Herod Antipas

Herod after the Father

• Herod Antipas (20 BC–c. AD 40), tetrarch of Galilee and Peraea, called "Herod the Tetrarch" or "Herod" in the New Testament up to Acts 4:27, and described therein as ordering John the Baptist's death and Jesus. Some believe he repented and converted to Christianity.

After being named to the throne by Augustus Caesar upon the death of his father, Herod the Great, in 4 BC, and subsequent Ethnarch rule by his brother, Herod Archelaus, Antipas ruled Galilee and Perea as a client state of the Roman Empire. He was responsible for building projects at Sepphoris and Betharamphtha, and more important for the construction of his capital Tiberias on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee. Named in honor of his patron, the emperor Tiberius, the city later became a center of rabbinic learning.

Antipas divorced his first wife Phasaelis, the daughter of King Aretas IV of Nabatea, in favour of Herodias, who had formerly been married to his brother Herod Philip I. (Antipas was Herod the Great's son by Malthace, while Herod II was his son by Mariamne II.)

While Archelaus was deemed incompetent by Augustus and replaced with a prefect in 6 AD, Antipas would govern Galilee and Perea for forty-two years.

Antipas faced more immediate problems in his own tetrarchy after John the Baptist – in 28/29 AD according to the Gospel of Luke.

Among those baptized by John was Jesus of Nazareth, who began his own ministry in Galilee – causing Antipas, according to Matthew and Mark, to fear that the Baptizer had been raised from the dead.

Luke alone among the Gospels states that a group of Pharisees warned Jesus that Antipas was plotting his death, whereupon Jesus denounced the tetrarch as a "fox" and declared that he, Jesus, would not fall victim to such a plot because "it cannot be that a prophet should perish away from Jerusalem".

Antipas' fall from power was due to Caligula and to his own nephew Agrippa, brother of Herodias. When Agrippa fell into debt during the reign of Tiberius despite his connections with the imperial family, Herodias persuaded Antipas to provide for him, but the two men quarreled and Agrippa departed.

The fox

• And he said unto them, Go ye, and tell that fox, Behold, I cast out devils, and I do cures to day and to morrow, and the third [day] I shall be perfected. Luke 13:32:

That fox, Herod Antipas, had his den, his throne, but the son of man came as a servant to man and gave all to serve all and would soon be hailed as the highest son of David and the rightful heir of his throne.

The word "Christ" meant anointed and therefore the Kings of Israel who were anointed. To Call Jesus the Christ was to call him Messiah and King. The Pharisees and Herod had instituted a system of Corban through the power of the priesthood and the civil law in order to exercise authority of the king over the people to provide welfare, benefits, and dainties.

Such systems of legal charity were a snare and a trap according to Proverbs, David, and Paul. They would entangle the people in the elements of the world, returning them to the bondage of Egypt.

King Saul used his power as king to force the sacrifice of the people but Samuel said he was foolish for doing that and his government would fail because of it. The Pharisees with the help of Herod the Great instituted a similar system of corban that blended their Religion with the power of the State which meant their religion was no longer pure Religion.

The Doctrine of Jesus opposed such systems because they weaken the people like Babylon, Sumer, and Sodom did.