The Bible and Life: Eusebius

Hello everyone. Praise the Lord!

This information was taken from Eusebius' book, The History of the Church.

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John 18:33: "Then Pilate entered into the judgment hall again, and called Jesus, and said unto him, Art thou the King of the Jews?"

Pontus Pilate asked that question as if he knew the answer already. Did Pilate know something? Did he overhear something? He worked closely with the priests. Were they talking about Jesus?

Why did he make such a statement?

But what a minute, Herod was the King of the Jews! Or was he!

When Herod, the first ruler of foreign blood, became King, the prophecy of Moses received its fulfillment: "The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh comes." Genesis 49:10.

Shiloh is a Hebrew word meaning "Peaceful One," or "Gift from God." Jesus was both.

Herod, the first foreigner, was given the Kingdom of the Jews by the Romans. As Josephus relates, he was an Edomite on his father's side and an Arabian on his mother's.

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But Africanus, a famous writer, he was a son of Antipater, and that the latter was the son of a certain Herod of Ascalon, one of the so-called servants of the temple of Apollo. This Antipater, having been taken prisoner while a boy by Edomite robbers, lived with them, because his father, being a poor man, was unable to pay the ransom for him. Growing up with them, he was afterwards befriended by Hyrcanus, the high priests of the Jews. A son of his, was that Herod who lived in the times of Jesus.

When Pompey, the Roman general, took Jerusalem by force in 63 BC, and defiled the holy places by entering the very innermost sanctuary of the temple, Aristobulus, who, by the right had been king and high priest, he sent with his children in chains to Rome; and gave to Hyrcanus, brother of Aristobulus, the high priesthood, while the whole nation of the Jews was made a tributary to the Romans from that time.

But Hyrcanus, who was the last of the regular line of high priests, was very soon afterwards taken prisoner by the Parthians, and Herod, the first foreigner, was made King of the Jewish nation by the Roman Senate and by Augustus.

Under him Christ appeared in bodily shape!