104 A History of Judaism
families from whose ranks the High Priest was appointed became a new
ruling elite in Jerusalem.^23
The Romans arrogated to themselves the selection of the High Priest,
reverting to the system of appointment by the suzerain power which
had been standard until the rise of the Hasmonaean dynasty. Some of
the priests selected came from the families which had been favoured by
Herod, but the family of Ananus son of Sethi, appointed in 6 ce by
Quirinius to replace the incumbent Joazar son of Boethus who had
proved unable to suppress opposition to the census, owed their position
entirely to Roman patronage. Of the seventeen High Priests who served
in the Temple between 6 ce and 66 ce, five were sons of Ananus, and
one (Caiaphas, the High Priest who condemned Jesus according to the
Gospel accounts) was Ananus’ son- in- law.
Roman rule through such carefully selected High Priests was thrown
into turmoil in 40 ce by the megalomaniac plans of the emperor Gaius
Caligula. Prompted by hostile Greeks who drew his attention to the fail-
ure of Jews to worship the emperor as a god as they themselves did, and
unimpressed by Jewish claims that praying to the Jewish God on behalf
of the emperor was just as good, Caligula ordered Petronius, the gov-
ernor of Syria, to place a cult statue of himself in the Jerusalem Temple.
On his arrival at Ptolemais on his way to Jerusalem, Petronius was met
by mass demonstrations and hesitated to carry out his orders. What
would eventually have happened if the statue had been erected can only
be guessed at, since Caligula was assassinated in 41 ce before his plan
was put into action.
Chief among those who pleaded with Caligula not to desecrate the
Jerusalem Temple was his friend Agrippa I, the grandson of Herod, and
Agrippa I also played a crucial role in ensuring the accession of Claudius
as emperor following Caligula’s assassination. As a reward from
Claudius, the selection of the High Priest was deputed by the Roman
state to Agrippa I from 41 to 44 ce, along with rule over a kingdom as
extensive as his grandfather’s. On Agrippa’s sudden death in 44 ce,
‘eaten up by worms’ according to the Acts of the Apostles, his kingdom
was again divided and Judaea returned to rule by a Roman governor,
but curatorship of the Temple was transferred to his brother, Herod of
Chalcis. Following a short hiatus after Herod of Chalcis himself died in
48 ce, oversight of the Temple was exercised by Agrippa’s son, Agrippa
II, from c. 50 ce to the outbreak of revolt against Rome in 66 ce.^24
The start of the revolt was marked in spring 66 ce by the symbolic
refusal of the Jerusalem priests to continue to offer up the traditional