Agrippa Returns to Jerusalem

By these edicts sent to Alexandria and to the whole inhabited world, Claudius Caesar made known what opinion he held of the Jews. He soon sent Agrippa off to take possession of his kingdom, with more splendid honors than before, and he wrote letters to the governors and procurators of the provinces telling them to treat him with every kindness. Agrippa returned in haste, as was natural for a man going back to far better fortunes. He came to Jerusalem and offered sacrifices of thanksgiving, leaving out nothing that the law required. For this reason he also arranged for a great many Nazirites to have their heads shaved. The golden chain that Gaius had given him, equal in weight to the iron chain with which his royal hands had been bound, he hung up within the sacred precincts of the temple, above the treasury. It was to be a reminder of the grim fortune he had suffered and a witness to his change for the better, and a proof both that great things can sometimes fall and that God raises up what has fallen. For the dedication of the chain showed everyone that King Agrippa had been stripped of his former rank and made a prisoner for a small cause, and that a little later he had come out of his fetters and been raised up to be a more splendid king than before. From this, then, people may understand that whatever shares in human nature, however great, can slip and fall, and that what has been brought low can rise again to a glorious height. [a]

When Agrippa had fully performed his worship of God, he removed Theophilus son of Ananus from the high priesthood and gave that honor to Simon son of Boethus, who was surnamed Cantheras. Simon had two brothers, and his father was Boethus, whose daughter King Herod married, as I have related above. So Simon held the high priesthood together with his brothers and with his father, just as the three sons of Simon son of Onias had held it before, under the rule of the Macedonians, as we have recorded in the earlier books. [d]

When the king had settled the high priests in this way, he repaid the people of Jerusalem for their goodwill toward him. He remitted the tax on every house, thinking it right to return the affection of those who loved him. He also made Silas, a man who had shared many of his hardships, commander of his whole army. After only a very short time, some young men of Dora, who put recklessness ahead of piety and were by nature rash and bold, brought a statue of Caesar into the synagogue of the Jews and set it up there. This greatly provoked Agrippa, for it amounted to the overthrow of the laws of his fathers. He went without delay to Publius Petronius, who was governor of Syria, and brought charges against the people of Dora. Petronius was no less angry at what had been done, since he too judged it impiety to transgress the law, and he wrote this in anger to the leaders of Dora: “Publius Petronius, legate of Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, to the leading men of Dora, declares: Some of you have been so bold in your madness that, even after the edict of Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus was published permitting the Jews to keep the customs of their fathers, you would not obey it, but did the very opposite. You have kept the Jews from holding their synagogue by moving Caesar’s statue into it. In this you have broken the law not against the Jews alone but against the emperor himself, whose statue was better set up in his own temple than in someone else’s—and in the place of the synagogue at that—since natural justice gives each people the right to be master of its own places, as Caesar has ruled. I need not mention my own ruling; it would be absurd to do so after the edict of the emperor, who has allowed the Jews to follow their own customs, and has ordered further that they share the rights of citizens with the Greeks. Those who dared to do such things against the emperor’s edict—at which even those who are reckoned their leading men are indignant, saying it was not done by their own choice but by the impulse of the crowd—I have ordered to be brought before me by the centurion Proculus Vitellius, to give an account of what they have done. And I urge the chief magistrates, unless they wish the wrong to appear to have been done by their own choice, to point out the guilty to the centurion, and to allow no occasion for sedition or fighting, which, it seems to me, is what such deeds are hunting for. For neither I nor King Agrippa, whom I hold in the highest honor, have anything more at heart than that the Jewish nation should not seize on an occasion, gather together under the pretext of defending themselves, and be driven to desperate measures. So that what the emperor thinks about this whole matter may be better known, I have added his edicts posted in Alexandria. Though they may seem to be known to everyone, King Agrippa, whom I hold in the highest honor, read them at that time before my tribunal, when he pleaded that the Jews ought not to be deprived of the emperor’s gift. I therefore command that for the future you seek no pretext for sedition or disturbance, but that each people worship according to its own customs.” [f]

So Petronius saw to it that the breach of the law already committed was corrected and that nothing like it would be done against the Jews again. King Agrippa then took the high priesthood from Simon Cantheras and offered it again to Jonathan son of Ananus, acknowledging that he was more worthy of the honor. But Jonathan did not care to take back so great an honor, and declined it, saying, “I rejoice at the honor you show me, O king, and I cherish with all my heart the privilege your goodwill gives me, though God has judged me in no way worthy of the high priesthood. I am content to have put on the sacred robes once. I put them on then in a holier way than I would receive them now. But if you want someone more worthy than I to receive the honor now, let me tell you of one. I have a brother who is pure of all sin against God and against you, O king. I recommend him to you as fit for this honor.” The king was pleased with these words. He admired Jonathan for his attitude, and gave the high priesthood to his brother Matthias. Not long afterward Marsus succeeded Petronius and governed Syria. [i]