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.
