Herod Antipas establishes Tiberias, a port on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee in northeastern Israel in 20, naming it for the Roman emperor (Teverya in Hebrew).

He partly models Tiberias on the plan of a Greek polis; although he erects statues in the Greek manner in his palace, his coins bear no images.

He also encourages the Herodians, well-to-do Jews who support him and are tolerant of Roman authority.

The Gentiles who live in Tiberias and other Jewish cities are probably natives of nearby Gentile cities, and many are Syrians, who can probably speak both Aramaic and Greek.

Marcus Julius Agrippa, the son of Antipater, whose suspicious father, Herod the Great, had put him to death, had been sent for education and safety to Rome, where he had grown up in company with the future emperor Tiberius' son Drusus.

After the death of his mother, Agrippa had quickly spent his family's wealth and acquired serious debts.

Agrippa had been obliged to flee Rome in 23 when Drusus died and had settled near Beersheba.

After a brief seclusion, through the mediation of his wife Cypros and his sister Herodias, he had been given a sum of money by his uncle, Herodias' new husband, Herod Antipas, Tetrarch of Galilee and Perea, and had been allowed to take up residence in Tiberias, receiving the rank of aedile in this city, with a small yearly income.

Eventually quarreling with his brother-in-law, he had fled to Flaccus, proconsul of Syria.

Agrippa is convicted soon afterwards through the information of his brother Aristobulus, of having received a bribe from the Damascenes, who wish to purchase his influence with the proconsul, and is again compelled to flee.

The Gospel of Luke states that when Jesus was brought before Pontius Pilate for trial, Pilate handed him over to Antipas, in whose territory Jesus had been active.

However, Antipas sent him back to Pilate.

Antipas had divorced his first wife Phasaelis, the daughter of King Aretas IV of Nabatea, to marry his sister-in-law Herodias, the widow of his brother Philip.

According to the New Testament Gospels, it was John the Baptist's condemnation of this arrangement that led Antipas to have him arrested; John was subsequently put to death.

In the Gospels of Mark and Matthew, Herodias plays a major role in John the Baptist's execution, using her daughter's dance before Antipas and his party guests to ask for the severed head of the Baptist as a reward.

Antipas did not want to put John the Baptist to death, for Antipas liked to listen to John the Baptist preach (Mark 6:20) Furthermore, Antipas may have feared that if John the Baptist were to be put to death, his followers would riot.

The name "Salome" is given to the stepdaughter of Herod Antipas (unnamed in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark) in Josephus's Jewish Antiquities (Book XVIII, Chapter 5, 4):

“Herodias, [...], was married to Herod, the son of Herod the Great, who was born of Mariamne, the daughter of Simon the high priest, who had a daughter, Salome; after whose birth Herodias took upon her to confound the laws of our country, and divorced herself from her husband while he was alive, and was married to Herod, her husband's brother by the father's side, he was tetrarch of Galilee; but her daughter Salome was married to Philip, the son of Herod, and tetrarch of Trachonitis; and as he died childless, Aristobulus, the son of Herod, the brother of Agrippa, married her; they had three sons, Herod, Agrippa, and Aristobulus;...”

Besides provoking his conflict with the Baptist, the tetrarch's divorce adds a personal grievance to previous disputes with Aretas over territory on the border of Perea and Nabatea.

The result is a war that is to prove disastrous for Antipas.

Galilee continues to be governed by the tetrarch Antipas, who is sovereign within his own domain, provided he remains loyal to Rome and maintains peace and stability within his borders.

Antipas' closeness to the imperial family results in his choice as a mediator in the Roman-Parthian talks of 36.

To his credit, the conference is a success, but his haste to report the news to Rome arouses the hostility of Aulus Vitellius, legate of Syria, later emperor.

Aretas IV, the Nabataean king whose daughter Antipas had repudiated, attacks the tetrarch’s realm, inflicting severe damage.

The Emperor's response to appeals from Antipas is to send Vitellius, who, still nursing his resentment, avails himself of every possible delay.

The Roman counteroffensive is abandoned upon the emperor's death in 37 CE.

Antipas has unsuccessfully sought from Caligula the title of king.

Herodias, envious of her brother Agrippa I's success, persuades her husband to denounce him before the Emperor, but the intended victim, who is Caligula's close friend, anticipates Antipas and levies charges, partially true, against him.

Antipas confesses to planning a rebellion against Roman rule with the help of Parthia.

Caligula banishes Antipas to Gaul, where Herodias accompanies him, and her brother adds the tetrarchy of Galilee and Perea to his domains.

…Petronius goes on to Tiberias, capital of Galilee, where he meets a high-profile delegation that makes it clear that they are being asked to accept the impossible.

It appears that there are no overt threats of violence, though it is clearly in the wind, and the harvest (CE 40) is being neglected already, which could bring famine to Tyre and Sidon and other neighboring areas. (Acts. 12. 20 - 24, describes the situation just four years later.)

Petronius withdraws his forces and buys more time while he writes to Caligula with an appeal to change his mind in view of the dangerous course that events are taking.

There are various versions of what happened next.

One has it that the emperor responded with fury and told Petronius to get on as ordered and followed that up with an order for him to commit suicide.

All agree that the one man from whom Caligula would take advice, the suavely persuasive Agrippa, arrived back in Rome previously unaware of what was brewing and persuaded him to offer to rescind the temple order in exchange for Jewish promises not to interfere with the imperial cult outside of Jerusalem.

Vespasian repeatedly attempts to parley for peace with the rebels, who will have none of it.

He is forced to battle the rebels at Tiberias and …

Great events were occurring in Rome while the war in Judea was being won.

The emperor Nero's increasingly erratic behavior in the middle of 68 CE had finally lost him all support for his position.

The Roman Senate, the praetorian guard and several prominent army commanders had conspired for his removal.

When the senate declared Nero an Enemy of the people, he fled Rome and committed suicide.

The newly installed emperor Galba is murdered after just a few months by Otho, a rival, triggering a civil war that comes to be known as the Year of the Four Emperors.

While the Jewish Revolt continues to rage in Palestine, Joseph has remained a prisoner in the Roman camp for two years; his prediction had gained in credibility after the death of Nero in 68, and comes true late in 69, when the popular Vespasian, though previously uninvolved, is also hailed emperor by the legions under his command.

Vespasian decides, upon gaining further widespread support, to return to Rome to claim the throne from the usurper Vitellius, leaving his son Titus to finish the war in Judea.

The agreeable Jewish prisoner is given his freedom and attaches himself to the Roman cause.

The Zealots and revolutionaries like them had been crushed by the Romans following the Jewish-Roman War of 66-73, and had little credibility (the last Zealots died at Masada in 73).

Similarly, the Sadducees, whose teachings were so closely connected to the Temple, had disappeared with the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE.

The Essenes too have disappeared, perhaps because their teachings so diverged from the concerns of the times, perhaps because they were sacked by the Romans at Qumran.

Of all the major Second Temple sects, only the Pharisees remain, poised with teachings directed to all Jews that could replace Temple worship.

Such teachings extended beyond ritual practices.

Following the destruction of the Temple, Rome governs Judea through a Procurator at Caesarea and a Jewish Patriarch and levies the Fiscus Judaicus.

Yohanan ben Zakkai, a leading Pharisee, has been appointed the first Patriarch (the Hebrew word, Nasi, also means prince, or president), and he has reestablished the Sanhedrin at Yavneh under Pharisee control.

Instead of giving tithes to the priests and sacrificing offerings at the (now-destroyed) Temple, the rabbis instruct Jews to give charity.

Moreover, they argue that all Jews should study in local synagogues, because Torah is "the inheritance of the congregation of Jacob" (Deut. 33: 4).

Galilee, especially the city of Tiberias, becomes the center of rabbinic learning after the fall of Jerusalem.