Page 134 - Gnosis volume 2

126

servative Jewish spirit. Its members were converted to Judaism but their Idumean

origins were responsible for a certain spirit of independence towards their milieu. This

attitude explains the politics they pursued with the Sanhedrin on the one hand and with

the Roman authorities on the other.

Now, Herod Antipas, who was reigning at the time of the Forerunner's ministry, was

well disposed to John the Baptist whom he considered as a just and holy man.
But St. John reproached him for marrying Herodias, who was his niece and his

brother, Herod-Philip's former wife. Herodias managed to bring about John the Baptist's

arrest first and, finally, his execution.

From the esoteric point of view, it is important to analyse, in the measure in
which the scriptures allow it, the causes for the Forerunner's elimination. Did Herodias

act on her own account out of vengeance, or was she the instrument of the forces of

darkness which utilized her for their ends? And were these forces not at work already
when Herod the Great tried to do away with the child Jesus in ordering the massacre of

the innocents? But one must admit that the birth of the King of the Jews, foretold by the

Magi, did not represent an imminent personal danger to Herod but only a distant threat.
21
After an agitated reign, Herod the Great had attained the ripe old age of seventy two

and was to die one year after Christ's birth. But St. Matthew tells us that he

21
Herod the Great, called the Ascalonite, son of Antipater, prime minister of Hyrcan II, the
last of the Macchabees, was born in the year 72 B.C.