Herod Antipas, Tetrarch of Galilee and Peraea

By Frederick Fyvie Bruce

Chapter 1

Herod the Great, proclaimed king of the Jews by the Roman senate in 40 B.C., on the nomination of Antony and Octavian, entered effectively into his kingship three years later, after he had with Roman military help ousted Antigonus, the last Hasmonaean ruler of the Jews, who had reigned as priest-king during those three years with the support of the Parthian invaders of Syria and Judaea. For the next thirty-four years Herod governed his kingdom with a firm hand, maintaining throughout unfaltering loyalty to Rome, no matter who might be the representative of Roman power in the Near East from time to time. Until the battle of Actium (31 B.C.) he enjoyed friendly relations with Antony, which even Cleopatra’s covetous designs on Judaea could not altogether cloud. After Actium, Octavian (henceforth known as the Emperor Augustus) recognized that Herod could be as loyal and useful to him as he had been to Antony, and confirmed him in his kingship: The Herodian dynasty, indeed, provided a notable justification of the Roman policy of governing certain national groups indirectly through native princes rather than directly through provincial governors. The native prince attracted most of the odium which would otherwise have been directed against Rome, and the Roman Empire enjoyed the benefits of the arrangement.

In order to establish some colourable title to his kingship over the Jews, Herod at the beginning of his reign married the Hasmonaean princess Mariamme: This match did nothing to improve Herod’s public image in Judaea, but it did mean that his children by Mariamme, having Hasmonaean blood in their veins, enjoyed the good will of the Jews as their father did not. Two of these children who bore the good Hasmonaean names Aristobulus and Alexander, were at an early age nominated by Herod as his heirs. Their mother was executed by her insanely jealous husband when they were young boys (29 B.C.), but they themselves received an education such as befitted crown princes. In due course, however, they in their turn fell victims to Herod’s suspicion, and were executed in 7 B.C.

Herod’s suspicion against these two sons was not unnaturally fomented by their elder half-brother Antipater, Herod’s son by his first wife Doris, whom he had put away thirty years previously in order to marry Mariamme. Now that the sons of Mariamme were out of the way, Antipater realized his ambitions and stepped info their place as heir to the throne; indeed, he was practically co-opted by his father as joint king along with him.¹

But Herod’s jealousy was soon directed in turn against Antipater, whom he suspected (rightly or wrongly) of plotting against his life. Antipater was therefore deprived of his status as crown prince in favour of one of his half-brothers―Herod, son of the second Mariamme (daughter of the high priest Simon Boethus, whom Herod married in 23 B.C. in place of the first Mariamme). But in 5 B.C. this son also fell from grace, his mother was divorced and his grandfather deposed from the high-priesthood.² Herod’s youngest son, Andpas, was now named heir to the throne.³ Antipas was Herod’s son by a secondary wife, a Samaritan woman named Malthake: Herod had an elder son by Malthake, Archelaus by name, but he passed him over at this stage because his mind had been poisoned against him by Antipater.

By this time Herod was in the grip of his last illness, which ended with his death in March, 4 B.C. Four or five days before his death he gave orders for the execution of Antipater, and appears to have changed his mind once more about the succession, for in his last will and testament his kingdom was divided between three of his sons. Antipas was to rule Galilee and Peraea as tetrarch, his full brother Archelaus was to receive Judaea (including Samaria and Idumaea) along with the title king, while Philip, Herod’s son by yet another wife (Cleopatra of Jerusalem) was nominated tetrarch of the territory which Herod had received from Augustus east and north-east of the Lake of Galilee.⁴

Herod’s will could not take effect until its provisions were ratified by Augustus. Antipas and Archelaus; and later Philip, made their way to Rome to see that their claims were properly represented to the emperor. Antipas, indeed, angled for the kingship in rivalry to his brother Archelaus, and was supported by several members of the royal family and others―not so much, says Josephus, because they loved Antipas as because they hated Archelaus.⁵

While the brothers were pressing their suits in Rome, Malthahe, the mother of Archelaus and Antipas, who was with them there, died.⁶ At the same time there were many attempts at revolt throughout Palestine, in Jerusalem and elsewhere. In Galilee, for example, an insurgent named Judas (whose father Hezekiah had been executed by Herod forty years previously) raided the palace at Sepphoris and seized the armoury. This rising was put down by Varus, imperial legate of Syria, who marched south with two legions to pacify the troubled areas of Palestine.

Augustus, after listening to representations from various quarters, including a deputation from Judaea which asked for the abolition of Herodian rule in favour of a Roman governor⁷ (an odd request in the light of later events), ratified the general terms of Herod’s will, except that he bade Archelaus content himself with the title ethnarch instead of king. Archelaus’s nine years’ ethnarchate of Judaea proved intolerably oppressive―he had all his father’s personal defects with but few of his administrative and diplomatic gifts―and in A.D. 6 he was deposed. Judaea (with Samaria and Idumaea) was reduced to the status of a third-class Roman province, governed by a prefect or procurator⁸ of equestrian rank, appointed by the emperor. Philip ruled his tetrarchy in the north-east without untoward incident for thirty-seven years, until his death in A.D. 34. Antipas, with whom we are at present concerned, governed Galilee and Peraea ably in the interests of Rome for forty-two years; and might have done so longer had it not been for circumstances over which he had but little control.

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¹ Josephus, Ant. xvii 3.

² Josephus, Ant. xvii 78.

³ Josephus, BJ i 646, ii 20; Ant. xvii 146, 224.

⁴ Josephus, Ant. xvii 188 ff.

⁵ Ant. xvii 227.

⁶ Josephus„ Ant. xvii 219; 225, 250.

⁷ Josephus, Ant. xvii 314.

⁸ The title of such a governor in the period before Claudius was praefectus, not procurator; cf. A. N. SHERWINWHITE, Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament, 1963, pp. 6 ff. On the fragmentary Latininscription found at Caesarea in June 1961, where Pilate is mentioned, he is designated praefectus.

 

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