Note 81 — Chapter I · RELATIONS BETWEEN JESUS AND JOHN THE BAPTIST.

But Josephus and the Evangelists are at variance as to the cause of his imprisonment and execution. According to the latter, the censure which John had pronounced on the marriage of Herod with his (half) brother’s81 wife, was the cause of his imprisonment, and the revengeful cunning of Herodias, at a court festival, of his death: Josephus gives the fear of disturbances, which was awakened in Herod by the formidable train of the Baptist’s followers, as the cause at once of the imprisonment and the execution.82 If these two accounts be considered as distinct and irreconcilable, it may be doubted which of the two deserves the preference. It is not here as in the case of Herod Agrippa’s death, Acts xii. 23, viz., that the New Testament narrative, by intermixing a supernatural cause where Josephus has only a natural one, enables us to prejudge it as unhistorical; on the contrary, we might here give the palm to the evangelical narrative, for the particularity of its details. But on the other hand, it must be considered that that very particularity, and especially the conversion of a political into a personal motive, corresponds fully to the development of the legendary spirit among the people, whose imagination is more at home in domestic than in political circles.83 Meanwhile it is quite possible to reconcile the two narratives. This has been attempted by conjecturing, that the fear of insurrection was the proper cabinet motive for the imprisonment of the Baptist, while the irreverent censure passed on the ruler was thrust forward as the ostensible motive.84 But I greatly doubt whether Herod would designedly expose the scandalous point touched on by John; it is more likely, if a distinction is to be here made between a private and ostensible cause, that the censure of the marriage was the secret reason, and the fear of insurrection disseminated as an excuse for extreme severity.85 Such a distinction, however, is not needed; for Antipas might well fear, that John, by his strong censure of the marriage and the whole course of the tetrarch’s life, might stir up the people into rebellion against him.