GEBible — Godless Engineer's Bible App
Matthew 14:1-2 and Mark 6:14-16 report Herod Antipas concluding that Jesus is John the Baptist resurrected — "It is John, whom I beheaded: he is risen from the dead." Luke 9:9 has Herod actively rejecting that identification: he hears the rumor that Jesus might be John risen but says "John have I beheaded: but who is this, of whom I hear such things?" Matthew and Mark have Herod committed to the identification; Luke has him perplexed and skeptical.
People have answered this in several ways; GEBible presents them as equal peers.
Cited passages
At that time, Herod the tetrarch heard the report concerning Jesus, and said to his servants, “This is John the Baptizer. He is risen from the dead. That is why these powers work in him.”
But Herod, when he heard this, said, “This is John, whom I beheaded. He has risen from the dead.”
Now Herod the tetrarch heard of all that was done by him [Jesus]: and he was perplexed, because that it was said of some, that John was risen from the dead; And of some, that Elias had appeared; and of others, that one of the old prophets was risen again. And Herod said, John have I beheaded: but who is this, of whom I hear such things? And he desired to see him. Luke 9:9
Cited passages
Herod said, “I beheaded John, but who is this about whom I hear such things?” He sought to see him.
Examining the tension
What follows is one scholar’s way of reading this disagreement — a critical-historical view that often concludes the texts genuinely disagree. It draws on the peer-reviewed sources listed below and stands as one position among the answers above, presented for transparency, not as GEBible’s position.
How critical scholarship weighs this: Leans toward a genuine contradiction
This summarizes where critical scholarship tends to land on this tension — a report on the field’s center of gravity, not GEBible’s own ruling.
This is a smaller divergence than the major chronological contradictions, but it is a genuine one, and it falls squarely within the documented redactional pattern of the Synoptic Problem. In Mark 6:14-16 several popular theories about Jesus circulate — that he is John raised, that he is Elijah, that he is a prophet like one of old — and Herod Antipas, hearing them, lands firmly on the first: "John, whom I beheaded, has been raised" (Ἰωάννην … οὗτος ἠγέρθη). Mark frames this as the verdict of a guilt-haunted conscience, and the notice triggers the long flashback of John's execution (6:17-29). Matthew 14:1-2 reproduces Mark's portrait essentially intact: Herod tells his servants, "This is John the Baptist; he has been raised from the dead, and that is why these powers are at work in him."
Luke 9:7-9 rewrites the scene. Luke retains the same menu of popular theories but changes Herod's own posture: "Herod was perplexed (διηπόρει), because it was said by some that John had been raised … And Herod said, 'John I beheaded; but who is this about whom I hear such things?' And he sought to see him." Luke's Herod does not adopt the John-redivivus theory; he reports it as something "said by some" and then distances himself from it with a question. The verb διαπορέω denotes genuine bewilderment, not settled conviction. Where Mark and Matthew give a haunted certainty, Luke gives open-ended curiosity.
The harmonization (Bock, Marshall, Blomberg) reads the difference as psychological development: Herod first wavered among competing theories — exactly the perplexity Luke records — and only later, after further reflection, settled on the Baptist identification recorded in Mark and Matthew. On this reading the two reports capture different moments of the same evolving deliberation, and the texts are sequential rather than contradictory. This is coherent at the level of human psychology, and it cannot be excluded.
The difficulty is that all three reports are tied to the same narrative trigger — Herod's reaction on first hearing of Jesus' miracles — and so describe the same moment, not two stages of reflection. Mark and Matthew present the John identification as Herod's conclusion at that point; Luke presents an explicit refusal to conclude at the same point. Critical scholarship (Marcus, Fitzmyer, Bovon) reads this as characteristic Lukan editing. Luke has a specific narrative investment in a curious-but-uncommitted Herod: only Luke includes the saying that "Herod … sought to see" Jesus (9:9), and only Luke supplies the Passion-week scene in which Antipas, having long wished to see Jesus and hoping for a sign, examines and mocks him before returning him to Pilate (Luke 23:6-12). The perplexed, inquisitive Herod of 9:9 is set up precisely to pay off in chapter 23; a Herod already convinced that Jesus was the resurrected Baptist would not fit that later portrait. Luke thus softens Mark's guilt-ridden certainty into curiosity to serve his distinctive Herod material.
Historically, Harold Hoehner's study of Antipas notes that the tetrarch's interest in popular prophetic figures and his political wariness are plausible against the Herodian background, but the historical data do not adjudicate which evangelist's portrait of his inner conclusion is accurate — they only show that either is conceivable for a ruler in his position. The contradiction operates at the level of "what Herod concluded" rather than "what Herod knew": all three agree the John-redivivus rumor reached him; they disagree on whether he embraced it. Mark/Matthew say yes; Luke says he withheld judgment. That is a real, if modest, contradiction, and it is most economically explained as Lukan redaction shaping Herod for the trial scene to come.
Where the critical reading lands: genuine but minor contradiction at the level of Herod's conclusion, best explained by Lukan redaction; the developmental harmonization is psychologically possible but strained against the shared narrative trigger.
Sources for this reading