Josephus calls the injured husband simply Herod. The first two Gospels
give him the name Philip (“Herodias his brother Philip’s wife,” Matt.
xiv. 3, Mark vi. 17). The name stands in all the MSS in Mark; in Matthew
it is omitted by the “Western text” (cod. D and Latin versions); in Luke
(iii. 19) it is absent from all the best MSS and in those which insert
it is undoubtedly an interpolation from the other Gospels. It is clear
from Josephus that the first husband of Herodias was not Philip the
Tetrarch, but his half-brother who paid the penalty for his mother’s
complicity in a plot by having his name removed from Herod’s will, and
lived as a private individual, apparently in Jerusalem (cf. _B.J._ I.
30. 7 [600]). Either then Herod the Great had two sons named Philip (1)
by Mariamne II (daughter of Simon the High Priest), the husband of
Herodias, and (2) by Cleopatra, Philip the Tetrarch, who married Salome
the daughter of Herodias; or, more probably, the name Philip in the
first two Gospels is a primitive error, due to confusion between the
husband and the son-in-law of Herodias. That two sons should have borne
the name Philip is improbable; no argument can be drawn from the
appropriation of the dynastic or family name Herod by more than one
member of the family. The omission of the name Philip by St. Luke, who
shows special acquaintance with the Herodian court, is very significant.
The confusion with Philip the Tetrarch appears elsewhere, notably in the
eccentric account of the Baptist’s denunciation of the second marriage
of Herodias in the Slavonic version of the _Jewish War_ (Note II above).
IV. Note on § (35). THEUDAS AND JUDAS
This passage has been often quoted as convincing proof that St. Luke had
read the _Antiquities_ of Josephus, or at least the twentieth book. On
this view the date of the _Acts_ must be brought down to the close of
the first century. The Evangelist is at the same time accused of the
grossest carelessness.
Gamaliel in his speech in the Sanhedrin adduces two instances of
insurrectionary movements which came to nought in the chronological
order: (1) Theudas, (2) Judas of Galilee (Acts v. 36 f.).
The date when Gamaliel is represented as speaking must have been some
time in the early “thirties.” The revolt of Theudas, according to
Josephus, occurred in the procuratorship of Cuspius Fadus (about 44-46
A.D.), at least ten years later. The revolt of Judas in “the days of the
enrolment” was in 6 A.D. Thus the events appear to have been transposed
in the speech and one of them to have been still in the womb of the
future!
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