Coincidence III.2: Herod and His Servants
The Alleged Coincidence
In Matthew we read about Herod Antipas’s reaction to Jesus’s fame:
At that time Herod the ruler heard reports about Jesus, and he said to his servants, “This is John the Baptist; he has been raised from the dead, and for this reason these powers are at work in him.” (Matt. 14:1–2) 1
Mark has a very similar passage (6:14–16). But whereas both Mark and Matthew report Herod’s belief that Jesus is John the Baptist raised from the dead, only Matthew says that Herod spoke about Jesus to his servants. This difference inspires McGrew to ask, “How could Matthew know, in the usual course of events, what Herod was saying to his servants?” 2
The answer supposedly comes from Luke. In a passage unrelated to Herod—a point stressed by McGrew—Luke lists some female followers of Jesus’s. Along with Mary Magdalene, Susanna, and “many others”, Luke mentions “Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza” (Luke 8:3). Therefore, according to McGrew, Matthew knew what Herod was saying to his servants about Jesus because the information passed from Herod’s servants, to Chuza, to Joanna, and finally to Jesus’s followers.
Thus, the passages allegedly coincide because Luke’s detail about Joanna explains how Matthew knew what Herod was saying to his servants.
First Failure: No Coincidence
The passages don’t coincide. We don’t need Luke’s detail about Joanna to explain Matthew’s detail about Herod.
When McGrew asks how did Matthew know what Herod said to his servants, she’s assuming Matthew’s account is historical. But another obvious answer to McGrew’s question is that Matthew didn’t know what Herod said to his servants. He imagined it. He got the story from Mark, one of his sources, and imagines Herod talking to his servants. 3
This explanation is perfectly satisfactory. Moreover, it’s a better explanation than McGrew’s because it’s simpler. McGrew’s explanation requires the following postulations be true: (1) Joanna really was a follower of Jesus, (2) Joanna really was married to Chuza, (3) Chuza really was a servant of Herod, (4) Herod really did say what Matthew reports, (5) Herod really did say it to his servants, (6) the servants really did report it to Chuza, (7) Chuza really did report it to Joanna, and (8) Joanna really did report it to Matthew. In contrast, all that my explanation postulates is that (1) Matthew copies the story from Mark, and (2) Matthew imagines Herod talking to his servants.
Therefore, there’s no coincidence here. Luke is not needed to explain Matthew, and that Matthew invented the detail about the servants is a better explanation than McGrew’s.
Second Failure: No Evidence for Reliability
Since the alleged coincidence can be rejected, it cannot be used as evidence for reliability.
But what about the fact that Luke’s detail about Joanna could explain Matthew’s detail about Herod and his servants, if the latter is historical? Should that make me think Herod really did talk to his servants about Jesus being the resurrected John the Baptist?
Of course not. Speculation is not evidence, and speculation is all that McGrew provides. Speculating that Joanna might have been Matthew’s source isn’t evidence that she was, nor is speculating that she might have been the source for Matthew’s detail evidence that the detail is true.
Third Failure: No Evidence for Eyewitness Testimony
Since the alleged coincidence can be rejected, it cannot be used as evidence for eyewitness testimony.
But what about the fact that Luke’s detail about Joanna could explain Matthew’s detail about Herod and his servants, if the latter is historical? Should that make me think these details are coming from eyewitnesses?
Of course not. Even if the details are reliable, they could have come to Matthew and Luke via oral and literary traditions. That Joanna was a follower of Jesus’s doesn’t mean she provided the group any or all the details about Herod we find in the Gospels. But even if she were the ultimate source for the detail about Herod and his servants we find in Matthew, Matthew himself could have gotten the detail from oral and literary traditions, not from Joanna.
Conclusion: A Failure in Plain View
Luke’s detail about Joanna isn’t needed to explain Matthew’s detail about Herod and his servants—Matthew could easily have imagined Herod speaking about Jesus to his servants. Nor does Luke’s detail constitute evidence that Joanna was one of Matthew’s sources for this detail or any other about Herod. McGrew’s claim that Joanna was the source is just speculation, and speculation is not evidence.
Thus, this alleged coincidence can be rejected as a failure.
Evidence Against Reliable Eyewitness Testimony
In both Mark’s and Matthew’s accounts, after relating that Herod concludes that Jesus is John the Baptist resurrected, they describe the death of John the Baptist. According to them, during Herod’s birthday party, Herodias’s daughter requests the Baptist’s head. 4
We’ve seen that McGrew thinks Joanna was the source of Matthew’s information about Herod speaking to his servants about Jesus. Would McGrew also think Joanna is the source for the details of John the Baptist’s death? Probably. But she shouldn’t. The story is almost certainly unhistorical.
First, it’s full of mistakes. Both Matthew and Mark say that Herodias had been the wife of Antipas’s brother Philip (actually half-brother), but Herodias had never been married to Philip. Philip’s wife was actually “Herodias’s daughter, Salome”. 5 Herodias was instead married to Herod’s half-brother, Herod II, who “was an otherwise unknown son of Herod the Great by his wife Mariamme II, daughter of the High Priest Simon”. 6 Also, Mark 6:22 mistakenly refers to Herodias as Antipas’s daughter, and Mark 6:14 mistakenly refers to Antipas as “King Herod”, who was a tetrarch, not a king. 7
Second, the story betrays literary influences. Herod’s offer to his daughter of up to half his kingdom parallels the king’s offer to Esther (Esther 5:3, 6), and the story of the Baptist, Antipas, and Herodias parallels the story of Elijah, Ahab, and Jezebel (1 Kings 17–19). And, of course, there is the obvious foreshadowing of Jesus’s fate: A ruler is pressured into executing a prophet of God, whose body is then laid in a tomb by his disciples (Mark 6:29 // Matt. 14:12). These allusions and parallels make it clear that the story of the Baptist’s beheading is a literary creation.
And third, the story is hugely implausible. Herodias’s daughter was a royal princess, and royal princesses don’t dance before men at birthday parties. As Steve Mason writes, “Such erotic dancing was in the job description of slaves, not of elite women, for whom it would be scandalous.” 8
For these reasons, we can be confident the story is unhistorical. Two points follow from this conclusion. First, the story is strong evidence that the Gospels aren’t composed exclusively of reliable eyewitness testimony, but that they contain invented stories. Second, Luke’s mention of Joanna among Jesus’s followers cannot be used to establish that anything the Gospels say about Herod is reliable, since the story of Baptist’s beheading in Mark and Matthew is clearly fictionalized.
- Unless otherwise noted, I use the NRSVue for all biblical translations. ↩
- I’m using the Kindle version of McGrew’s book, Hidden in Plain View: Undesigned Coincidences in the Gospels and Acts (DeWard, 2017), making page numbers useless. Unless otherwise noted, all quotations from McGrew in this post come from Chapter III, section “2. Herod and His Servants”. McGrew also asks, “Why does Matthew specify that Herod spoke about this to his servants?” But she never answers this question in her discussion. She does suggest that Herod knew about Chuza’s connection to Jesus, but this suggestion can only explain why Herod spoke to his servants about Jesus; it doesn’t explain why Matthew specifies that Herod spoke to his servants. McGrew would probably say Matthew specifies Herod spoke to his servants because he knew it was true. But this explanation doesn’t require Luke, and so is not answered by a coincidence. ↩
- In an endnote, McGrew argues that the fact that Matthew mentions Herod’s servants whereas Mark doesn’t is evidence that Matthew had “access to independent information not found in any other Gospel, despite the fact that in other respects Matthew might be thought to be simply taking the passage from Mark” (McGrew, Hidden in Plain View, Chapter III, n.7). This argument is fallacious since, as I argue, Matthew himself could easily have imagined the detail about the servants. ↩
- Mark 6:21–29 // Matt. 14:6–12. Luke mentions that Herod beheaded the Baptist (Luke 9:9), but doesn’t mention a birthday party or that the beheading was done at the request of Herodias’s daughter. ↩
- Amy-Jill Levine, “Visions of Kingdoms: From Pompey to the First Jewish Revolt,” in The Oxford History of the Biblical World, ed. Michael D. Coogan (Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 480. ↩
- Steve Mason, Josephus and the New Testament, 2nd ed. (Hendrickson Publishers, 2003), p. 157. Some modern historians call Herod II “Herod Philip” because Mark and Matthew say Herodias was married to a Philip. But there is no ancient evidence that Herod II was ever called Philip, so Mark and Matthew are probably erroneously referring to Herod Antipas’s other half-brother, Philip the Tetrarch, who was never married to Herodias. ↩
- Mark 6:22 reads, per the NRSVue, “When his daughter Herodias came in and danced . . .”. Later scribes changed it to “When the daughter of Herodias herself came in and danced . . .” (my emphasis). ↩
- Mason, Josephus and the New Testament, p. 161. ↩