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Machaerus— Salome Where Danced

Antipas—The Herod Jesus Knew Has King David’s Palace Been Found? and Jeremiah: History vs. Prophecy S

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N Y Antıpas The Herod Jesus Knew Morten Hørning Jensen

HEROD THE GREAT GETS ALL THE PRESS. HIS SON 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 for whom Salome danced. This is understandable because the Gospels refer to Herod Antipas simply as “Herod,” or occa- sionally as “Herod the tetrarch” or even as “King Herod” (Mark 6:14), but never by his common name Antipas (see How Many? on p. 11). Herod Antipas ruled 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 Anti- pas governed Galilee (and , 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.

42 SEPTEMBER/OCTO BER 2012 According to the three synoptic Gospels, Herod Jesus, for which Luke skillfully prepares his reader Antipas’s relationship to Jesus is somewhat vague by references to Antipas along the way that build and indecisive. up an intense question in the reader’s mind: Is In Matthew and Mark, Herod Antipas is ambiv- Antipas interested in Jesus or is he trying to kill alent with regard to Jesus. Both gospels quote him? (See Luke 3:19–20, 9:7–10, 13:31–33.) Herod Antipas as saying, after he has had John the When Antipas finally gets to meet Jesus in Luke Baptist executed, that Jesus is actually John resur- 23:7–12, an almost-absurd scene ensues. At first rected (Matthew 14:1–2; Mark 6:14–16). Both gos- Antipas is “exceedingly glad” to see him; he had pels state that Antipas was actually saddened by wanted that for a long time and had hoped to see Salome’s request to have John beheaded (Matthew Jesus perform a sign. Then, under the impression 14:9; Mark 6:26), and they seem to blame Salome that Jesus has remained silent, he treats him with and her mother, Herodias, for John’s execution. contempt and mocks him. Finally, he sends Jesus in Bound by his own oath, Antipas is nevertheless a bright shining robe to Pilate. Pilate understands forced to fulfill his promise to Salome. this as an acquittal of Jesus. At the same time, however, we get the feeling It may come as no surprise that scholars have in Matthew and Mark that Antipas is a shadow of disagreed on how to understand Antipas’s relation death over Jesus. When Jesus hears that John has been killed, “he withdrew from there in a boat to COMPARED TO HIS FATHER, Herod the Great, Antipas was not much of a builder. Although he founded cities a lonely place,” apparently fearful of Antipas (Mat- and may have built theaters at and Tiberias, thew 14:13). In Mark 3:6, the Herodians counsel they were relatively small compared to the later Roman- about how to kill Jesus, just as Jesus in Mark 8:15 period structures that can be seen there today. Excava- warns against “the leaven of Herod.” tions of the Tiberias theater (below) by the Antiqui- Luke’s account differs from Matthew’s and ties Authority began in 2009 under the direction of Walid Mark’s by concentrating mostly on the trial of Atrash and Avner Hilman. H E R S H E L S H A N KS

B IBLICA L A RCHA E O L O GY REVIEW 43 HER OD A NTIPAS A F I A H

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to Jesus. Some suggest Antipas was really one of to what can be seen today.1 Similarly, it is possible Jesus’ enemies; others that Antipas was simply per- that the stadium in Tiberias mentioned by Jose- plexed. My own view is that the latter is the bet- phus and discovered in a recent Israel Antiquities ter argument: Herod Antipas was a perplexed and Authority salvage excavation directed by Moshe indecisive ruler. Hartal goes back to Antipas, but the main part of He simply could not match his father either as what can be seen today postdates Antipas. This is a tyrant or as a builder. On the other hand, it is not to say that Sepphoris and Tiberias were not significant that we get no reports in the Gospels important cities in Antipas’s time or that Antipas or otherwise of any riots caused by bad govern- did not sponsor a certain amount of building activ- ment or religious oppression during Antipas’s rule ity, but compared to their later phases, these cit- in Galilee. ies were in their “urban infancy” during Antipas’s It is also significant that, archaeologically speak- time. ing, we have no evidence of Roman temples, What about rural Galilee? gymnasia or hippodromes built during Antipas’s Recent excavations of rural villages and towns reign. This changed dramatically after the Roman such as , Cana, Capernaum and Gamla reveal destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D., but the sit- a first-century period with an increase in the set- uation was quite different in the earlier period. tled area right up until the outbreak of the Jew- Although theaters have been discovered at Sepph- ish Revolt in 66 A.D. Yodfat is especially inter- oris and Tiberias that may have been built by Anti- esting; its destruction by the Romans during the pas, they were built on a smaller scale compared war effectively sealed off its first-century layers.

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LIVING WELL IN GALILEE. Recent surveys and excavations of rural Galilee reveal that villages and towns continued to expand in the first century A.D., as indicated by a rise in the area and number of settlements. Although pov- erty was a fact of life for some in this period, the region in general was thriving economically. This can be seen especially at Yodfat, where the Roman destruction sealed o! the first-century layers. The growing town included an upper-class area with an elite house that featured high-quality frescoes (left) much like those at Herod the Great’s palace at . A cave at the site contained remains of olive-oil pro- duction (right), which was one of several prosperous industries at Yodfat. As illustrated in the drawing of an olive press below it, the flat, fallen stone (A) in the center of the photo was one of two upright stones that sup- ported baskets of olives being crushed. A wooden beam anchored in a socket (in the wall at back center) pressed the oil out of the olives into a collecting vat (also in back) with the help of two weight stones (B, in the foreground of the photo) hung from the free end of the beam.

Excavator Mordechai Aviam dug, so to speak, right into the first century and found evidence of olive-oil production, pottery manufacturing and textile pro- A duction, 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 B survey by Israeli archaeologist Uzi Leibner, who M O R describes how rural settlements increased dramati- TE N H

cally in this period, even at places that were diffi- Ø R

3 N cult to protect and of “no strategic value.” J ING

Taken together, the picture we get is of a E N S E thriving economic situation in the rural areas of N Galilee that does not match earlier proposals of a devastating urban elite’s exploitation of a uni- formly poor peasant population. beam This is not to deny that poverty was a persistent fact of life in this period—to a degree more than B enough for a social prophet like Jesus to arise. But socket Herod Antipas did not add to this in any notewor- in wall A thy way. stone weights Herod Antipas’s coinage is telling for the impact support stone support stone (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 collecting vat first was not issued until his 24th regnal year. More- baskets containing crushed olives over, all of them were small in number. In a recent

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PLANTS NOT PORTRAITS. Herod Antipas’s coinage is telling in what it lacks. Of only five series of coins that Antipas issued—the first of which was in the 24th year of his reign—none of them has any figural images, show- ing his respectful observance of the Jewish ban against graven images. As shown in the upper bronze coin at left, Antipas limited his coin designs to floral motifs. The obverse bears the Greek inscription “Tiberias” (where it was minted) surrounded by a wreath; the reverse reads “of Herod the Tetrarch, year 33” (i.e., 29/30 A.D.) around a palm branch, a common Jewish symbol that often rep- resents the lulav waved during the holiday of Sukkoth. Antipas’s brother Herod Philip, however, frequently issued coins bearing his own portrait or that of the emperor, as

N IO well as other pagan symbols. The lower example at left S IS M has a portrait of the emperor Tiberius on the obverse R E P

H with a laurel branch and an inscription (in Greek), T I W “Tiberius Augustus Caesar.” On the reverse Philip’s regnal D E T year “37” (33/34 A.D.) is written among the columns of N I

R P the Augusteum of Paneas, which is surrounded by the E

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about his reign in the written sources. Josephus is

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O C are relatively few—perhaps because there is not much to say. But one thing came to be remembered about study of 186 sites and collections of coins found in Herod Antipas—his birthday party with dance, Galilee and the , less than 3 percent were from music and wine, and Salome’s request for the head issues of Herod Antipas.4 Here, too, we must judge of John the Baptist brought to her on a platter. a Herod Antipas as a relatively passive leader. 1 See also the discussion in Morten Hørning Jensen, Herod Although they were few in number, Herod Anti- Antipas in Galilee (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), pp. pas’s coins are significant from another aspect: 154–156. To learn more about Herod Antipas, visit herodan- tipas.com. They reflect his respect for his subjects’ religious 2 See Mordechai Aviam, “Socio-Economical Hierarchy and sensitivities. He strictly observed the ban against Its Economical Foundations in First Century Galilee,” in Jack images, limiting himself to floral motifs. This is in Pastor, Menahem Mor and Prina Stern, eds., Flavius Josephus: Interpretation and History (Leiden: Brill, 2011), pp. 29–38; marked contrast to his brother Philip, another tet- Mordechai Aviam, “Yodefat/Jotapata: The Archaeology of the rarch and son of Herod the Great. Philip’s coins First Battle,” in Andrea M. Berlin and J. Andrew Overman, featured his own portrait, as well as those of eds., The First Jewish Revolt: Archaeology, History, and Ideolog (London: Routledge, 2002), pp. 121–133 and others. emperors Augustus and Tiberius. 3 Uzi Leibner, “Settlement and Demography in Late Roman In his personal life, Herod Antipas was differ- and Byzantine Eastern Galilee,” in Ariel S. Lewin and Pietrina Pellegrini, eds., Settlements and Demography in ent. His palace in Tiberias (which he had founded the Near East in Late Antiquity (Rome: Istituti Editoriali as his capital city) was graced with figures of liv- e Poligrafici Internazionali, 2006), p. 115. Cf. Uzi Leibner, ing creatures5; and at Delos he was honored for Settlement and History in Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine 6 Galilee: An Archaeological Survey of the Eastern Galilee, Stud- his benefactions to a temple of Apollo. Antipas’s ies and Texts in Antiquity and Christianity 127 (Tübingen: adherence to the ban against images was grounded Mohr Siebeck, 2009), p. 333. not in personal preferences but in concern for his 4 See David Adan-Bayewitz and Mordechai Aviam, “Iotapata, Josephus, and the Siege of 67: Preliminary Report of the Jewish subjects. 1992–94 Seasons,” Journal of Roman Archaeology 10 (1997), All in all, Herod Antipas’s impact on socioeco- pp. 157–161. 5 nomic conditions in Galilee was both minor and Josephus, The Life of Flavius Josephus, 65. 6 See David Noy, Alexander Panayotov and Hanswulf Bloed- moderate. He was not a remaker of Galilee but horn, Eastern Europe, Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism rather a modest developer. His reign was one of 101 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004), pp. 234–235.

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