PHILIP: Josephus, Antiq., xviii, 4, 6. Philip was the first Jewish ruler to impress the effigy of any human being on his coins. For his coinage, see Emil Schürer, A History of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1900), I, ii, p. 15.
TIBERIAS: Josephus, Antiq., xviii, 2, 3.
MARRYING A BROTHER’S WIFE: prohibited in Leviticus 20:21.
ANTIPAS’S DIVORCE AND ARETAS: Josephus, Antiq., xviii, 5, 1.
CHAPTER 8 (PAGES 106–120)
HEROD AND JERUSALEM: Josephus, Antiq., xv, 8, 1 ff.; xvii, 10, 2.
TEMPLE NOTICE PROHIBITING GENTILES: Josephus, Antiq., xv, 11, 5; Wars, vi, 2, 4. Archaeologists have discovered two notices with this inscription at Jerusalem.
HEZEKIAH’S TUNNEL: 2 Chronicles 32:2–4, 30. Cp. also 2 Kings 20:20, and, for David and the Jebusites, 2 Samuel 5:6 ff. The cited Siloam inscription is authentic. It was since chiseled out of the rock wall near the tunnel entrance and is now in the Turkish Museum of the Ancient Orient in Istanbul. Gihon has continued its small but steady flow down to the present day, and people can still wade through Hezekiah’s tunnel, probably the only Biblical site which is entirely extant.
JEWISH TAX APPEAL UNDER GRATUS: Tacitus, Annals, ii, 42.
USE OF SHEKALIM: Surplus from the half-shekel temple dues is discussed in Shekalim, iv, 2., and the citation in the text is translated by Herbert Danby, The Mishnah (London: Oxford, 1938), p. 115. See also the discussion by E. Mary Smallwood, ed., Philo Judaeus, Legatio ad Gaium (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1961), p. 301. The Jewish traditional laws grouped under the rubric Shekalim would later constitute a tractate and be incorporated into the Mishnah, the collection of Jewish sacred traditions.
THE JERUSALEM AQUEDUCT: Josephus, Antiq., xviii, 3, 2; Wars, ii, 9, 4. Nothing in the sources indicates Pilate’s negotiations with the Judean authorities prior to construction of the aqueduct, but it would seem obvious that such an enterprise, involving massive building operations in the vicinity of the temple, could not possibly have been undertaken without at least tacit approval of the temple authorities. Nor could Pilate have seized the temple treasury to finance construction of the aqueduct, as a cursory reading of Josephus might seem to indicate. For gentiles to enter the temple, where the sacred treasure was stored, would have been impossible—short of war between Rome and Judea—and seizing the sacred treasury would have elicited an immediate embassy from the Jews to Tiberius, which would have demanded Pilate’s recall. He must, therefore, have had some cooperation from the temple authorities. The subsequent popular outcry was, apparently, just that: a protest of the people, not the authorities, who may even have warned Pilate in advance of the approaching demonstration, see Josephus, Wars, ii, 9, 4.
CHAPTER 9 (PAGES 121–131)
PACUVIUS: Tacitus, Annals, ii, 79; Seneca, Epistulae Morales, xii, 8.
THE AQUEDUCT RIOT: Josephus, Wars, ii, 9, 4. Cp, also Antiq., xviii, 3, 2. For further discussion of Pilate and the water system of Jerusalem, see Frank Morison, And Pilate Said… (New York: Scribner’s, 1940), pp. 105 ff., to which this portrayal of the aqueduct episode is indebted.
VOLESUS MESSALA: Seneca, De Ira, ii, 5, 5.
VARUS: Josephus, Antiq., xvii, 10, 10. ALEXANDER JANNAEUS: Antiq., xiii, 14, 2.
CHAPTER 10 (PAGES 132–140)
JOHN THE BAPTIZER: Matthew 3:1 ff.; Mark 1:2 ff.; Luke 3:1 ff.; John 1:19 ff.
EVENTS AT ROME IN 29–30 A.D.: Suetonius, Tiberius, liv; Gaius Caligula, vii; Tacitus, Annals, iv, 68–70; v, 3 f.; vi, 23; Dio Cassius, lviii, 1, 1 ff.; 2, 7; 3, 8 ff. Pliny, Natural History, viii, 145. Besides Caligula, Tiberius had a natural grandson, Gemellus, but he was only ten at this time—too young for serious consideration as successor.
SEJANUS AND THE JEWS: Philo, De Legatione ad Gaium, xxiii, 159 ff.; In Flaccum, i, 1 ff. Cp, Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, ii, 5.
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT AND THE SANHEDRIN: In Shabbath 15a of the Babylonian Talmud, the following statement is germane: “Forty years before the destruction of the Temple, the Sanhedrin went into exile and took its seat in the Trade Halls…. They did not adjudicate in capital cases.” (Trans. by H. Freedman in Shabbath, Moed I, The Babylonian Talmud [London: Soncino Press, 1938] who explains that the Sanhedrin left their Chamber of Hewn Stone in the temple at this time for another place on the temple mount [p. 63].) Since the temple was destroyed in 70 A.D., “forty years before the destruction of the Temple” would be 30 A.D., or under Pilate’s administration. Moreover, Sanhedrin 18a and 24b of the Palestinian Talmud (the Yerushalmi) states: “Capital punishment was abolished forty years before the destruction of the Temple.” (Trans. by M. Movsky.) See also Ethelbert Stauffer, Jerusalem und Rom im Zeitalter Jew Christi (Bern: Francke Verlag, 1957), p. 121. Also, by the same author, Jesus and His Story (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1960), p. 72. However, Schürer, op. cit. II, i, p. 188, suggests that the date for the withdrawal of this right from the Sanhedrin, i.e., 30 A.D., need not be considered precise, since the jus gladii may have been suspended when Judea became a Roman province rather than first under Pilate’s administration. Nevertheless, a literal reading of the sources would indeed point to 30 A.D.
THE SANHEDRIN VACATES BALL OF HEWN STONE: Shabbath, loc. cit. (above).
CHAPTER 11 (PAGES 141–155)
THE ESSENES: Josephus, Wars, ii, 8, 2 ff. The Essene monastery was recently excavated at Khirbet Qumran. Its library included the famed “Dead Sea Scrolls” found in nearby caves during the spring of 1947.
DEAD SEA GASES: Strabo, Geographica, xvi, 2, 42; Genesis 18:20 ff.
HEROD AT CALLIRRHOë: Josephus, Antiq., xvii, 6, 5; Wars, i, 33, 5.
“TIBERIUS ONLY AN ISLAND POTENTATE”: Dio Cassius, lviii, 5, 1.
THE EXECUTION OF JOHN: Mark 6:17 ff.; cp. also Matthew 14:3 ff., and Josephus, Antiq., xviii, 5, 2. Pilate’s presence on this occasion is only presumed.
MACHEARUS: now called Tell Mukawir by the Arabs, the citadel remains a huge, trapezoidal mound, dead as the Sea over which it towers. Buried within it are the ruins of Antipas’s citadel, but they have never been excavated.
CHAPTER 12 (PAGES 156–165)
SALOME AND PHILIP: Josephus, Antiq., xviii, 5, 4.
GAIUS GALERIUS: Seneca, ad Helviam, xix, 4–6; Pliny, Natural History, xix, 3.
SEJANUS AND LIVILLA: Although Zonaras’s epitome of Dio Cassius, lviii, 3, states that it was Livilla’s daughter Julia to whom Sejanus was engaged, Frank B. Marsh, The Reign of Tiberius (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1959), p. 192, and other scholars would seem to be correct in assuming that the lady in question was indeed Livilla, not Julia, the error intruding via Zonaras.
CORNELIUS AND THE ITALIAN COHORT: Acts 10:1. For the identity and full name of the Cohors II ltalica, see the article “Cohors” in Paulys Realencyclopädie, VII, pp. 304 ff. There is some debate over whether the Italian Cohort could have been in Judea prior to Vespasian, but also scholarly support for the implication in Acts that this cohort and Cornelius must have been in Caesarea at least by ca. 35–36 A.D., if not earlier.