Читать книгу Judaism I - Группа авторов - Страница 76

After his death in 4 BCE, Herod’s realm was divided among three of his children, and the Romans downgraded their authority. Of the three, Philip and Herod Antipas were demoted to the rank of tetrarch. They ruled the peripheries of Herod’s kingdom much as their father had—interested in building infrastructure and maintaining loyalty to Rome, while being attentive to local mores. Herod Antipas ruled the Galilee and Peraea (cf. Mark 6:14–16), and Philip ruled in the north. Only Archelaus held the title ethnarch, and he dramatically failed. He ruled Judea, Samaria, and Idumea, which included Jerusalem and Caesarea. He proved a tyrant, whom Augustus removed from power in 6 CE, replacing him with a Roman prefect under direct Roman control.

The swan song of the Herodian dynasty was the reign of King Agrippa I, grandson of Herod the Great, who ruled from 41 to 44 CE. Agrippa was educated in Rome with the city’s highest elite; he was a favorite of emperors Caligula (37–41 CE) and Claudius (41–54 CE). Supported by these relationships, in 41 Agrippa gained control of the bulk of Herod’s territories. He was by nearly all accounts a popular Jewish king, able to balance his Herodian blood, Roman ties, and eugertistic practices with piety and a steady ruling hand. Agrippa died in 44 at the height of his popularity, but the Roman emperor Claudius did not appoint his son, Julius Marcus Agrippa, better known as Agrippa II, in his stead.

So reduced, Agrippa II, the last of the Herodian kings, was given control over a smaller more peripheral realm that included Chalcis, Batanea, and Lebanon, among other small fiefdoms (ca. 48–66 CE); he later acquired parts of Galilee and Peraea. He was also granted the authority to appoint the high priest. The core territories of Judea and Samaria that his father had ruled devolved to direct Roman rule as an equestrian province under the aegis of the Syrian legate.

In the two decades from the death of Agrippa I in 44 CE to the outbreak of rebellion in Judea in 66, lawlessness and widening economic disparities between the urban elite and the rural poor intensified. Alongside these trends was a set of volatile religio-political ideas that finally erupted into war.