The First Foreign King

At that time, when Herod, the first man of foreign race, had taken over the kingdom of the Jewish nation, the prophecy given through Moses reached its fulfillment. It said that “a ruler will not fail from Judah, nor a leader from his loins, until he comes for whom it is reserved,” and it shows that he would be the expectation of the nations. [a] The prediction remained unfulfilled for as long as they were allowed to live under rulers from their own nation, beginning with Moses himself and lasting until the reign of Augustus. Under Augustus, Herod, the first foreigner, was entrusted by the Romans with rule over the Jews. As Josephus records, he was an Idumean on his father’s side and an Arabian on his mother’s. But Africanus, who was no ordinary writer either, says that those who know the facts about him exactly report that Antipater, his father, was the son of a certain Herod of Ascalon, one of the so-called temple slaves of the temple of Apollo. [b] This Antipater was carried off as a child by Idumean robbers and stayed with them, because his father was poor and could not pay a ransom for him. He was brought up in their customs, and later became a friend of Hyrcanus, the high priest of the Jews. His son was the Herod who lived in our Savior’s time. [d] So when the kingdom of the Jews had passed to such a man, the expectation of the nations was already at the door, as the prophecy said, since from that time the rulers and leaders who had governed them in succession from Moses himself came to an end.

Before their captivity and their removal to Babylon they were ruled by kings, beginning with Saul first, and David. Before the kings, rulers called judges governed them, who themselves came after Moses and his successor Joshua. After the return from Babylon they continued, without a break, to live under an aristocratic constitution with an oligarchy, for the priests were in charge of affairs. This lasted until Pompey, the Roman general, came upon them, took Jerusalem by storm, and defiled the holy places, going into the innermost sanctuary of the temple. The man who by succession from his ancestors had remained until that time both king and high priest—his name was Aristobulus—Pompey sent in chains to Rome with his children. He gave the high priesthood to Hyrcanus, Aristobulus’s brother, and from that time made the whole Jewish nation pay tribute to the Romans. [e] Soon after, Hyrcanus, the last in the succession of the high priests, was taken prisoner by the Parthians. Then Herod, the first foreigner, as I said, was entrusted with the Jewish nation by the Roman senate and the emperor Augustus. [f] In his time the coming of Christ plainly took place, and the expected salvation and calling of the nations followed, as the prophecy said. From that time the rulers and leaders from Judah—I mean those of the Jewish nation—came to an end, and naturally the high priesthood, which from their ancestors had passed in steady order to the nearest heirs, generation by generation, was at once thrown into confusion. [g]

You have Josephus as a trustworthy witness of these things too. He shows that when Herod was entrusted with the kingdom by the Romans, he no longer appointed high priests from the ancient line, but gave the honor to obscure men. His son Archelaus did the same as Herod in appointing the priests, and after him so did the Romans, who took over the rule of the Jews. [h] The same writer shows that Herod was the first to lock up the high priest’s sacred robe under his own seal, no longer allowing the high priests to keep it in their own charge. Archelaus did the same after him, and the Romans after Archelaus. [i] Let this be said to prove that another prophecy has been fulfilled at the appearance of our Savior Jesus Christ. In Daniel the word expressly gives a number of weeks until Christ the ruler, a subject we have dealt with in other works, and it most plainly prophesies that after those weeks are completed, the anointing among the Jews will be utterly destroyed. This is clearly shown to have been fulfilled at the time of the birth of our Savior Jesus Christ. We have had to set this out first, to establish the truth of the dates. [j]