1. The Civil History of the Jews From the Birth of Christ to the Destruction of Jerusalem

For a clearer understanding of the course of New Testament history, some familiarity with the civil history of the Jews of this period is necessary. After the death of Herod the Great, which took place shortly after the birth of Christ, the Jewish kingdom was divided among his three sons—Archelaus, Herod Antipas, and Philip. The first received Judea, which together with Idumea and Samaria constituted half of Herod the Great’s entire kingdom and yielded a revenue of 600 talents. He was granted the title of “ethnarch” with the promise of also being given the title of king later if he proved worthy of it. Herod Antipas received governance of Galilee and Perea with the title of “tetrarch”—that is, ruler over a quarter of his father’s former dominions. These regions yielded him 200 talents of revenue. Philip became the tetrarch of the regions of Auranitis and Trachonitis, lying in the northern part of the country on the eastern side of the Jordan. It was during the governance of these sons of Herod the Great that the earthly life of the Savior passed, and in part that of His apostles as well.

Archelaus, the son of one of the ten wives of Herod the Great, was born in 21 B.C. and received his education in Rome, where he absorbed into his naturally evil soul the worst of what it was possible to learn in the world’s capital of that time.

He was an arrogant, despotic, unjust, and dissolute man, as he showed himself to be immediately upon ascending the throne. His brief ten-year administration was marked by all manner of oppressions, injustices, and the most brazen licentiousness. Like his father—who probably loved him more than all his other sons on account of his kinship with him in every respect—he entered into unlawful marriages and kept changing the high priests, continually degrading the high dignity of the high priesthood.

When Joseph, having received news of the death of Herod the Great, wished to return to Judea, he received, as is known, a warning from the angel not to remain in Judea under the rule of Archelaus, and this warning was fully an echo of the general popular distrust of the latter.

His injustices quickly aroused universal complaints to the Emperor Augustus, who as a result deprived him of his throne and sent him into exile in Vienna in Gaul, while Judea was transformed into a Roman province placed under the administration of special Roman officials called procurators.

The procurators in their turn were subordinate to the imperial governors (prefects) of Syria. At their disposal was the army stationed in Palestine; they managed the financial affairs of the region entrusted to them as well as all judicial proceedings, with the exception of cases—mostly of a religious character—which were left to the jurisdiction of the Sanhedrin. To them alone belonged the exclusive right to pronounce death sentences, a right that had at this time been taken away from the Sanhedrin (John 18:31). Their main residence was in Caesarea, but they frequently visited Jerusalem, especially on major festivals, when the influx of large masses of people required special maintenance of public order, so as to prevent popular uprisings and riots. During their stays in Jerusalem they usually lived in one of the palaces of Herod—the so-called Praetorium—where the tribunal of justice was also situated. Of the majority of procurators very little is known to us. The first of them after the deposition of Archelaus was Coponius, who governed Palestine under the authority of Quirinius, the prefect of Syria—the very “Quirinius” during whose earlier administration the well-known census had been conducted (Luke 2:2). He immediately showed the Jews the spirit of Roman autocracy and arrogated to himself the right of custody over the high priestly vestments used in worship at the great annual festivals. The census served as the occasion for a revolt under the leadership of Judas of Galilee (Acts 5:37). Under him Annas was made high priest.

Coponius governed Palestine for four years, and after him the procurators were Marcus Ambivius (A.D. 13–16), Annius Rufus (16–19), Valerius Gratus (19–30), and Pontius Pilate (30–40). The last three were appointed by the Emperor Tiberius, who came to the throne in A.D. 15. During the administration of these procurators the high priests changed repeatedly, and by the time of Pontius Pilate the high priest was the well-known Joseph Caiaphas.

The most famous of the procurators was Pontius Pilate himself. Like all other procurators, he came from the wealthy equestrian class and was probably of the Pontii family, which traced its lineage from the famous Samnite commander Pontius Telesinus. Under him passed the entire public ministry of the Savior in Judea, and under him too He suffered and died, as the Roman historian Tacitus testifies, saying that “Christ was put to death under the reign of Tiberius, by the procurator Pontius Pilate.”

By character he was, as Philo testifies, a stubborn, cruel, and unrelenting man. He distinguished himself by many cruelties and injustices. Under him there were several outbursts of popular discontent. The first occasion for an outburst was his order to Roman soldiers to enter Jerusalem with their pagan standards and images of the emperor; but when this threatened an uprising and bloodshed on the part of the Jews, who saw in this a terrible insult to their “holy city,” Pilate reluctantly rescinded his order, harboring a terrible hatred for the people under his governance. During popular disturbances in Jerusalem he dealt harshly with those responsible, and from Luke 13:1 it is known how he executed several Galileans, mingling their blood with that of their sacrifices. Under him there were several more disturbances and outbursts of discontent, which finally attracted the attention of the prefect of Syria, Vitellius, who reported him to Rome and obtained his removal from office (in A.D. 40).

While Judea (together with Samaria) was completely transformed into a Roman province and governed by Roman procurators, the other regions were still under the governance of Herod’s sons—Herod Antipas and Philip.

Herod Antipas governed Galilee and Perea, and it was under his rule that the holy family of Nazareth lived. He reigned from A.D. 1 to 43, and is frequently mentioned in the Gospels simply under the name of Herod (the tetrarch). He was a man of outward refinement, extremely ambitious, extravagant, and—like all the Herods—dissolute. Occupying a very modest position and feeling his complete dependence on the Romans, he fawned upon them, and by his flattering craftiness fully earned the name of “fox” given him by Christ (Luke 13:32). Like his father he was passionately devoted to building, and founded on the shore of the Sea of Galilee a new city, which he named Tiberias in honor of the emperor, and which became the capital of Galilee. In his private life he disgraced himself by an unlawful marriage with Herodias, the wife of his half-brother Herod Philip; and when this criminal liaison found a stern denouncer in John the Baptist, he in his weakness became guilty of the martyrdom of the great prophet, who became the victim of the crafty malice of Herodias. His conscience tormented him terribly for this great crime, and when news reached him of the activity of Christ, it seemed to him even that John had risen and was thirsting for vengeance. As a result he secretly sent agents to Christ to find out the substance of the matter, and then himself desired to see Jesus, but this was granted to him only at the trial of Christ, when Pilate sent the Savior to him as a resident of Galilee and therefore subject to his authority. Despite his base character, Herod had not a few supporters who were called “Herodians” (Matt. 22:16; Mark 3:6). Toward the end of his life Herod waged war with his father-in-law Aretas, an Arabian prince who wished to avenge himself upon his son-in-law for the insult to his daughter, whom Herod had repudiated after entering into his illicit connection with Herodias. In this war he suffered a crushing defeat, and the people saw in this a deserved punishment for his faithlessness to his wife and especially for the murder of John the Baptist. On the accusation of Herodias’s brother Agrippa, he was deprived (in A.D. 43) of his throne as a traitor to Rome and exiled to Lugdunum in Gaul, where he ended his life together with Herodias, who accompanied him into exile.

The third son of Herod the Great, the tetrarch Philip, was in all respects worthier than his half-brothers Archelaus and Antipas. He peacefully governed the regions entrusted to him and devoted himself to building and improving his cities. Thus he enlarged and adorned the city of Panias, at the foot of Lebanon, renaming it Caesarea Philippi (to distinguish it from Caesarea on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea); the village of Bethsaida, on the northeast shore of the Sea of Galilee, he raised to the rank of a city, renaming it Bethsaida Julias in honor of Julia, the daughter of Augustus. He was married to Salome, the daughter of Herodias—the one who by her dance had obtained the head of John the Baptist—but was childless; he died (in A.D. 38) in Bethsaida Julias and was buried with full honors. His regions were annexed to the Roman province of Syria.

Thus Palestine was little by little absorbed piecemeal by the Romans. But thanks to one accident, it temporarily regained a degree of independence. At the Roman court, among other Herodian princes, was Agrippa, a grandson of Herod the Great, the son of the executed Aristobulus. He managed to become particularly close to Gaius Caligula, rendered him an important service at the very time of his accession to the Roman throne, for which he was rewarded with the grant of the former regions of the tetrarch Philip for his governance, with the title of king. Using his influence at the Roman court, he then obtained also the regions that had been under the governance of Herod Antipas—that is, Galilee and Perea; and upon the accession of the Emperor Claudius, Judea and Samaria were also given to him, so that he became king of all Palestine and came to be called Agrippa I. In order to retain this position, he tried in every way to ingratiate himself with the powerful Pharisaic party; being at heart a pagan, he hypocritically observed all the Laws of Moses, and to please the Pharisees became a persecutor of Christians. It was under him that the Apostle James suffered martyrdom (Acts 12:2) and the Apostle Peter was cast into prison, from which he received miraculous deliverance. After a brief reign, Agrippa I unexpectedly received a stroke, being struck down by an angel in the theater at Caesarea, where following the example of Roman emperors he had wished to receive divine honors from the people. Like his grandfather, he suffered from a loathsome disease and was consumed by worms before his death (Acts 12:20–23). After his death all Palestine once again became a Roman province and was governed by procurators. Among them the best known are Antonius Felix (A.D. 56–64) and Porcius Festus (64–66)—those procurators (the fourth and fifth in succession) before whom the Apostle Paul defended himself against the accusations of the Jews (see chapters XL and XLI of the “Guide”). In A.D. 54 the son of Agrippa I, Agrippa II, received in governance the small region of Chalcis on Lebanon. Three years later he obtained the title of king, as well as the addition to his domains of the former regions of Philip; and with the accession of Nero—also certain parts of Galilee and Perea, including the city of Tiberias. It was this same Agrippa II who, during his official visit to the procurator Festus, made together with his sister Bernice, expressed a wish to hear the case of the prisoner Paul, who thus had the opportunity to deliver his great sermon about Christianity before a brilliant assembly of the highest representatives of the pagan and Jewish worlds. Agrippa II was entirely devoted to Rome, and when the great revolt of the Jews began—which led to the devastating war and the destruction of Jerusalem—he sided with the Romans. After the ruin of the Jewish people and its capital, he withdrew to Rome, where he died in the third year of Trajan’s reign, around A.D. 104.

The various abuses of the procurators who, simultaneously with Agrippa II, governed the regions of Palestine not within the borders of his kingdom, gradually drove the people to furious exasperation and revolt, which led to the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in A.D. 74 (70).