In verse 15 you have just a little more information about how Herod came to hear. ‘Others said, That it is Elijah’, risen from the dead.
You notice that nobody ever denied the miracles of Christ. Even his greatest enemies had to say, it is demonic; it is by Beelzebub, the prince of the demons that he does these things. The explanation may have been insulting and outrageous and outlandish, but they couldn't just dismiss them. There is only one set of people in the history of the world that actually dismiss the miracles of Christ, and that is atheists. Atheists don't need an explanation. Of course we know that modern atheists weren't there, but nevertheless they don't need an explanation. The people at the time who didn't want to accept that Christ was Messiah, had to think of some good explanation for the miracles. No one denied them. Only atheists deny things, because atheism, though it likes to say, we are the people of reason, they are actually the people who put their head in the sand, in the earth. If they don't agree with something and they can't answer it – whether it something in biological science, which collapses the whole theory of evolution, or whatever it is – they simply ignore it, and bury their reason. Everybody here had to have an explanation, whether they were for Christ, or whether they were against him. The explanation that Herod Antipas selected was that John the Baptist was risen from the dead.