(12) Since Moses never came himself beyond Jordan, nor particularly to Mount Gerizzim, and since these Samaritans have a tradition among them, related here by Dr.Hudson, from Reland, who was very skillful in Jewish and Samaritan learning, that in the days of Uzzi or Ozis the high priest, 1 Chronicles 6:6; the ark and other sacred vessels were, by God's command, laid up or hidden in Mount Gerizzim, it is highly probable that this was the foolish foundation the present Samaritans went upon, in the sedition here described.
(13) This mention of the high priest's sacred garments received seven days before a festival, and purified in those days against a festival, as having been polluted by being in the custody of heathens, in Josephus, agrees well with the traditions of the Talmudists, as Reland here observes.Nor is there any question but the three feasts here mentioned were the passover, pentecost, and feast of tabernacles; and the fast so called by way of distinction, as Acts 27:9, was the great day of expiation.
(14) This calculation, from all Josephus's Greek copies, is exactly right; for since Herod died about September, in the fourth year before the Christian era, and Tiberius began, as is well known, Aug.19, A.D.14, it is evident that the thirty-seventh year of Philip, reckoned from his father's death, was the twentieth of Tiberius, or near the end of A.D.33, [the very year of our Savior's death also,] or, however, in the beginning of the next year, A.D.34.This Philip the tetrarch seems to have been the best of all the posterity of Herod, for his love of peace, and his love of justice.
An excellent example this.
(15) This Herod seems to have had the additional name of Philip, as Antipus was named Herod-Antipas: and as Antipus and Antipater seem to be in a manner the very same name, yet were the names of two sons of Herod the Great; so might Philip the tetrarch and this Herod-Philip be two different sons of the same father, all which Grotias observes on Matthew 14:3.Nor was it, as I with Grotias and others of the Philip the tetrarch, but this Herod-Philip, whose wife Herod the tetrarch had married, and that in her first husband's lifetime, and when her first husband had issue by her-; for which adulterous and incestuous marriage John the Baptist justly reproved Herod the tetrarch, and for which reproof Salome, the daughter of Herodias by her first husband Herod-Philip, who was still alive, occasioned him to be unjustly beheaded.
(16) Whether this sudden extinction of almost the entire lineage of Herod the Great, which was very numerous, as we are both here and in the next section informed, was not in part as a punishment for the gross incests they were frequently guilty of, in marrying their own nephews and nieces, well deserves to be considered.See Leviticus 18:6, 7; 21:10; and Noldius, De Herod, No.269, 270.
(17) There are coins still extant of this Eraess, as Spanheim informs us.Spanheim also informs us of a coin still extant of this Jotape, daughter of the king of Commageus.
(18) Spanheim observes, that we have here an instance of the Attic quantity of use-money, which was the eighth part of the original sum, or 12 per cent., for such is the proportion of 2500to 20,000.
(19) The governor of the Jews there.
(20) Tiberius, junior of Germanicus.
(21) This high commendation of Antonia for marrying but once, given here, and supported elsewhere; Antiq.B.XVII.ch.13.
sect.4, and this, notwithstanding the strongest temptations, shows how honorable single marriages were both among the Jews and Romans, in the days of Josephus and of the apostles, and takes away much of that surprise which the modern Protestants have at those laws of the apostles, where no widows, but those who had been the wives of one husband only, are taken into the church list; and no bishops, priests, or deacons are allowed to marry more than once, without leaving off to officiate as clergymen any longer.See Luke 2:36; 1 Timothy 5:11, 12; 3:2, 12; Titus 1:10;Constit.Apost.B.II.sect.1, 2; B.VI.sect.17; Can.B.
XVII,; Grot.in Luc.ii.36; and Resports.ad Consult.Cassand.
p.44; and Cotelet.in Constit.B.VI.sect.17.And note, that Tertullian owns this law against second marriages of the clergy had been once at least executed in his time; and heavily complains elsewhere, that the breach thereof had not been always punished by the catholics, as it ought to have been.Jerome, speaking of the ill reputation of marrying twice, says, that no such person could be chosen into the clergy in his days; which Augustine testifies also; and for Epiphanius, rather earlier, he is clear and full to the same purpose, and says that law obtained over the whole catholic church in his days,--as the places in the forecited authors inform us.