History of Herod Antipas: Why Jesus called him That Fox

Bill Petro
3 min readMar 24, 2021

Herod Antipas was the son of Herod the Great (whom we met in the Christmas story) and Malthake. After his father’s death in 4 B.C., he was made tetrarch of Galilee and Peraea in the Trans-Jordan area of Palestine which he ruled as a client state of the Roman Empire.

Like his father, he was a lover of great and artistic architectural works and built the beautiful Tiberias (named after guess who) as the capital of his kingdom on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, which was renamed to Sea of Tiberias. Similar to his father, you could say he was an Italophile. Jesus appeared before him during his many trials on Good Friday, having been sent to him by Pilate. But after the audience, Antipas sent Jesus back to Pilate.

Background of Herod Antipas

He was married to the daughter of Aretas, king of Arabia, but afterward divorced her to the wrath of her father. Antipas found himself at war with the king and was saved only with the help of Rome. He took away from his half-brother, Herod Philip, his wife, Herodias. Her influence over him led to his utter ruin.

As you may recall the story of John the Baptist, the prophet denounced Antipas’ breaking the Jewish law by taking his brother’s wife. The Jewish historian Josephus further tells us that Antipas feared the prophet’s…

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Bill Petro

Writer, historian, technologist. Former Silicon Valley tech exec. Author of fascinating articles on history, tech, pop culture, & travel. https://billpetro.com