Who was Herod Antipas?

Which Herod is this?

The New Testament has several Herods. The king of the Christmas story is Herod the Great, who died in 4 BC. Rome split his kingdom among three sons: Archelaus took Judaea, Philip the lands north-east of the lake, and Antipas Galilee and Perea, two territories on either side of the Jordan. Nearly every “Herod” in the adult life of Jesus is Antipas.

His mother was Malthace, a Samaritan. An earlier draft of his father’s will had named him king. The final one gave the crown to his brother Archelaus, and Antipas sailed to Rome to contest it before Augustus, and lost. He came home a tetrarch, ruler of a quarter, with an income of 200 talents a year (Josephus, Antiquities 17.224–249, 318). Mark still calls him “King Herod” (Mark 6:14), a title he never held; Matthew and Luke correct it to tetrarch (Matthew 14:1; Luke 9:7).

A builder like his father

During the revolts of 4 BC, the Roman governor of Syria burned Sepphoris, about 6 kilometers (4 miles) from Nazareth. Antipas rebuilt it as his first capital and made it, Josephus says, the showpiece of Galilee.

Around AD 19 he founded a new capital on the lake’s western shore and named it Tiberias, after the emperor. It went up over old graves, so observant Jews counted it unclean, and Antipas had to fill it with settlers by gifts and by force: Galileans, foreigners, poor men, freed slaves (Antiquities 18.36–38). His coins, struck there, bear plants and his name, never a face. John calls the lake itself the Sea of Tiberias (John 6:1), but no Gospel puts Jesus inside either of Antipas’s cities.

“That fox”

Antipas married Herodias, the wife of his half-brother. John the Baptist said in public that the law forbade it, so Antipas jailed him and later had him beheaded, as told in How did John the Baptist die? Hearing about Jesus, Luke says, Antipas was perplexed and “sought to see him” (Luke 9:9). Then some Pharisees bring Jesus a warning.

On that same day, some Pharisees came, saying to him, “Get out of here and go away, for Herod wants to kill you.” He said to them, “Go and tell that fox, ‘Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I complete my mission.’”

His court reached into the circle around Jesus. Joanna, the wife of his steward Chuza, helped pay for the mission (Luke 8:3), and Manaen, “the foster brother of Herod the tetrarch,” later taught in the church at Antioch (Acts 13:1).

Face to face

Only Luke tells the meeting. At the trial, Pilate learns that the prisoner is a Galilean and sends him to Antipas, who is in Jerusalem for Passover. Antipas is delighted: he has wanted to see a miracle for a long time. Jesus does not answer a word. Antipas and his soldiers mock him, dress him in fine clothes and send him back (Luke 23:6–11).

Herod and Pilate became friends with each other that very day, for before that they were enemies with each other.

Losing everything for a crown

Around AD 36 Aretas IV, king of the Nabataeans, whose daughter Antipas had sent away to marry Herodias, destroyed his army (Antiquities 18.109–126). In AD 37 the new emperor, Caligula, made Herodias’s brother Agrippa a king, and Herodias pushed her husband to sail to Rome and ask for a crown too. Agrippa’s letters got there first, accusing Antipas of plotting with the Parthians and of storing armor for 70,000 men. He could not deny the armor. In AD 39 Caligula gave his lands to Agrippa and exiled him to Lugdunum in Gaul, or to Spain in Josephus’s other account (Antiquities 18.240–255; Jewish War 2.183). Herodias went with him. Nobody recorded his death.