ruled Galilee for most of Jesus’ life. His father, Herod the Great, reigned from 37 to 4 B.C. Jesus was apparently born in about 6 B.C. If so, from the time Jesus was 2 years old until his crucifixion in about 30 A.D., Herod Antipas governed Galilee (and Perea, where John the Baptist came from). Antipas served as tetrarch (appointed by the emperor Augustus to rule over one quarter of his father’s kingdom) from 4 B.C. until 39 A.D., almost exactly the time of Jesus.

043

According to the three synoptic Gospels, Herod Antipas’s relationship to Jesus is somewhat vague and indecisive.

In Matthew and Mark, Herod Antipas is ambivalent with regard to Jesus. Both gospels quote Herod Antipas as saying, after he has had John the Baptist executed, that Jesus is actually John resurrected (Matthew 14:1–2; Mark 6:14–16). Both gospels state that Antipas was actually saddened by Salome’s request to have John beheaded (Matthew 14:9; Mark 6:26), and they seem to blame Salome and her mother, Herodias, for John’s execution. Bound by his own oath, Antipas is nevertheless forced to fulfill his promise to Salome.

At the same time, however, we get the feeling in Matthew and Mark that Antipas is a shadow of death over Jesus. When Jesus hears that John has been killed, “he withdrew from there in a boat to a lonely place,” apparently fearful of Antipas (Matthew 14:13). In Mark 3:6, the Herodians counsel about how to kill Jesus, just as Jesus in Mark 8:15 warns against “the leaven of Herod.”

Luke’s account differs from Matthew’s and Mark’s by concentrating mostly on the trial of Jesus, for which Luke skillfully prepares his reader by references to Antipas along the way that build up an intense question in the reader’s mind: Is Antipas interested in Jesus or is he trying to kill him? (See Luke 3:19–20, 9:7–10, 13:31–33.)

When Antipas finally gets to meet Jesus in Luke 23:7–12, an almost-absurd scene ensues. At first Antipas is “exceedingly glad” to see him; he had wanted that for a long time and had hoped to see Jesus perform a sign. Then, under the impression that Jesus has remained silent, he treats him with contempt and mocks him. Finally, he sends Jesus in a bright shining robe to Pilate. Pilate understands this as an acquittal of Jesus.

It may come as no surprise that scholars have disagreed on how to understand Antipas’s relation 044 to Jesus. Some suggest Antipas was really one of Jesus’ enemies; others that Antipas was simply perplexed. My own view is that the latter is the better argument: Herod Antipas was a perplexed and indecisive ruler.

He simply could not match his father either as a tyrant or as a builder. On the other hand, it is significant that we get no reports in the Gospels or otherwise of any riots caused by bad government or religious oppression during Antipas’s rule in Galilee.

It is also significant that, archaeologically speaking, we have no evidence of Roman temples, gymnasia or hippodromes built during Antipas’s reign. This changed dramatically after the Roman destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D., but the situation was quite different in the earlier period. Although theaters have been discovered at Sepphoris and Tiberias that may have been built by Antipas, they were built on a smaller scale compared to what can be seen today.¹ Similarly, it is possible that the stadium in Tiberias mentioned by Josephus and discovered in a recent Israel Antiquities Authority salvage excavation directed by Moshe Hartal goes back to Antipas, but the main part of what can be seen today postdates Antipas. This is not to say that Sepphoris and Tiberias were not important cities in Antipas’s time or that Antipas did not sponsor a certain amount of building activity, but compared to their later phases, these cities were in their “urban infancy” during Antipas’s time.

What about rural Galilee?

Recent excavations of rural villages and towns such as Yodfat, Cana, Capernaum and Gamla reveal a first-century period with an increase in the settled area right up until the outbreak of the Jewish Revolt in 66 A.D. Yodfat is especially interesting; its destruction by the Romans during the war effectively sealed off its first-century layers. 045 Excavator Mordechai Aviam dug, so to speak, right into the first century and found evidence of olive-oil production, pottery manufacturing and textile production, while the town expanded on the southern slope throughout the first century. Most interesting is the discovery of an upper-class area with an elite house featuring frescoed walls quite similar to those found at Herod the Great’s magnificent northern palace at Masada.²

Moreover, a number of surface surveys all testify to a rise in the number of settlements in Galilee in the first century. Most important is the recent survey by Israeli archaeologist Uzi Leibner, who describes how rural settlements increased dramatically in this period, even at places that were difficult to protect and of “no strategic value.”³

Taken together, the picture we get is of a thriving economic situation in the rural areas of Galilee that does not match earlier proposals of a devastating urban elite’s exploitation of a uniformly poor peasant population.

This is not to deny that poverty was a persistent fact of life in this period—to a degree more than enough for a social prophet like Jesus to arise. But Herod Antipas did not add to this in any noteworthy way.

Herod Antipas’s coinage is telling for the impact (or lack of it) that he had on Galilee. In his 43 years as a ruler, he issued only five series of coins. And the first was not issued until his 24th regnal year. Moreover, all of them were small in number. In a recent 046 study of 186 sites and collections of coins found in Galilee and the Golan, less than 3 percent were from issues of Herod Antipas.⁴ Here, too, we must judge Herod Antipas as a relatively passive leader.

Although they were few in number, Herod Antipas’s coins are significant from another aspect: They reflect his respect for his subjects’ religious sensitivities. He strictly observed the ban against images, limiting himself to floral motifs. This is in marked contrast to his brother Philip, another tetrarch and son of Herod the Great. Philip’s coins featured his own portrait, as well as those of emperors Augustus and Tiberius.

In his personal life, Herod Antipas was different. His palace in Tiberias (which he had founded as his capital city) was graced with figures of living creatures⁵; and at Delos he was honored for his benefactions to a temple of Apollo.⁶ Antipas’s adherence to the ban against images was grounded not in personal preferences but in concern for his Jewish subjects.

All in all, Herod Antipas’s impact on socioeconomic conditions in Galilee was both minor and moderate. He was not a remaker of Galilee but rather a modest developer. His reign was one of the longest in this entire period; yet there is little about his reign in the written sources. Josephus is a good example; the references to Herod Antipas are relatively few—perhaps because there is not much to say.

But one thing came to be remembered about Herod Antipas—his birthday party with dance, music and wine, and Salome’s request for the head of John the Baptist brought to her on a platter.

Herod the Great gets all the press. His son Herod Antipas is known mostly, as the preceding article explains, as the Herod for whom Salome danced and who ordered John the Baptist to be beheaded. Many people mistakenly think it was Herod the Great for whom Salome danced. This is understandable because the Gospels refer to Herod Antipas simply as “Herod,” or occasionally as “Herod the tetrarch” or even as “King Herod” (Mark 6:14), but never by his common name Antipas (see How Many?). Herod Antipas ruled Galilee for most of Jesus’ life. His father, Herod the Great, reigned […]