The life and work of St. Paul

736 APPENDIX.
of Dor, l who had insulted the Jews by erecting In their synagogue a statue of th
emperor. They had also told with applause that he carried his basket of first-fruits to
the Temple like any ordinary Israelite 2
; and that although every one had to give way in
the streets to the king and his suite, yet Agrippa always yielded the right of road to a
marriage or funeral procession. 3 There were two stories on which they dwelt with
peculiar pleasure. One was that on a single day perhaps that of his arrival at
Jerusalem he offered a thousand holocausts, and that when they had been offered, a
poor man came with two pigeons. The priest refused this sacrifice, on the pretext that
on that day he had been bidden to offer none but royal victims ; but he yielded to the
poor man's earnest solicitation on being told that the pigeons were brought in fulfilment
of a vow that he would daily offer half the produce of his day's work ; and Agrippa
at the Feast
warmly approved of this disobedience of his orders. 4 On another occasion,
of Tabernacles, he received from the hands of the High Priest the roll of the Law, and
without seating himself, read the Lesson for the day, which was Deuteronomy xvii.
14 20. When he came to the words, " Thou mayest not set a stranger over thee which
is not thy brother," the thought of his own Idumsean origin flashed across his mind, and
he burst into tears. But the cry arose on " all sides, Fear not, Agrippa ; thou art our
brother, thou art our brother." 6
There were other tendencies which would win for Agrippa the approval of the people
no less than that of the Pharisees. Such, for instance, were his early abolition of a
house-tax in Jerusalem, which had been felt to be particularly burdensome ; and his
construction of a new quarter of the Holy City, which was called Bezetha. 6 The Kabbis,
indeed, refused to accord to the new district the sanctity of the old, because it had not
been inaugurated by the presence of a king, a prophet, the Urim and Thummim, a
Sanhedrin of seventy-one, two processions, and a choir." It is far from improbable that
this addition to Jerusalem was mainly intended to strengthen its natural defences, and
that Agrippa had formed the secret intention of making himself independent of Home.
If so, his plans were thwarted by the watchful jealousy of Vibius Marsus, 8 who had
succeeded Petronius as Praefect of Syria. He wrote and informed the Emperor of the
suspicious proceedings of Agrippa, and an Imperial rescript commanded the suspension
of these building operations. Petronius had been on terms of intimacy with Agrippa,
but Marsus distrusted and bitterly offended him. 9 After the completion of the magnificent
theatre, and other buildings which he had presented to Berytus, he was visited by
a number of neighbouring princes Antiochus, King of Commagene, Sampsigeramus of
Emesa, Cotys of Lesser Armenia, Polemo of Pontus, and his brother Herod, King of
Chalcis. It is probable that these royal visits were not of a purely complimentary
character, but may have been the nucleus of a plot against the Koman power. If so,
their machinations were scattered to the winds by the contemptuous energy of the
Praefect, who felt a truly Koman indifference for the gilded impotence of these
Oriental vassals. As the gathering took place at Tiberias, he went thither, and Agrippa,
i Jos. Antt. xix. 6, 8. *
Bikkurim, iii. 4 ; Derenbourg, p. 217.
Bab. KethubMth, 17, 1 ; Munk, Palest, p. 571.
*
Vayyikra-rabba, iii.
5
Sota, f. 41, 1, 2. Bat, as Derenbourg points out, there were not wanting some stern Rabbis
who unhesitatingly condemned this "flattery of the king." (See, too, Jost, Gesch. d. Judenthvmt,
420. It is not certain that the anecdote may not refer to Agrippa II.) In continuation of the story
about Babha Ben BuU's advice to Herod the Great to rebuild the Temple, the Talmud adds that the
Romans were by no means willing, but that the task was half done before the return of the
messenger, who had been purposely told to spend three years in his mission. Among other things
the Romans "
said, If thou hast succeeded by violence at home, we have the genealogy here. Thou
art neither a kino, nor the son of a king, but a liberated slave " (Babha Bathra, f. 3, 2).
8
Josephus (B. J. v. 4, 2) says that this word means "New City"; but elsewhere (Antt. rii.
10, 2; 11, l)hu writes it BMh-Zttho, or "House of Olive-trees." In the Syriac version of Acts L
12, eXatwi', olive-yard, is rendered 3tth-Ztho ; and in B. J. ii. 19, 4, Josephus seems to draw a
distinction between Bezetha and the New City (Munk, Palest., p. 45). Derenbourg, however, holds
that Bezetha is a transliteration of the Chaldaic Bet!i Hadta, and that Josephus is right (Palest.,
p. 218).
1 Jer. Sanhedr. i. 8 ; Jos. V. J. v. 4, 2.
* Jew. B. /. a. 11, 1 0. Jos. Antt. xix. 7, 2.