Main news for 21 October 2023

The story of Herod's death was understood by his contemporaries as God's punishment for the life this man led and for the manner of rule he practiced. A petty, cowardly tyrant and libertine, a sensualist who did not control himself, Herod, as often happens with such people, was a lover of beautiful theatrical effects.

He had little real power: unlike Herod the Great, the very one on whose conscience lay the blood of the infants of Bethlehem, his successor Herod the Tetrarch, or as the Synodal translation of the New Testament books calls him, the quarter-ruler, possessed only Galilee, remaining, of course, a vassal of Rome. Formally he, like Herod the Great, had the status of a Roman ally, but in practice this status was merely a form of honorary vassalage. Despite all this, Herod imagined himself a real and strong ruler, fearing most of all, however, that someone might overthrow him from the throne.

Apparently these complexes and fears eventually led to the mental illness known to psychiatrists as "Caesar madness," a peculiar form of insanity in which mania for greatness is overlaid with persecution mania. The name of the illness is not accidental: it became an occupational disease of rulers; many rulers of all times and peoples suffered from it. Herod was no exception, and those around him could in no way feel safe because of it: Herod hated and feared even the people closest to him, including his wife and son.

At the same time his pathological self-importance grew: at the end of his life he truly considered himself a god, staging before his subjects something like the scenes that some Roman emperors, such as Nero, so enjoyed. In such scenes he appeared in the image of a pagan deity. His death was agonizing: he died of an unidentified disease from which his body literally rotted. Such a death was understood by his believing contemporaries as punishment from God for all the crimes and sacrileges Herod had committed in life. And this is no surprise: every sin asserted as the norm of life, and Herod's life was precisely an assertion of sin as the norm, is a challenge to God. A challenge to which God cannot fail to respond.

Act 12:21-23

NOTES

Today's reading gives us the chance to see the Kingdom from a new and somewhat unexpected side. It concerns...

Today's reading gives us the chance to see the Kingdom from a new and somewhat unexpected side. It concerns the incident with Peter (vv. 6-11). At first glance it may seem that the miracle that happened to Peter is not very different from the miracles we read about in the Gospel. Yet there is one important difference.

Of course, appearances of angels are quite well known to the authors of the biblical books; references to them occur in both the Old and New Testaments. But earlier every appearance of an angel was regarded as an event that was, to a certain degree, mystical.

Here a clarification is needed: strictly speaking, the Bible knows nothing mystical at all. Mysticism assumes that we live in an originally divided world whose different regions do not intersect with one another at all, or almost not at all. The Bible, however, from its first pages describes the world as one, and any division in it, from the viewpoint of the authors of the biblical books, is the consequence of evil and sin that entered the world. Such division cannot be absolute, and therefore a person who has normal, full relations with God sees the world not as divided, but as God conceived and created it: whole. In such a world God is always near, and one can meet an angel simply while sitting at the entrance to one's own tent, as Abraham did. Yet for the authors of the Old Testament books the Kingdom was still the reality of "the age to come"; its time had not yet arrived. Jesus constantly reminds people that it is near throughout His earthly ministry, revealing it to those ready to see. Still, before Pentecost the Kingdom remained limited in space and time; it was bound to the person of Jesus Himself and moved over the earth together with Him.

Now everything is different: the Kingdom enters the world, no longer limited by any boundaries. It can open anywhere and at any time; it is always near, and what earlier was only partly revealed in a vision now becomes part of the reality in which we live. Earlier, to see the Kingdom one had to look into the future; now one needs only to enter the Kingdom for it to remain always near. The Kingdom becomes the reality of our world. Of course, far from everyone in the world notices it, but it does not become less real because of that. The age to come has become the present age. The Kingdom enters the world.

For all the incredible nature of Peter’s miraculous release from prison, this is a very typical story. This is exactly how everything...

FAQ

Acts 12:23 speaks of the death of Herod, stating that he was eaten by worms. What does history say about this? Or perhaps history records the fact of Herod's bizarre death?

The authoritative historian Flavius Josephus reports approximately the same account concerning the death of Herod, which occurred in A.D. 44, as the Evangelist Luke...

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