18 14, June, 2020 C omment catholicweekly.com.au achievements was the build- ing of his capital, Tiberias, on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee, named after his patron, the emperor Tiberi- us, who succeeded Augustus in 14 AD. At first, observant Jews re- fused to live in Tiberias be- cause it was built on top of a graveyard, resulting in ritual impurity for them. Antipas had to resort to bringing in a mixture of foreigners, forced migrants, poor people and slaves to populate the city. Another of Herod’s projects was the rebuilding and forti- fying of Sepphoris, which had been destroyed by fire. Early in his reign Herod Antipas married Phasaelis, the daughter of King Aretas IV of Nabatea, which bor- dered on Perea. But on a vis- it to Rome he stayed with his half-brother Philip, also This Herod went to Spain T he Herod at the end of Jesus’ life was the son of King Herod the Great, who had tried to kill Jesus by having all the boys under the age of two put to death. His official name was Antipater but he is more commonly known as Herod Antipas, or simply Herod. He was born sometime before 20 BC and died after 39 AD. He was the brother of Archelaus, who ruled Judea after their fa- ther’s death in 4 BC. After the death of Herod the Great, the emperor Augus- tus recognised Herod Antipas as ruler of Galilee, in the north of Israel, and of Perea, to the east of the Jordan River. He had the title of tetrarch, mean- ing one of four rulers at the time. In the New Testament he is called both “Herod the tetrarch” (Mt 14:1) and “King Herod” (Mk 6:14-29) although he never had the title of king. It is he who had imprisoned John the Baptist and consent- ed to his beheading at the request of his wife Herodias’ daughter (cf. Mk 6:14-29). Herod the Great had orig- inally designated Antipas to succeed him as ruler of Judea, but shortly before he died he changed his will, nam- ing instead Antipas’ brother Archelaus as his successor. In the end, Augustus accepted King Herod’s will and named Archelaus ethnarch of Judea and Antipas tetrarch of Gal- ilee and Perea. Antipas gov- erned until 39 AD. Like his father, King Herod, Antipas was known as a builder. One of his greatest known as Herod II, and fell in love with Philip’s wife Hero- dias, the granddaughter of Herod the Great, and Anti- pas’ niece. They agreed to marry after Herod divorced Phasaelis. John the Baptist condemned Herod for this marriage, moving Herod to have him arrested and later beheaded. Phasaelis came to know of the planned marriage and she travelled back to her fa- ther Aretas, who later waged war on Herod, defeating his forces. Emperor Tiberius or- dered a Roman counter-of- fensive against Aretas but it was abandoned on the death of Tiberius in 37 AD. It was in Herod’s territory of Galilee that Jesus grew up and began his public minis- try. When he heard of Jesus’ teaching and miracles, Herod feared that Jesus might be John the Baptist risen from the dead and he sought to see him (cf. Lk 9:7-9). Later some Pharisees told Jesus to leave Galilee because Herod want- ed to kill him, prompting Je- sus to call Herod a “fox” and to imply that he would not fall victim to Herod because “it cannot be that a prophet should perish away from Jeru- salem” (Lk 13:31-32). When Jesus was later ar- rested in Jerusalem, Pilate, hearing that Jesus was a Gal- ilean and therefore belonged to Herod’s jurisdiction, sent him to Herod, who was in Je- rusalem at the time. Herod was very happy to see Jesus because he had heard about him and hoped to see him perform a miracle. He ques- tioned him at length, but be- cause Jesus did not answer him, he sent him back to Pi- late. Herod and Pilate, who had been at enmity with each other, became friends that day (cf. Lk 23:6-12). In 39 AD Herod was ac- cused by his nephew Agrip- pa I of conspiracy against the new Roman emperor Caligu- la, who sent him into exile in Spain. Herod’s wife Herodias chose to join him and he died there sometime after 39 AD.
[email protected] Widening, not healing, the gap W hile the world’s attention has been centred on the China virus and its impact causing count- less infections and deaths, dis- rupting lives and bankrupting businesses and economies, the Black Lives Matter move- ment represents an evenmore destructive and insidious in- fection. The Irish poet Y. B. Yeats in The Second Coming wrote “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world” and in the same poem“The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity”. While written in 1919, such are the anarchic and deeply disturbing times we now live in that Yeat’s words have never beenmore prophetic and apt. Ours is a time when raw emo- tion andmob rule trump ratio- nality and reason. Themaximattributed to Descartes ‘I think therefore I am’ is replaced by ‘I feel there- fore I’m right’ and individuals now take it upon themselves to decide what constitutes the truth regardless of the facts. Across Australia, England, America and Europe count- Washington BlackLivesMatter demonstrators gather at the Lincoln Memorial. CNS, CARLOS BARRIA, REUTERS Jesus at Herod’s Court, by Duccio, c. 1310. PHOTO:WIKICOMMONS Why is everyone flocking to the #BlackLivesMatter movement when it is fundamentally flawed? less thousands have taken to the streets, parks and thor- oughfares ignoring the deadly and infectious China virus and breaking the law and putting other citizens at risk. While the overwhelming majority of people have social- ly isolated often at great cost and under the threat of fines, governments and the police do nothing to keep social order while businesses and build- ings are robbed, burnt and trashed.This is best illustrated by the sight of UK police sub- mitting on bended knee to an illegal and rowdymob of Black LivesMatter activists, like Alice inWonderland, we have gone down the rabbit hole and long held certainties and absolutes no longer apply. Police are no longer author- ity figures entrusted to enforce the law and protect all citizens equally – instead they are now complicit in politically correct virtue signalling and turning a blind eye towanton illegal- ity and vandalism. In Ameri- ca, notwithstanding his faults, President Trump is attacked and condemned for daring to state the obvious – there is no room for senseless violence and destruction and the rule of lawmust prevail in order to protect the common good. InMinneapolis, the city where George Floydwas un- justly killed, Black LivesMatter demonstrators are calling for the police to be defunded on the supposed basis all are racist and guilty of white suprema- cism. Ignored is that the police are the only ones safeguarding shops and businesses in Afri- can-American communites. Also ignored is that in Amer- ica the overwhelming inci- dents of violence and death inflicted on African-Americans is at the hands of other Afri- can-Americans. Heather Mac- Donald in The Myth of System- atic Police Racism published in TheWall Street Journal argues it is wrong to suggest American “law enforcement is endemi- cally racist”. MacDonaldwrites “a police officer is 18 and a half times more likely to be killed by a blackman than an unarmed blackman is to be killed by a police officer”. The point is alsomade in 2018 “African-Americansmade up 53 per cent of known homi- cide offenders in the U.S. and commit about 60 per cent of robberies, though they are 13 per cent of the population”. In Australia, as argued by the Aboriginal academic at the ACUAnthony Dillion, the issue of Aboriginal deaths in custo- dy is overstated and, as a re- sult, other more pressing issues are ignored. As examples Dil- lion cites “homelessness, poor health, violence and unem- ployment”. Other issues ignored in- clude the unacceptable high levels of domestic violence, es- pecially against women, where even though Aborigines rep- resent about 3 per cent of the population they represent 23 per cent of intimate-partner homicide victims. As towhymob hysteria, vir- tue signalling and cultural-left group think nowprevail look no further than theWest’s ed- ucation system. As a result of the late 60s cultural-revo- lution a rainbow alliance of neo-Marxist inspired critical theories nowdominate schools and universities. Western civil- isation, especially Christianity, is condemned as Eurocentric, exploitive and guilty of white supremacism. For generations students have been taught what the eminent Australian historianGeoffrey Blainey terms a ‘black armband’ view where Aborigines are always presented as victims being forced to live under oppressive conditions. The ideal of a liberal edu- cation based on the search for truth, objectivity and rational- ity no longer exists as for years students have been told knowl- edge is a social construct em- ployed to enforce the hegemo- ny of the ruling, capitalist class. As a result, as argued by Nick Timothy in the UK’s The Telegraph , “the customs, norms and institutions that once brought us together are no longer venerated, but as- saulted as bastions of oppres- sion. And so the bonds between us are destroyed. In place of a cohesive society, with com- mon habits, symbols and tradi- tions, we are reduced tomem- bership of fragmented groups defined by racial and gender identities that inevitably con- flict with one another”. Dr Kevin Donnelly is a Senior Research Fellow at the Aus- tralian Catholic University Father Flader Columnist Dear Father, You have written that the Herodwho appeared at the end of Jesus’ life was not the Herodwhowanted to kill himafter hewas born. Whowas this secondHerod, what was his relationshipwith the first Herod andwhat sort of personwas he? Kevin Donnelly Columnist