Agrippa I dies at Caesarea: comparing accounts
About this date: The year follows Agrippa's reign and the return of Judea to Roman provincial administration. No exact day or medical diagnosis is asserted.
Acts and Josephus both recount Agrippa I's death after public acclamation in language appropriate to a god. Their descriptions differ in setting, sequence, and symptoms.
Historical context
Acts places the king's appearance in a dispute involving Tyre and Sidon. Josephus describes festival games, a shining silver garment, abdominal pain, and death after five days.
Key points
- Acts attributes the death to an angel's blow and describes worms.
- Josephus includes an owl as an omen and an illness lasting several days.
- Eusebius quotes Josephus to support a theological reading of Acts, but his quotation should still be compared with Josephus's surviving text.
People
- Herod Agrippa I
Scripture
- Acts 12:20–23 — Agrippa's public address and death as narrated in Acts.
Sources and further reading
- Acts: the death of Herod
The narrative names the king Herod; this is Agrippa I. - Antiquities: Agrippa's final festival
The silver garment, divine acclamation, owl, pain, and five-day illness. - Church History: Eusebius compares the accounts
Read as fourth-century interpretation and quotation, not another contemporary witness.