III. [p. 20.] Mark vi. 17.  “Herod had sent forth, and laid hold upon John, and bound him in prison, for Heredias’ sake, his brother Philip’s wife:  for he had married her.” (See also Matt. xiv. 1—­13; Luke iii. 19.)

With this compare Joseph.  Antiq. 1. xviii. c. 6, sect. 1:—­“He (Herod the tetrareh) made a visit to Herod his brother.—­Here, failing in love with Herodias, the wife of the said Herod, he ventured to make her proposals of marriage."*

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* The affinity of the two accounts is unquestionable; but there is a difference in the name of Herodias’s first husband, which in the evangelist is Philip; in Josephus, Herod.  The difficulty, however, will not appear considerable when we recollect how common it was in those times for the same persons to bear two names.  “Simon, which is called Peter; Lebbeus, whose surname is Thaddeus; Thomas, which is called Didymus; Simeon, who was called Niger; Saul, who was also called Paul.”  The solution is rendered likewise easier in the present case by the consideration that Herod the Great had children by seven or eight wives; that Josephus mentions three of his sons under the name of Herod; that it is nevertheless highly probable that the brothers bore some additional name by which they were distinguished from one another.  Lardner, vol. ii. p. 897. _________

Again, Mark vi. 22.  “And when the daughter of the said Herodias came in and danced.”

With this also compare Joseph.  Antiq. 1. xviii. c. 6, sect. 4.  “Herodias was married to Herod, son of Herod the Great.  They had a daughter, whose name was Salome; after whose birth Herodias, in utter violation of the laws of her country, left her husband, then living, and married Herod the tetrarch of Galilee, her husband’s brother by the father’s side.”

IV. [p. 29.] Acts xii. 1.  “Now, about that time, Herod the king stretched forth his hands, to vex certain of the church.”

In the conclusion of the same chapter, Herod’s death is represented to have taken place soon after this persecution.  The accuracy of our historian, or, rather, the unmeditated coincidence which truth of its own accord produces, is in this instance remarkable.  There was no portion of time for thirty years before, nor ever afterwards, in which there was a king at Jerusalem, a person exercising that authority in Judea, or to whom that title could be applied, except the last three years of this Herod’s life, within which period the transaction recorded in the Acts is stated to have taken place.  This prince was the grandson of Herod the Great.  In the Acts he appears under his family-name of Herod; by Josephus he was called Agrippa.  For proof that he was a king, properly so called, we have the testimony of Josephus, in full and direct terms:—­“Sending for him to his palace, Caligula put a crown upon his head, and appointed him king of the tetrarchie of Philip, intending also to give him the tetrarchie of Lysanias.” (Antiq. xviii. c. 7, sect. 10.) And that Judea was at last, but not until the last, included in his dominions, appears by a subsequent passage of the same Josephus, wherein he tells us that Claudius, by a decree, confirmed to Agrippa the dominion which Caligula had given him; adding also Judea and Samaria, in the utmost extent, as possessed by his grandfather Herod (Antiq. xix. c. 5, sect. 1.).