The Jewish Annotated New Testament (140 page)

Herod thus knew the political system and how to maintain it, but because he was of Idumean background and hence not of priestly descent, he could not hold the high priesthood. To gain Hasmonean support, in 42 BCE he became betrothed to Mariamme I, the granddaughter of both Hyrcanus II and Aristobulus, and in 37 he married her. However, the popularity of the Hasmoneans was itself a threat. Bowing to popular pressure, in 36 he appointed Mariamme’s brother, Aristobulus III, to the high priesthood, but in 35 he had Aristobulus drowned, and in 27 he executed Mariamme herself. Aristobulus was the last high priest of Hasmonean descent. Herod appointed subsequent high priests from families of limited social clout. Thereby he was able to retain control of the Temple and prevent the high priesthood from becoming a source of revolt.

The main base of Herod’s power was always the support of Rome. Upon being proclaimed “king of Judea, Galilee, and Perea” in 40 BCE in Rome by the Roman Senate, and with the support of both Mark Antony and Octavian (Augustus), Herod’s first act was to offer a sacrifice to Jupiter. In 37, it was the Roman legions, with only marginal help from Herod, who defeated the Parthian troops that were backing Antigonus and who captured Jerusalem. Herod’s main achievement in this campaign was to dissuade the Roman soldiers from looting the city.

Herod reigned until 4 BCE with a combination of repression, paranoia (some of which was justified), and skillful international negotiation. Enlarging Judea to the size it had been during the Hasmonean expansion, he turned the country into a regional power. For defense, he built fortresses at Masada, Machereus, and Herodium; for glory, his renovations to the Jerusalem Temple made it one of the most magnificent buildings of antiquity. Herod also rebuilt the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron, constructed the city of Caesarea Maritima, including its new harbor, and rebuilt the capital of Samaria, which he named Sebaste. He increased Jerusalem’s water supply and boosted the local economy by encouraging international pilgrimage to the city, much facilitated by the ease of travel possible under the
Pax Romana
.

While presenting himself as loyal to Judaism and apparently encouraging circulation of a false genealogy that depicted him as a descendant of a Judahite family taken into Babylonian exile, Herod also supported numerous Hellenized projects such as constructing a theater, amphitheater, and hippodrome in Jerusalem, serving as the patron of the Olympic games (either in 12 or in 8 BCE), and erecting a golden eagle over the Jerusalem Temple gate. According to Josephus, he felt “closer to the Greeks than to the Jews” (
Ant
. 19.329), and he built temples to pagan gods in Gentile areas under his control.

Dependent on Roman support, Herod imposed on his subjects a loyalty oath to Augustus. A number of Jews refused, and Herod executed them. According to Josephus, Jewish representatives in Rome complained to the emperor, that “the miseries which Herod, in the course of a few years, had inflicted on the Jews surpassed all that their ancestors had suffered during all the time since they left Babylon to return to their own country” (
J.W
. 2.86). Although the “slaughter of the innocents” described in Matthew 2.1–18 is not confirmed by external sources, the report is consistent with Herod’s reputation.

In 7 BCE, Herod arranged for the execution of Alexander and Aristobulus, his sons by Mariamme I; the ease with which he executed members of his family prompted a punning joke attributed to Augustus, “Better to be Herod’s pig (
hus
) than his son (
huios
)” (Macrobius,
Saturnalia
2.4.11). In other words, the king kept Jewish dietary practices, but he did not hesitate to murder. The son of this Aristobulus, Marcus Julius Agrippa, would three decades later become the Judean king Agrippa I.

When Herod died in 4 BCE, a number of small revolts broke out; Varus, the governor of Syria, quickly suppressed them, but they were harbingers of difficulties to come. Herod had changed his will so often that the final version was disputed, so Rome determined his heirs. Augustus appointed Archelaus, son of Herod and his Samaritan wife Malthace, ethnarch of Judea; his brother Antipas became the tetrarch (lit., “ruler of a quarter”; like “ethnarch,” the title signals a status below that of “king”) of Galilee. A third son, Herod Philip—whose mother was Herod’s fifth wife (of ten), Cleopatra of Jerusalem—became the tetrarch of the predominantly Gentile region of lturaea and part of the Transjordan (4 BCE–34 CE). He built Caesarea Philippi, famous for the site of Peter’s confession of Jesus’ messianic status (see Mk 8.22–26; Mt 16.13–28).

Archelaus was unable to impose the same repressive rule as his father, although he utilized similar techniques, such as deposing and appointing high priests (
Ant
. 17.33). In 6 CE Rome banished Archelaus to Vienne in southern Gaul. Even the Gospel of Matthew (2.20–23) explains that Joseph was afraid to live under Archelaus’s rule. Instead of finding another client king, Rome placed a praefectus (prefect) of equestrian rank over Judea. The most famous of these, the fifth, is Pontius Pilate, who ruled from 26 to 36 CE. By 44 if not before, the status of the governor changed to “procurator.”

Josephus states that Pilate “removed the army from Caesarea to Jerusalem, to take their winter quarters there, in order to abolish the Jewish laws. So he introduced Caesar’s effigies, which were upon the ensigns, and brought them into the city; whereas our law forbids us the very making of images” (
Ant
. 18.55). When the Jews protested this transgression, Pilate first threatened the crowds with death but then relented and removed the offending ensigns. Josephus also recounts that Pilate raided the Temple treasury for funds to construct an aqueduct; when the population again protested, Pilate arranged for his soldiers to mingle among the crowds and then, at an appointed signal, massacre them (
Ant
. 18.60–62). According to Philo, who also describes the incident of the shields, Pilate was

a man of a very inflexible disposition, and very merciless as well as very obstinate … in respect of his corruption, and his acts of insolence, and his rapine, and his habit of insulting people, and his cruelty, and his continual murders of people untried and uncondemned, and his never ending, and gratuitous, and most grievous inhumanity. (
Leg. Gai
. 301–2)

In Galilee, Antipas rebuilt Sepphoris and constructed alongside the Sea of Galilee a new capital, Tiberias. Although Sepphoris and Tiberias were the two largest cities in Galilee, strikingly the New Testament never mentions them. Josephus (
Ant
. 18.118–19) records that Antipas engaged in a preemptive strike against John the Baptist, whose popularity he feared. The Gospels attribute this execution to John’s condemnation of Antipas’s marriage to his niece (and sister-in-law) Herodias (Mt 14.3; Mk 6.7; Lk 3.19). According to Luke 23.6–12, Antipas heard Jesus speak and became friendly with Pilate.

This Herodian heir lost his throne because of his own greed. When Caligula appointed Agrippa I king of Judea in 37 CE, Antipas and his wife Herodias, who was Agrippa I’s sister, went to Rome to request that Antipas also be appointed king. Agrippa I brought charges against his brother-in-law, and Caligula exiled him to Gaul as well. Although the emperor, learning that Herodias was Agrippa’s sister, offered her back her property and her freedom, Herodias accompanied her husband into exile.

In 41 CE, the emperor Claudius confirmed Agrippa’s rule over Philip’s land as well as over Judea and Samaria. According to Luke (Acts 12.1–2), Agrippa was responsible for the execution of James, the son of Zebedee, and the arrest of Peter. By the time of Agrippa’s death in 44 (described in Acts 12.22–23 and
Ant
. 19.343–50), the borders of his kingdom matched those of his grandfather Herod.

Because Agrippa’s son, Agrippa II, was only sixteen at this time, Claudius returned the region to provincial status, and Judea came back into direct Roman rule. The next series of Roman governors exacerbated the increasingly tense relationship between Judea and Rome. Fadus (44–46) faced the revolt of Theudas; Tiberius Julius Alexander (46–48), Philo’s nephew, put down the revolt of the sons of Judas the Galilean, a leader of the revolt over the census in 6 CE; Cumanus (48–52), who ignored growing enmity between Galileans and Samaritans, was removed by Claudius at Agrippa II’s insistence.

The emperor’s positive relationship with Agrippa II did not extend to the Jewish population in Rome. According to Suetonius (
Claud
. 25.4; see Acts 18.2), Claudius expelled the Jews from Rome because they “were constantly causing disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus.” Theories that “Chrestus” stands for “Christ” and that the expulsion reflects something to do with Christian claims remain speculative.

In 50 CE, Claudius gave Agrippa II the kingdom of Chalcis. Nero, in 54, granted him Tiberias and Tarichaea and some further territory. Agrippa II also gained the right to appoint the high priest for the Jerusalem Temple. Josephus reports that Agrippa II deposed the Sadducee high priest Ananus when “leading men” (perhaps Pharisees) protested his execution of Jesus’ brother James (
Ant
. 20.197–203). According to Acts 25.13–26.32, Agrippa II and his sister Berenice, who would later have an affair with the emperor Titus, heard Paul testify in Jerusalem. When Agrippa II died (either ca. 93 or ca. 100), Rome incorporated his holdings into the province of Syria and placed them under direct Roman rule.

Rome never restored Judea to the Herodian household, and during Agrippa’s life Roman governors still controlled Judea. Felix (52–60 CE), whose relationship to Agrippa II’s sister Drusilla is recorded both in Acts 24.24 and by Josephus (
Ant
. 20.141–44), faced several revolts including that of a messianic pretender called “the Egyptian.” Festus (60–62), mentioned in Acts 25.12, by threatening to remove the wall that blocked the Temple from Agrippa’s view, did not endear himself to the population either.

THE FIRST REVOLT

In 6 CE, when Rome imposed a census on Judea as part of their provincial organization, portions of the population had rebelled. The Jewish population again threatened a revolt in 40, when Gaius Caligula, one of Rome’s less adept emperors, mandated that his statue be erected in the Jerusalem Temple. Josephus states: “Many tens of thousands of Jews with their wives and children came” to the Syrian governor “with petitions not to use force to make them transgress and violate their ancestral code”; they replied, “on no account would we fight … but we will sooner die than violate our laws” (
Ant
. 18.269–72). Caligula’s assassination rescinded the order.

Yet Rome did not place numerous troops in Judea and did not, until 66, consider the population threatening. Josephus, who is admittedly prone to demographic exaggeration, asserts (
J.W
. 6.423–27) that in 65, more than 2,700,000 men (the number then must be increased to include women and children) participated in the Passover celebration in Jerusalem; no one appeared to expect a revolt. The military garrison of Judea, housed in Caesarea, consisted of only five cohorts and one cavalry unit.

Even in 66 CE, Rome first entered battle less to subdue a national revolt than to force the Jews to reinstate Temple sacrifice offered on behalf of the emperor. Josephus, upper-class priest and military commander of the Jewish troops in the Galilee, blamed the revolt on incompetent Roman officials and lower-class Jews, including “the sicarii [dagger-men], who left no word unspoken, no deed untried, to insult and destroy the objects of their foul plots” (
J.W
. 7.269). At fault were also the very elites Josephus represented, as his own involvement in the revolt demonstrates. Economic and other factors leading to the war included a shortage of public works after the completion of Herod’s Temple in 64 left Jerusalem with a problem of unemployment; a surplus of funds in Jerusalem brought to the city from throughout the Roman world prompted impoverished peasants to relocate to the city; demographic pressure created by competition for limited resources in the countryside because Jews did not traditionally practice contraception, abortion, or infanticide; and strife between Jews and Gentiles in Caesarea increased local tensions. The upper class, weakened initially by Herod’s manipulation of the priesthood and then by Roman rule, lacked sufficient prestige in the eyes of the general population to control the volatile political situation.

Eleazar, son of Ananias, the captain of the Temple, was the priest responsible in 66 CE for the cessation of sacrifices offered to the emperor. Eleazar was reacting to the incompetence of the Roman procurator, Gessius Florus, whose own reaction to the failure of the local elite to control the urban mob was to punish the elite. Rome’s initial response to the stopping of the loyal sacrifices was a march on Jerusalem by the governor of Syria, Cestius Gallus. After a successful initial incursion, Gallus, while withdrawing from Jerusalem, was dramatically defeated by Jewish forces. In 67, Nero sent a new general, Vespasian, to stop the revolt. Vespasian entered Galilee, where Josephus not only surrendered but also (or so he later claimed) predicted the general’s success. By 68, Vespasian took the area around Qumran. Following Nero’s suicide in June 68, a series of three Roman generals seized power one after another. Finally, in July 69, Rome’s army in the east declared Vespasian emperor. While Vespasian then concentrated on consolidating his control over the empire, his son Titus took control of the troops in Judea.