Philip the Tetrarch
Philip the Tetrarch, was the son of Herod the Great and his fifth wife, Cleopatra of Jerusalem. As a tetrarch, i.e. ruler over one of the four unequal parts into which his father's kingdom was divided, namely the northeastern one, he maintained his rule from Herod's death in 4 BCE until his own in 34 CE. This arrangement is known as the Herodian tetrarchy, all four heirs remaining client rulers of Rome, like Herod himself. The other three were his half-brothers Herod Antipas and Herod Archelaus, and his aunt Salome I. He is not the same person as Herod the Younger, whom some writers call Herod Philip I. To distinguish the two, he is called Herod Philip II by some writers.
Territory
Philip ruled territories which the Gospel of Luke lists as Iturea and Trachonitis and Flavius Josephus lists as Gaulanitis, Trachonitis and Paneas as well as Batanea, Trachonitis, Auranitis, and "a certain part of what is called the House of Zenodorus".As the capital of his tetrarchy, Philip rebuilt the city of Caesarea Philippi, calling it by his own name to distinguish it from the Caesarea on the sea-coast.
Marriage and dynasty
Philip married Salome, also a member of the Herodian dynasty. This Salome is usually identified as the daughter of Philip's niece Herodias and his brother Herod the Younger. This Salome appears in the Bible in connection with the beheading of John the Baptist.However, there would have great difference in their ages: Salome was born ca. 14 CE, at which time Herod Philip was 39 years old. Hence, some scholars supposed that Philip was married to another Salome, his own half-sister by that same name, a daughter of Herod the Great and his 8th wife Elpis. This Salome was born 14 BCE, and so only twelve years younger than Herod Philip. But this would also be the only known occurrence of the children of Herod the Great intermarrying, even if from different mothers. Marriages to first cousins and uncles, however, were relatively common in the Herodian dynasty.
Kokkinos, on the other hand, argues that Philip never married any Salome but rather Herodias and that the traditional reading of these marriages were due to a mistake by Josephus.
Naming convention
There is no contemporary evidence for Philip the Tetrarch's use of the name "Herod Philip" as a dynastic title, as did occur with his brothers Herod Antipas and Herod Archelaus.; Neither Josephus nor the gospels preface Philip's name by the dynastic name "Herod".This conventional naming ultimately derives from references to the first husband of Herodias. While Josephus calls him "Herod", the gospels of Matthew and Mark call him "Philip". Some authors combined the names "Herod" and "Philip" to form the conventional name "Herod Philip ". While this was intended to distinguish him from Philip the Tetrarch, the latter subsequently was also called "Herod Philip ", with numerals again distinguishing the two. Kokkinos calls the convention a "stubborn insistence" and "without any value".;
Years of reign
There are various problems in determining the beginning and ending years of the reign of Philip. The first problem is whether he reigned 32, 36, or 37 years, all of which variants appear in different copies of the relevant passage in Josephus. This issue has now been settled by the coins that Philip issued during his reign. The dated coins are from his years 5, 12, 16, 19, 30, 34, and 37, thus determining that 37 was the original figure in Josephus.The second problem is matching Philip's 37th and last year with the reign of Tiberius, so that an absolute date can be assigned. Here again there are variants in the passage just cited in Josephus : Some texts of Josephus say Philip's death was in the twentieth year of Tiberius, as appears in modern versions, or in Tiberius’s twenty-second year, "as given in the many Latin manuscripts issued before AD 1455. Adding to the ambiguity is whether Josephus was using 'factual' years for the reign of Tiberius or by calendar years starting on January 1". Steinmann and Young conclude that Josephus used the factual method for Roman emperors, as is suggested by his giving their reign lengths in the exact terms of years, months, and days rather than just years as he does for Judean rulers.
Philip issued a coin that gives to which he assigns year 19 of reign. This coin honors Tiberius as the new emperor after Tiberius took the throne of Rome on the death of Augustus in August of 14 CE. Philip’s coin commemorating Tiberius's emperorship could only have been issued after the news of the death of Augustus reached Judea, which would have been after the start of the Judean regnal year that began in Tishri of 14 CE. Since this places Philip's coin of year 19 as the year beginning in Tishri of 14 CE, his year 37, in which he died, would have eighteen years later, in the Judean regnal year that began in Tishri of 32 CE. This rules out the variants of Josephus that have Philip dying in the 22nd year of Tiberius, which would have begun by factual reckoning in August of 35, but it is consistent with the twentieth factual year, which began in August of 33. The overlap of these two counting systems, the Judean with Tishri-based years and the Roman with years from the start of emperorship, thereby narrows the death of Philip to the period from September 18 to October 14 of 33 CE.
In order to ensure accuracy, the foregoing discussion used, for Judean rulers such as Philip, the Judean method of starting the regnal year in the lunar month of Tishri. The first day of Tishri occurs in either September or October of the Roman-based calendar that we use to this day. That Judeans in the first century BCE and the first century CE used a Tishri-based calendar for governmental affairs, which would include the reigns of Judean kings and tetrarchs, is made explicit by Josephus in Antiquities 1.81/1.3.3:
After relating that Moses instituted Nisan as the first month for festivals and "everything related to divine worship“, he continues: ... "concerning, however, buying and selling and the other financial administration he preserved the earlier arrangement". The lexicons give the meaning of dioikasin as "administration, management“, or "control, government, administration, treasury department". There is no meaning of "ordinary affairs" as rendered by Whiston and later Thackeray. By using the word dioikasis, Josephus clearly meant that the affairs of government were according to a Tishri-based calendar, and it is unfortunate that Thackeray apparently followed Whiston in rendering this Greek word in English. Josephus was stating that all activities other than those related to divinely mandated religious observances would be reckoned by a fall calendar that started with the first day of Tishri.
Since the evidence of the coins is that Philip reigned 37 years, and his final year began in Tishri of 32 CE, he must have reckoned the start of his reign, 37 years earlier, in the year that began in Tishri of 5 BCE. This is the year Herod the Great died in the old Schürer chronology, 4 BC, It contradicts the newer chronology of Filmer, Finegan, and Steinmann that dates Herod's death to the spring of 1 BCE. The conclusion must be that Philip counted the year his father died in as the first year of his own reign.