| Herod Antipas |
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Herod Antipas (short for Antipatros) was an ancient leader ( Tetrarch , meaning "ruler of a quarter") of Galilee and Perea . Born in 20 BC , Antipas was a son of Herod The Great , who had become king of Judea; and Malthace, who was from Samaria . He and full-brother Archelaus and his half-brother Herod Philip were educated in Rome, as a kind of friendly hostage situation in order to maintain Herod the Great's compliance with Augustus Caesar . (Herod the Great was also notorious for killing family members, having killed his older sons Aristobulus and Antipater in 7 BC and 4 BC .) When Herod the Great died in 4 BC , his will divided Israel into four parts, with Antipas placed over the Galilee and Parea, Philip over Gaulanitis (the Golan heights), Batanaea (southern Syria), Trachonitis and Auranitis (Hauran); and Archelaus as "king of the Jews" over the bulk of Herod's mini-empire. (Archelaus was later deemed incompetent by Caesar and replaced with a Procurator in AD 6 .) Antipas' first task was to restore order caused by the rebellion of the Jewish Feast of Pentecost ('' Shavuot '') in 4 BC , which was a reaction to Herod the Great's death. Antipas followed in his father's footsteps as a builder. He rebuilt Sepphoris in Galilee and Livia in Perea, but his most noted accomplishment was the construction of Tiberias as his capital on the western shore of the Sea Of Galilee in AD 17 . The city was named to honor his patron, Emperor Tiberius . Originally, pious Jews refused to live in it because it was built atop a graveyard, but the city eventually became a great school and center of Jew ish learning. The city gave its name to the sea. He married Phasaelis , who was the daughter of Aretas IV Philopatris , king in Arabia Petrea Nabatea . He divorced her and married Herodias , the wife of his half-brother Herod Philip and daughter of his half-brother Aristobulus; for which he and Herodias were condemned by John The Baptist and blamed by Flavius Josephus (''Jewish Antiquities,'' XVIII, v). The union with Herodias brought him to ruin, for it involved him in war with his original father-in-law, in which he lost an army. Josephus moralizes the calamity in his '' Antiquities '': "as a punishment for what he did against John that was called the Baptist; for Herod slew him, who was a good man, and commanded the Jews to exercise virtue, both as to righteousness towards one another, and piety towards God, and so to come to baptism" (''Antiquities'', XVIII, v, 2). Herod Antipas was exiled by the Roman Emperor Gaius Caesar Caligula to Lugdunum (modern Lyons ), in Gaul in AD 39 according to Josephus (''Antiquities Book 18, Chapter 7, item 2") who says, however, in the ''Jewish Wars'' (II, ix, 6) "So Herod died in Spain whither his wife had followed him". The mention of "Spain" is probably a mistaken copying correction, due to the confusion of "Lyons" in modern France with "León" in modern Spain, both ethimologically rooted at the latin "Leo" (Lion). It should be acknowledged, in this particular point of historical discussion, that Lugdunum and the adjacent town of Vienna (not to be confused with the present capital of Austria) had been places of intense colonization by the romans from emperor Tiberius time in government onwards, and that Herod Archelaus had himself been previously exiled to Vienna by emperor Augustus, always according to Josephus ( Wars, Book 2, Chapter 7, item 3, confirmed in Antiquities, Book 17, Chapter 13, item 2). A much later spurious 'letter of Herod Antipas' is sometimes naively cited as being in 'records of the Roman senate.' The reference itself is equally spurious; there are no such records of the Roman Senate. HEROD ANTIPAS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT Herod Antipas is featured in the New Testament for ordering the execution of John The Baptist and for his role in the trial of Jesus . ' opera '' Salome '', to a libretto based on the play by Oscar Wilde . Herod Antipas is also famous as the 's Roman Procurator , the prefect Pontius Pilate , learns that Jesus is a Galilean (and therefore under Herod's jurisdiction), he sends Jesus to Herod, who is also in Jerusalem at that time. Herod hopes to see Jesus perform miracles but Jesus does not perform any. Herod asks Jesus many questions, but Jesus does not reply. Herod and his soldiers therefore mock and ridicule Jesus. After dressing Jesus in an elegant robe, Herod sends him back to Pilate. EXTERNAL LINKS |
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