“But when Herod heard thereof, he said, It is John, whom I beheaded: he is risen from the dead.”
But when Herod heard this, he said, John, whom I beheaded, has been raised from the dead! — Herod's specific identification of Jesus with the risen John reveals Herod's guilty conscience about the execution. The whom I beheaded is the admission of the act; the raised from the dead communicates Herod's supernatural explanation for the powers being reported. Herod does not believe in resurrection as a theological principle (the Herodian household was associated with the Sadducees who rejected resurrection) but the powers being reported about Jesus have no other explanation Herod can reach.
Church Fathers on Mark 6:16
It goes on, 'For His name was spread abroad.'
Here we are taught how great was the envy of the Jews. For, lo, they believe that John, of whom it was said that he did no miracle, could rise from the dead, and that, without the witness of any one. But Jesus, approved of God by miracles and signs, whose resurrection, Angles and Apostles, men and women, preached, they chose to believe was carried away by stealth, rather than suppose that He had risen again.
For John confuted many men, when he said, 'Ye generation of vipers.'
Read all 5 entries in the readerCatena Aurea · St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. J. H. Newman · public domain
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