3.19. Women in High Places
CHAPTEE XIX Women in High Places A STUDY of the women of the New Testament, however cursory, would be deficient without some reference to those of the ruling classes whom we occasionally meet in the course of the history. Most of them are members of the Herod family, and for a full account of their lives the reader may be referred to the volume of the present series that is devoted to that family,^ a work which makes it the less necessary for us to go into the details here.
None of these women can be said to belong to the New Testament excepting in a literary and historical way. From a religious standpoint they are of interest to us chiefly because they furnish a dark and terrible background to the portraits of the pure and kindly women that adorn the pages of the sacred book. We could not have a more effective proof of the enormous contrast between Christian character and the worldly character of the time of Christ and the apostles than that which is supplied by comparing the Marys of the gospels, or Lydia and Phoebe and the other saintly women of the epistles, with those disgraceful female characters whose presence in the courts of the Herods sunk these courts to the lowest depths of infamy. Here on Jewish soil are exact imitations of the scandals that Suetonius narrates as going on in the palace of the Caesars at Rome. Thus, now and again, happily but just for a moment, the dark shadow of pagan vice falls across the page of the New Testament, and whenever it does so it heightens the impression of the beauty and holiness of the realm where the new-born citizens, both men and women, have learnt to walk in white robes of holiness.
1. Herodias. — The first of these abandoned women to sully the page of Scripture by her shameful presence there is Herodias. She was the daughter of Aristobulus, who was son to Herod the Great. First she was married to one of her uncles, a disinherited son of Herod the Great, also named Herod. A woman of luscious beauty, she next threw her spell over another of her uncles, Herod Antipas, when he was paying a visit to her husband. This Herod was the king to whom Pilate sent Christ, and who subsequently had the Apostle James beheaded. When he coveted Herodias he had a wife living, the daughter of Aretas, king of Arabia. Thus both were already married.
Moreover, they Avere within the prohibited barriers of consanguinity. But in these dissolute Roman times the halfheathen Herod family made short work of all such obstacles to the attainment of their desires. Antipas permitted his queen to retire to the castle of Machaerus, by the Dead Sea, whence she escaped to her father, who thereupon made war upon his faithless son-in-law, and defeated him in battle.
Meanwhile the bold Herodias had unblushingly deserted her husband and become the consort of the faithless Herod.
Such was the condition of affairs when the prophet of the wilderness raised his voice against the scandalous wickedness of this trebly illegal union. If John the Baptist was the new Elijah, Herodias was more than equal to Jezebel in the devilry of her revenge. The one mitigating feature in the life of Herodias is her fidelity to Herod Antipas amid the misfortunes of his later days. When he was dethroned and disgraced she still clung to him and shared with him his exile to Gaul at the remote town of Lugdunum by the foot of the Pyrenees.
2. Salome.’^ — One shudders to think that such a woman had a daughter. But knowing her origin we cannot be surprised at the degradation of the poor girl in the dissolute court of which we read in the gospel accounts of the murder of John the Baptist. In her flight from her first husband Herodias had brought their daughter with her, depriving the unhappy man of his child as well as his wife. The scene of feasting and drinking at Herod’s birthday feast which the gospels describe is enough to indicate in what sort of a school the girl had been brought up. Yet even there the outrage of decency was amazing when she was allowed to lower herself, princess as she was, to the condition of a professional dancer before a drunken party of lords and magnates. No doubt it was in diaphanous drapery such as is represented in Pompeian frescoes, and with the lascivious gestures that accompanied those disgraceful performances. Cruelty commonly goes with dissoluteness.
Brought up as she had been among scenes of vice and in sight and hearing of wickedness enough to crush and kill all the higher feelings, Salome was hardened beforehand into readiness to obey her mother’s hideous suggestion.
Only a girl thus schooled out of all feminine sympathies could be willing to turn the king’s drunken vow, which gave her so large a range of choice, into an excuse for demanding a prophet’s head to be sei-ved up in mimic mockery, as though it were to bo her own and her mother’s share of the banquet — an unparalleled mingling of bloodthirsty vengeance with sickening jocularity. Such a scene unsexes any woman. Lady Macbeth would shrink from it with horror. Lucrezia Borgia could not be credited with the loathsome combination of devilry and buffoonery. The dreadful Maenads, the serpent-headed Medusa, those mythological monsters of cruelty, are at least tragic throughout. In the case of the murder of John the Baptist it is the admission of vulgar comedy that adds’ the finishing touch of vileness to the scene. And yet Salome lived to be a woman and marry, perhaps to bear children and suckle her babes. But her marriages were true to her family history.
Iler first husband was an uncle, Philip the Tetrarch, a mild and peace-loving man, the solitary member of the Herod family who escaped the family taint of bloodthirsty cruelty.
Such a man was not likely long to satisfy the temper of the daughter of Herodias. So she tried her fortunes with a pccond husband, Aristobulus, the king of Chalcis.
3. Bemice} — Two other women of the Herodian family, also of unsavoury memory, whom we meet with in the New Testament, are the daughters of Agrippa I, viz, Bemice and Drusilla. The elder, Bemice, was first married to her uncle Herod, king of Chalcis. Singularly enough, considering what family she came from, Bernice actually remained with her husband till his death. Then she went to live with her own brother Agrippa II, and dark suspicions were circulated as to their relations. Subsequently Bernice was married to Ptolemon of Cilicia; but she soon left him and returned to her brother. After this she became the mistress of Yespasian, and then of his son Titus, This is the woman who accompanied Agrippa, her brother as we have seen, when the king came in state to C’jEsarea to pay a visit to Festus the Roman procurator. The scene must have been one of truly oriental magnificence. The military officers were there to receive the visitor with all the honours of royalty which these kinglets under the Boman Empire delighted to obtain, and the magnates of the city were present to flatter both Agrippa their visitor and Festus their master.
It was part of the entertainment and a compliment to the Jewish king to hand over to him a prisoner of his own people, if only for a mock trial. Thus Festus setting Paul before Agrippa followed the example of Pilate when that Boman governor in the same office sent Jesus to Herod.
We know how nobly the apostle availed himself of his opportunity, how clearly he told the astounding story of his conversion, and from this went on to set before Agrippa the essence of his gospel message. It was a great occasion, and the inspired apostle rising to it urged his arguments with unwonted force and passion, finally pressing the king with direct questions, which much disconcerted his royal conscience.
Now Bernice was present throughout this memorable scene. She heard the apostle’s thrilling account of his conversion; she heard his declaration about Christ; she heard him speak of the resurrection. What an utterly different world this Jew lived in from that in which she had been brought up! What an entirely new range of ideas he was setting before her! For a moment the golden gates were opened, and she looked into a realm of the very existence of which she had previously had no conception.
It was her first introduction to the spiritual world. Like Balaam, she saw the star afar off. Faint and dim must have been her conception of it. We do not know whether it dwelt much with her. Yet she could not easily forget so impressive a scene. We may suppose it not unlikely that in rare quiet moments the memory of this inspired Jew and his startling message would float back into her mind and perhaps stir some slumbering thoughts of better things than she ever saw in her daily life at court.
4. Drusilla} — Bernice’s younger sister, Drusilla, the second daughter of Agrippa I, had been betrothed in her childhood to a pagan prince named Antiochus Epiphanes; but as this man refused to become a Jew in order to obtain permission to marry her, the compact was broken, and she was given to Azizus, the king of Emesa, that ruler consenting to undergo circumcision as the price of his alliance with the powerful Herod family. Idumeans by birth, and pagans in character, the Herods were always anxious to pose as Jews. So while outraging the moral law of Judaism they were careful to insist on the rite which was recognised as the badge of the race and its religion. But though he won his bride through a humiliating concession to Jewish customs the king of Emesa was not able to retain her. The family taint was in her blood as in that of all the daughters of this corrupt house. No sooner did Felix, the Roman procurator, set his eyes on her than he coveted this fair queen. Josephus tells us that ho obtained the assistance of a Cyprian sorcerer, Simon by name, to win her over, and thus induced her to abandon Azizus and become his wife.^ This would seem to have been a very superfluous device in the case of a woman of the notorious family from which Drusilla had come; for it did not usually require any very powerful spells of magic to lead the daughters of the Herods into marital unfaithfulness.
Now it is as the wife of Felix that Drusilla meets us in the pages of the New Testament. This is earlier than the interview with Agrippa and Bernice just referred to. For two years Felix kept St. Paul in prison at Caesarea in the hope that he would tire him out, and so at last force him to seek his liberation by means of a bribe. During all this time Felix would often send for his captive and hold conferences with him. St. Luke significantly informs us that Drusilla the wife of Felix was a Jewess, connecting this statement with the fact that the Roman governor “ sent for Paul, and heard him concerning the faith in Christ Jesus.” The implied suggestion is that the nationality of the wife of Felix prompted his interest in his prisoner. Perhaps Drusilla was drawn to the apostlo at first only from the idle motive of curiosity. The historian does not tell us whether she was ever present at those conferences with her husband. But if her interest in her wonderful fellowcountryman was at the root of them, it is most probable that she was present. We have no information as to any impression they may have made on her. Since her dissolute husband was deeply affected by the apostle’s trenchant words on the great moral principles of temperance and righteousness, and alarmed to trembling at the warnings he heard of coming judgment, it can scarcely be that they meant nothing to Drusilla. And yet no permanent eflfect was left on Felix, and we have no ground for supposing that his wife yielded to the truth in which she had shown some interest.
It is diflScult for us to read the stories of these four queens — Herodias and her daughter Salome, and the two sisters Bernice and Drusilla, all of them adulteresses, two of them guilty of foulest murder — and not set them apart from their sex as beneath the nature of womankind. There is no reason to minimise their crimes. We cannot compare them with the poor, miserable, outcast women whom Jesus treated so mercifully, because those women, “sinners” as they were called, had become penitents, and probably throughout had been crushed down by poverty and illusage. These gay queens had no excuses to plead in defence of their shameless careers of crime. And yet there is much in heredity, and more in the influence of example. The royal sinners had never known a pure home life.
They had been cradled in wickedness. We regard them as monsters of sin; but we must remember that there was something monstrous about the circumstances with which they had been surrounded from their childhood. It would have been a miracle if ever a virtuous woman had appeared in the family of the Herods. The dreadful picture of the four dissolute queens may serve to show in lurid colours the desperate need of the world at the time when Jesus came with His new method of righteousness to supersede the old attempts at reformation which had ended in ignominious failure. It was the fulness of the times, in part because then the cup of iniquity was full to overflowing. The world that permitted these daughters of the Herods to flaunt their vices in the highest places was on the brink of utter ruin, and fast perishing of its own rottenness. Then Christ was born, and by degrees His people became the salt of the earth, arresting this fearful corruption, and forming the nucleus of a society of pure-minded, clean-living men and women.
5. Pilate^s Wife — One other woman in high position claims our attention. It is in the midst of all the excitement of the trial of Jesus. The weak governor is nearly distracted with conflicting ideas. He is more and more persuaded of the innocence of his prisoner. But the Jews are obstinate. The rulers are determined to have the blood of their victim. The longer Pilate argues with them the hotter their rage grows. He offers the choice of Jesus or Barabbas. They snatch at the offer, but demand Barabbas.
Pilate is at his wits’ end. Then while he is sitting on his chair of judgment before the tumultuous assembly a message is privately brought to him. It comes from his wife, and it is urgent. He must have nothing to do with this righteous man. She has had terrible dreams about him. Pilate has gone too far to draw back. But the uncanny message completes his discomfiture. He cannot see his way to acquit the prisoner in face of that howling crowd. Yet he must clear himself of guilt in the matter, or some dreadful doom foreshadowed by that ominous dream may fall upon him. So he formally renounces responsibility by publicly washing his hands. The impotence of the act must not blind us to the fact that it was all the weak man could brace himself to do in response to his wife’s message.
Nothing is really known about Pilate’s mfe beyond the incident narrated in Mattheio. Tradition, chiefly based on the apocryphal gospel of Nicodemus, has given her the name Claudia Procla, and represented her as a worshipper of the God of Israel; but this has no historical value. It has been pointed out that Augustus had revived an old law forbidding Roman statesmen and legates to take wives with them into the provinces. But under Tiberius the prohibitory mandate had been relaxed again, and now, while it was still preferred that the officials in foreign parts should be celibate, they were allowed to marry, and made responsible for their wives’ conduct. Therefore it was now quite according to custom that Pilate’s wife should be found with her husband at Jerusalem. The passage in Matthew that gives us all our information about Pilate’s wife shows that she knew something of Jesus; for she calls Him “that righteous man.” She was more than convinced of His innocence of the crime for which her husband was trying Him. But it was a dream of the early morning that roused Pilate’s wife to send the warninoy message to her husband. Doubtless she had heard how, late on the previous evening, a request had come to the governor for soldiers to be sent to arrest the Galilean Prophet. This was a dreadful piece of business for her husband to be mixed up in. He had done some discreditable things in his official capacity before, but never anything so out rageously unjust as the condemnation of such a man as Jesus. The subject takes possession of her mind. She cannot shake it off. It passes into her dreams. There it assumes those forms of horror that crowd into a troubled imagination in the helplessness of sleep. Not once only, but again and again, in different ways, the phantasmagoria of dreamland force the same subject upon her attention. That grave face of the weary man with the earnest, piercing eyes, of which she has caught a glimpse in the streets of Jerusalem, haunts her. There is no escaping it. What a terrible reproach speaks from those truthful eyes! And it is her husband who is to give the word that shall condemn Him, innocent as He is; nay, more than innocent, righteous. Condemn this righteous man to death. It is too horrible; it must not be. She starts up from her couch before daylight, hastily summons a servant, and sends her imperative message to the feeble creature who holds the reigns of power in Palestine, and whom she must find it hard to honour as her lord.
It matters not how we account for this dream. We may say it was very natural under the circumstances; or we may hold it to be a message from the world of the unseen.
What we call natural, and what we describe as supernatural, are both equally in the hands of God. But doubtless to Pilate, who was sceptical of all the higher truth, as to many another Roman of his day, a dream would seem to have a deeper significance than the greatest utterance of divine wisdom declared in the daylight of reason.