Herod Antipas

Like most of the other members of his family, Antipas was educated at Rome, and kept in close touch with the imperial court. Little is known of his mode of life or of his activity before his accession to power. About 4 BC Herod Antipas inherited part of his father’s kingdom after the Roman emperor Augustus adjusted his father’s will. He restored the damage caused in the period between his father’s death and the approval of the will, restoring two towns, one of which he renamed in honour of the Roman imperial family.

He divorced his Nabataean wife, the daughter of Aretas IV, king of the desert kingdom, only to marry Herodias, formerly the wife of his half brother, Philip. The marriage offended his former father-in-law and alienated his Jewish subjects. According to Mark 6 (and parallel gospel accounts) when John the Baptist reproached Herod for this marriage, Herodias goaded her husband into imprisoning him. Still unsatisfied, she instructed her daughter, Salome, to ask for the Baptist’s head in return for dancing at her stepfather’s birthday feast. Antipas reluctantly beheaded John, and later, when Jesus’ miracles were reported to him, he believed that John the Baptist had been resurrected.

When Jesus was arrested in Jerusalem, according to Luke 23, Pontius Pilate, the Roman procurator of Judaea, first sent him to Antipas, who was spending Passover in the capital, because Jesus came from Antipas’s realm of Galilee. The tetrarch was eager to see Jesus, expecting more miracles, but soon returned him to Pilate, unwilling to pass judgment. 

Unlike his father, Antipas was not much of a builder. Although he founded cities and may have built theaters at Sepphoris and Tiberias, the building projects were relatively small compared to the later Roman-period structures that can be seen there today. Tiberias, on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee, was partly modeled after a Greek city. Although he erected statues in the Greek manner in his palace, the coins that Antipas minted were relatively few and simple, (especially compared with those of his co-tetrarch brother Herod Philip). and unlike his brother, he took care not to offend the religious sensibilities of his Jewish subjects with graven images and pagan temples. His main efforts as a ruler were directed toward the adornment of towns that already existed. He rebuilt Beth-Haran (Betharamptha), in the south of Perea, and called it Livias; he next reconstructed and enlarged his capital, Sepphoris; and then made into a town the fortress Macherus, on the eastern shore of the Dead Sea, rebuilding the fortress itself and erecting a magnificent palace. It was probably in this palace that John the Baptist preached and was ultimately imprisoned.

Herod’s closeness to the imperial family resulted in his choice as a mediator in the Roman-Parthian talks of 36. To his credit the conference was a success, but his haste to report the news to Rome aroused the hostility of Aulus Vitellius, legate of Syria, (and later emperor). In AD 37 the Nabataean king Aretas IV, (whose daughter Antipas had divorced), attacked Herod’s realm, inflicting severe damage. When Antipas appealed to Rome, the emperor sent Vitellius whose continued resentment made him delay. When Caligula became emperor in 37, Herodias, envious of her brother Agrippa I’s success, persuaded Antipas to denounce him before the emperor. However, Agrippa was Caligula’s close friend, and Caligula banished Antipas to Gaul, leading to the addition of the Antipas tetrarchy to Agrippa's domains. Little is known of Antipas’s life following his exile.