Hey, my friends.

I'm Matt.

This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast, and we are on the third day of a three-day, little

mini-historical aside on our journey through the Book of Matthew to try to understand Herod

Antipas, the Herod family, and what the very confusing, conflicted, dramatic political

court life was that is going on in the background of the Gospels.

By the time Matthew was written, the original audience would have known about a lot of this

salacious stuff.

They would have formulated strongly held opinions about Pontius Pilate, Tiberius.

The Emperor Caligula, they would have formulated these same strongly held opinions about different

members of the Herod family and who was right and who was wrong in the conflict between

Antipas and Agrippa.

And so because Matthew introduces these political characters into the narrative throughout

the Gospel of Matthew, we have to know a little bit about this in order to position ourselves

to understand and receive the document the way the original audience would.

If we don't try to position ourselves that way when we read the Bible, then we read

it poorly.

And it ultimately is just going to come down to whatever some charismatic person with a

microphone says you ought to think because you're receiving it through that charismatic

person with a microphone's lenses and not through the lenses of the original audience

to whom it was written in the first place.

So this energy that we're putting into this is an attempt to be an end-run round my dumb

...