Christian Texts and History • Re: Hypothesis: Wicked Priest = Herod Agrippa I, Teacher of Righteousness = Simeon of Jerusalem, Man of the Lie = Paul

Lev. 20: 21; 18: 16. Antipas was denounced because he married his brother's wife. John was not rebuking Antipas for the divorce of his earlier wife in order to marry Herodias, for this seems to have been allowable (TB: Ket. 57b; Jeremias, Jerusalem, p. 371 n. 60), nor for taking another wife, for polygamy seems to have been very common in high places. Herod the Great had been married many times (Ant. xvii. 19-22; BJ i. 562-3). The Talmud reports a bigamous marriage by Agrippa's ἐπίτροπος (TB: Suk. 27a). Among the priestly members similar marriages were recorded, such as Alubai, Caiaphas, and Josephus (Tos.: Yeb. i. 10; TB: Yeb. 15a; TJ: Yeb. i. 4 [or 6]; Jos. Vita 414-15; cf. L. Ginzberg, Eine unbekannte jüdische Sekte [New York, 1922], p. 183 n. 4). This was also true of the educated class, for Abba, son of Rabban Simeon ben Gamaliel I, a member of the Sanhedrin, had two wives at the same time (TB: Yeb. 15a; Ginzberg, p. 184 n. 1). Josephus told the Roman world that it was an ancient custom of the Jews to have many wives at the same time (Ant. xvii. 14; BJ i. 477). Justin Martyr accused the Jews of having four or five wives and for marrying as many wives as they wished, Dial. cxxxiv. 1; cxli. 4 (MPG, VI, 785, 799). Also, there was no odium attached to the fact that Antipas was marrying his niece (she was the daughter of his half-brother Aristobulus). Marrying a niece was forbidden by the Zadokite sect (Fragments of a Zadokite Work, p. 5, lines 7-8 in vol. I of Documents of Jewish Sectaries, ed. with an Eng. trans., intro., and notes by S. Schechter [Cambridge, 1910]), as well as by the Sadducees, Samaritans, Falashas, and Karaites, cf. S. Krauss, 'Die Ehe zwischen Onkel und Nichte', Studies in Jewish Literature. Issued in Honor of Professor Kaufman Kohler (Berlin, 1913), pp. 167-8. This was also true of non-Jews such as the early Arabs (Krauss, p. 168). There is an Islamic account which says that Jesus and John forbade the marriage of nieces (cf. J. C. K. Gibson, 'John the Baptist in Muslim Writings', MW, XLV [1955], 344), and the marriage of uncles and nieces was not approved by the Roman law until A.D. 44 (cf. Tac. Ann. xii. 6-7; Suet. Claud. xxvi. 3; F. R. B. Godolphin, 'A Note on the Marriage of Claudius and Agrippina', Classical Philology, XXIX [1934], 143-5). Although there seems to have been a popular sentiment against the marriage of uncles to nieces (Ned. viii. 7; ix. 10) which was contested by some (TB: Yeb. 55a, b), 'the Pharisees thought that marrying a niece was permitted, and not only permitted, but meritorious' (L. M. Epstein, Marriage Laws in the Bible and Talmud [Cambridge, Mass., 1942], p. 251). Certainly in high places there was an abundance of uncles and nieces marrying, for Josephus mentions one case of it in the priestly family of Tobias (Ant. xii. 186-9) and several within the Herod family: Herod with the daughter of his brother and a daughter of his sister (Ant. xvii. 19; BJ i. 563); his son, Philip the tetrarch, with Salome, daughter of Herodias (Ant. xviii. 137); Herodias with two uncles successively (Ant. xviii. 110); Agrippa I's daughter Berenice with her uncle Herod of Chalcis (Ant. xix. 277). This was also true among the religious leaders (for references, see C. Rabin, Qumran Studies [London, 1957], p. 92; Epstein, pp. 252-5). John very carefully stated that it was unlawful for Antipas to marry his brother's wife and he completely ignored everything else. There is one exception to this spelled out in the Mosaic Law, and that is that when a man died who left no offspring, the surviving brother was responsible for raising children to his deceased brother by levirate marriage (Deut. 25: 5; Mk. 12: 19; Strack-Billerbeck, I, 886-7; cf. Epstein, pp. 77-144). However, this is not the case in the present narrative. To marry a brother's wife was a direct contravention of the ordinance (Lev. 20: 21; 18: 16; Archelaus transgressed the same law, Jos. Ant. xvii. 341; BJ ii. 116) and would be characterized as incest. But it was even a more blatant breach of the law to marry the brother's wife while the brother was still alive as in this story (cf. F. F. Bruce, New Testament History [London, 1969], p. 153). Therefore, according to Jewish Law, John's charge was strictly in order. Josephus confirms this by saying Herodias wanted to violate the traditions of the fathers (Ant. xviii. 136)