Greetings subscribers! A couple of weeks back, I noted a book project conceived during my most recent visit to Mount Athos and blessed by the Abbot of Vatopedi.
The book is tentatively titled The Supporting Cast of the Gospels: The Names and Fates of Those Who Met Jesus.
The volume catalogues the ancillary characters of the Gospels, whom I’ve dubbed “supporting cast,” and offers a brief account of the traditions, biblical and extra-biblical, about these figures. Following each account, I discuss the source material, its dating, its status in the Orthodox Church, and its reliability.
Two weeks ago, I shared the Table of Contents and the Introduction. In addition, I announced that I would be releasing (over the next 15 weeks) these chapters in groups of three, some free and others paywalled. Last week, I released the first installment, looking at Zechariah and Elizabeth, the mother and father of John the Baptist, as well as Joseph, the betrothed of Mary. Today, we look at King Herod, Symeon, and John the Baptist.
Be watching for more in the coming weeks. If you wish to unlock the whole of these stories, become a paid subscriber. Enjoy!
A quick reminder before jumping in: The East-West Series—a comprehensive 33-episode exploration of the theological differences between Eastern and Western Christianity—is now out of pre-production and well into production, with blocks 1 and 2 filmed (episodes 1-18) and the remaining two blocks scheduled to be completed in October. Post-production is underway in tandem with filming, and the first three episodes will drop at the end of October, followed by weekly releases.
We are currently crowdfunding the series at the lowest price it will ever be available—an offer that expires on October 15. Visit theeastwestseries.com to support or purchase the series and explore various tiers and benefits, including one-on-one meetings, Q&A access, and class participation.
I recommend readers visit the first post in this series and read the Introduction to the volume, if you haven’t already. You can find it HERE.
King Herod
Reigning as King of Judea under the authority of the Roman Senate, Herod consolidated his power through a combination of political savvy, military force, and grand architectural projects—including the expansion of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. However, his reign was marked by cruelty and severe paranoia, which led him to execute multiple members of his own family—including his beloved wife Mariamne, her mother, his brother-in-law, and three of his own sons whom he suspected of plotting against him.
Toward the end of his life, while suffering from a terminal illness, Wise Men (or Magi) arrived in Jerusalem from the East (Persia), inquiring: “Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we have seen His star in the East and have come to worship Him.” Alarmed by the prospect of a rival king born of David’s line, Herod’s paranoia flared. He assembled the chief priests and scribes, who identified Bethlehem as the prophesied birthplace of the Messiah. Under a facade of piety, Herod summoned the Magi and instructed them to search diligently for the child, reporting back to him once the boy is found, so that he, too, could come and honor him.
After finding and honoring the infant Christ with gifts of gold (kingship), frankincense (divinity), and myrrh (death), the Magi were warned by God in a dream not to return to Herod. So, they departed to their own country by another route. Realizing he had been outwitted, Herod flew into a violent rage. He dispatched soldiers to Bethlehem and all its surrounding borders under strict order to slaughter every male child two years old and younger. Through an angelic warning in a dream to Joseph, the Holy Family fled to Egypt before the massacre, escaping Herod’s wrath.
According to early Christian historians and Jewish records, Herod’s murderous cruelty reached its peak on his deathbed at his palace in Jericho. Suffering from severe ulcerations, internal putrefaction, gangrene, and uncontrollable spasms, his agonizing death was viewed by contemporary observers as divine retribution for his impiety and the slaughter of innocent children. Shortly before his death, he ordered the prominent Jewish leaders of the nation to be imprisoned in the hippodrome, commanding that they be executed the moment he died to ensure that the nation would weep at his passing. Upon his death, his orders were ignored by his sister Salome, and his kingdom was subsequently divided by Rome among his surviving sons.
Source Material
The primary scriptural foundation for Herod the Great is established in the Gospel according to Matthew (2:1–22), which records the arrival of the Magi, Herod’s consultation with the chief priests, his deceitful request, his rage upon being outwitted, the Massacre of the innocents in Bethlehem, and his death. He is also referenced in Luke’s Gospel (1:5) as setting the historical timeframe for the announcement of the birth of John the Baptist.
Outside of Scripture, Herod’s life, family background (as an Idumean convert), political alliance with Mark Antony and Augustus, architectural achievements, and extensive family murders are all documented by the first-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus in Antiquities of the Jews (Books 14–17) and The Jewish War (Book 1). Josephus details the gruesome nature of Herod’s final illness in Jericho (Antiquities, Book 17, Chapter 6) and his failed plot to force national mourning by ordering the execution of Jewish nobility upon his death. Roman historical tradition also recorded his murderous reputation. The 5th-century Latin writer Macrobius (Saturnalia, 2.4.11) noted a famous quip attributed to Emperor Augustus: “It is better to be Herod’s pig than his son”—playing, of course, on Jewish dietary laws.
In patristic literature, John Chrysostom (c. 347–407) in his Homilies on Matthew (Homily 6–9) treats Herod as the archetypal tyrant, driven by demonic envy and earthly pride. Chrysostom notes the folly of Herod’s attempt to wage war against God’s own prophesied plans, highlighting that the slaughter of the infants failed to kill Christ—while also ensuring his own damnation and eternal crowns for the martyred infants.
Within the Eastern Orthodox Church, Herod is remembered purely as a ruthless tyrant who sought to kill Christ to protect his own earthly reign. The Gospel account of his massacre in Bethlehem is received as divinely inspired Scripture. The children slain by his order are canonized in the Orthodox Church as the 14,000 Holy Innocents (Infants) of Bethlehem, solemnly commemorated as the first martyrs for Christ on December 29. The historical accounts of his gruesome death in Jericho and his political cruelty preserved by Josephus and patristic historians are received in Eastern Orthodox tradition as authentic, highly authoritative historical records demonstrating divine judgment.
Symeon
During the reign of King Ptolemy II of Egypt in the third century before Christ, seventy-two learned Jewish scholars were selected to translate the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek for the Library of Alexandria. Among these chosen elders was the righteous Symeon. As he was translating the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, he reached the prophecy that declares a virgin will conceive and bear a son. Reasoning that such a thing is impossible, Symeon presumed the original text must contain an error and prepared to scrape the word from the parchment, intending to replace it with the word for young woman—thereby correcting the error.
Before his pen could touch the page, an angel of the Lord stayed his hand, forbidding him from changing the holy text. The angel revealed to him that the prophecy was true, a virgin would indeed conceive, and because Symeon doubted God’s power, he would not see death until his own eyes beheld the fulfillment of the prophecy: the birth of the Messiah from a virgin.
Desiring confirmation of this divine mandate, Symeon took his personal signet ring and cast it into the deep waters of a nearby river, and if God truly intended to preserve his life for this miracle, then his ring would return to him. The following day, Symeon purchased a fish at the local market, and upon cutting it open, he discovered his signet ring intact within its belly. Humbled by the miracle, he accepted not only the prophecy but the divine decree that he would live to see the virgin-born Messiah.
For roughly three centuries, Symeon lived in patient expectation, watching generations pass while his own earthly stay was prolonged. Having advanced to an unnaturally long age, he served in the Temple at Jerusalem—always waiting. At long last, the three-hundred-and-sixty-year-old elder, led by the Holy Spirit, entered the Temple on the day the Virgin Mary and the righteous Joseph brought the forty-day-old Infant Jesus to fulfill the custom of the Law. Taking the Child into his arms, Symeon recognized the long-awaited Messiah and the Mother who had born Him as a virgin. Released finally from the bond of his earthly flesh, he uttered his final prayer, asking God to let His servant depart in peace according to His word, for his eyes had seen the salvation prepared before the face of all people.
Source Material
The scriptural account of Symeon is found in the Gospel according to Luke (2:25–35), which records his righteousness, the promise of the Holy Spirit that he would not die before seeing the Christ, his reception of the infant Jesus in the Temple, his canticle, and his prophecy to the Virgin Mary. The biblical text does not detail his age, his occupation as a translator, or the miraculous sign of the ring.
The identification of Symeon as one of the seventy-two translators of the Septuagint appears in early Christian tradition and patristic commentaries. Church fathers such as Athanasius of Alexandria (c. 296–373) and Cyril of Jerusalem (c. 313–386) see Symeon as a living bridge between the Old and New Covenants, with patristic writers through the fourth and fifth centuries affirming his advanced age as a testimony to the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy. In accord with this sentiment, John Chrysostom (c. 347–407) emphasizes Symeon’s role as the prophetic elder whose prolonged life served as a witness to the Incarnation.1
The fully developed narrative details—specifically his doubt over Isaiah 7:14, the angelic intervention, his three-hundred-and-sixty-year lifespan, and the miracle of the signet ring found inside the fish—are preserved within Eastern Orthodox hagiographical tradition. These details were compiled in works such as The Synaxarion of the Orthodox Church for his feast day on February 3, and later exhaustively codified by Demetrius of Rostov (1651–1709) in his monumental Lives of the Saints.
In the liturgical tradition of the Eastern Church, the memory of St. Symeon is embedded heavily in the Feast of the Meeting of the Lord (Hypapante), celebrated on February 2. The hymnography for this feast, largely composed between the fifth and ninth centuries by hymnographers such as Anatolius of Constantinople (d. 458), Andrew of Crete (c. 660–740), and John of Damascus (c. 676–749), refer frequently to Symeon as the ancient Elder who was loosed from the bonds of long life only after holding the Creator of the world.
Within Orthodox Church tradition, these accounts hold varying levels of canonical status. The scriptural narrative in Luke is received as divinely inspired historical truth. His identity as a Septuagint translator, his extreme age, and his divine stay of death are held in very high regard as authentic Holy Tradition, fully integrated into the Church’s liturgical mind and iconographic canon. The narrative of the signet ring swallowed by a fish is recognized as a pious hagiographical tradition; while it is treated as an illustration of God’s providence, scholarly Orthodox consensus views it as an edifying tradition of the hagiographical genre rather than an article of dogma.
