An impostor promises to show the Samaritans the sacred vessels buried by Moses under Mount Gerizim. Crowds assemble at a village, Tirathana, at the foot of the mountain, to make the ascent.
A.D. 36
Pilate, however, forestalled their ascent by despatching a force of cavalry and heavy-armed infantry, who attacked the multitude assembled in readiness in the village, and in the ensuing engagement killed some, routed others, and took a large number of prisoners. The chief prisoners and the most influential of the fugitives were put to death by Pilate.
When the tumult was quelled, the Samaritan council approached Vitellius, the governor of Syria, of consular rank, with accusations against Pilate for his butchery of the victims. They said that the object of the expedition to Tirathana was not revolt from Rome, but to seek refuge from Pilate’s insolence. Vitellius thereupon sent Marcellus, a friend of his, to take over the administration of Judæa, and ordered Pilate to depart for Rome, to render his account to the Emperor of the charges brought against him by the Samaritans. Pilate, accordingly—after ten years’ residence in Judæa—went in haste to Rome on the instructions of Vitellius, which he must needs obey. |A.D. 37| But before he reached Rome, Tiberius was no more.—Ant. XVIII. 4. 1 f. (87-89.)
Josephus proceeds to tell how Vitellius went up to Jerusalem and pacified the Jews by restoring to them the custody of the high priest’s vestments, recently in Roman hands. Also how he deposed the high priest “Joseph, surnamed Caiaphas.” Thus the three responsible authorities for the trial of our Lord—the Emperor, Pilate and Caiaphas—quit the scene simultaneously. After the next extract, we pass from the period of the Gospel history to the period covered by the Acts.
VI. THE LATER HERODS
(29) Herod the Tetrarch: his Marriage with Herodias and Murder of John the Baptist[[179]]
Now about this time a quarrel arose between Aretas king of Petra[[180]] and Herod on the following ground. Herod the Tetrarch married the daughter of Aretas and had now lived with her a long time. On the eve of a journey to Rome he lodged in the house of Herod, his half-brother on the father’s side; the mother of this Herod was the daughter of Simon the high priest. There he fell in love with Herodias his brother’s wife (she was the daughter of their brother Aristobulus and sister of Agrippa the Great[[181]]) and had the effrontery to propose marriage. She met his advances and a compact was made that she should leave her home and come to him on his return from Rome; it was part of the compact that he should divorce the daughter of Aretas. The agreement settled, he set sail for Rome. On his return, after discharging his commission in that city, his wife, who had got wind of the compact with Herodias, bade her husband, who was still unaware that she knew all, send her away to Machærus—on the frontier between the dominions of Aretas and Herod—without revealing her intentions. Herod, accordingly, let her go, not suspecting that the poor woman had any inkling of the plot. She, however, had long since sent word to Machærus, which at that time[[182]] was subject to her father, and so found that the general in command[[183]] there had everything in readiness for her (intended) journey. No sooner, therefore, had she arrived (at Machærus) than she was off again into Arabia, escorted by one general after another in turn, and so reached her father post haste and told him of Herod’s intentions.
Aretas seized this occasion for hostilities and also for raising the question of frontiers in the region of Gamala;[[184]] the two belligerents mustered their armies and opened war, sending their generals as their representatives in the field. A battle took place in which the whole of Herod’s army was cut to pieces as the result of the defection of a contingent from Philip’s tetrarchy which enlisted with Herod’s forces and then deserted. Herod reported the matter to Tiberius, who was indignant at the aggression of Aretas and wrote instructions to Vitellius to go to war with him and either to take him alive and bring him a prisoner to Rome or to kill him and send him his head. Such were the injunctions of Tiberius to the governor of Syria.