Excerpts
Salome and the Baptist: History and mythology
Excerpt from The Jesus Sayings
Rex Weyler
Princess Salome clutches a silver tray but turns from the severed head wistfully. Her lips pinch tightly, perhaps betraying a life adrift in a moral sea beyond her comprehension. A matron in the shadows touches the girl’s shoulder but averts her aging eyes downward and appears to offer little help. A rugged young jailer delivers the head almost stoically, but not quite. Some misgiving haunts him as well. The dead desert mystic, mouth falling open as if to speak, appears animated, while the three living characters seem lost in private soul-searching. A chilling self-doubt hangs in the air.
This seventeenth century painting by Michelangelo Caravaggio depicts the final scene from the gospel story of John the Baptist. The biblical version of John and Jesus begins with John baptizing followers at the Jordan River. During Jesus’ baptism, the Holy Spirit declares him the son of God. Jesus picks his first disciples from among John’s followers and begins his mission.
In the meantime, John is arrested by Herod Antipas (son of Herod “the Great”). Later, during Antipas’ birthday banquet, his alluring stepdaughter Salome entertains the revellers with a dance. The performance so overwhelms Antipas that he offers Salome a wish; she consults her mother – her stepfather’s young niece, Herodias – and asks for the head of John the Baptist. According to the biblical story, Antipas admires John, feels troubled about the execution, but is compelled by his promise.
What can we make of this story? Is it accurate? Does it reflect history? The desert Baptist had allegedly made a public mockery of King Herod Antipas, and here begins the most famous story in the western world: the life and message of John’s protégé, known to us as Jesus, the Nazarene.
Salome and Herodias
The Herods enjoyed a tightly knit family. Jewish peasants might have whispered “incestuous,” behind their backs. The powerful patriarchs shared a fondness for their young nieces, or even the daughters of their nieces. Their alliances, betrayals, marriages, and peccadilloes remain hopelessly confusing and the Herod family tree becomes a family web strewn with more than a few abandoned wives, bastard sons, and inconvenient corpses. Meanwhile, the young, aspiring heirs enjoyed holidays in Rome, where they curried imperial patronage.
The Herodian women, abused and traded like chattel, were not powerless for one very important reason: they represented the matrilineal bloodline of Jewish royalty. Earlier, in 37 BC, Idumean warlord Herod (so-called “the Great”) helped the Romans depose the Jewish Hasmonean family and thereby won Rome’s blessing as “King of the Jews.” To consolidate his power, Herod divorced his Samaritan wife Malthace, married teenage Hasmonean Mariamne, and then methodically executed her relatives. He dispatched Mariamne herself at the age of 25, but her granddaughter, Herodias, would exert royal influence and appear in biblical stories. Herod blustered through ten wives and countless concubines, leaving fifteen recorded children, including the notorious Herod Antipas, who married Herodias, clashed with our desert baptizer, John, and allegedly met the prisoner Jesus face to face in Jerusalem.
The story of the Baptist’s execution begins when the married Antipas takes a fancy for his niece, Herodias, married to his half-brother Herod Philip. Antipas plots to divorce his wife, who uncovers the scheme and flees to her father, Nabataean king Aretas IV, in the desert southeast of Judea. Aretas, dishonoured by the treatment of his daughter, assembles his army, marches north, and defeats Antipas. This much, at least, the secular historical record supports. In the Bible stories, however, sometime before Aretas arrives for battle, Herod Antipas holds his now famous birthday banquet.
In Mark and Matthew, Salome, Herodias’ daughter by Philip, dances for the assembled men and orders up the head of the Baptist as a prize, but only after consulting with her mother. Herodias allegedly resented John for publicly denouncing her scandalous divorce from Philip and marriage to Antipas. Is this tale of retribution history or legend? Did Herodias barter her daughter to Antipas and his cronies in exchange for revenge against John? Did Antipas bend to the will of Herodias?
Preventing mischief
According to Bible stories, Antipas only carried out the execution of John on the wish of Herodias, his wife, delivered through Salome. In the Mark account (6:17-20), we hear:
Herod had sent and seized John, and bound him in prison for the sake of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife because he had married her. For John had told Herod, “It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife.” And Herodias held a grudge against him, and wanted to kill him. But she could not, for Herod feared John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man, and kept him safe.
Compare this with Jewish historian Josephus, on the other hand, who mentions no birthday banquet, dance, or request for John’s head from Herodias or Salome. Rather:
Herod [Antipas], who feared that the great influence John had over the people might provide him the power and inclination to raise a rebellion … thought it best to put him to death, to prevent any mischief.
What do we learn from these passages? One: John drew a crowd, presumably by his inspired teachings and free atonement. And two: John’s ability to attract and arouse crowds threatened insurrection, providing ample motivation for Antipas to execute him. John’s location, in the desert, east of the Jordan River, heightens the political theatre. Crossing the Jordan, purifying one’s self, and returning to Judea from the wilderness – a reenactment of the legendary Jewish arrival into the promised land – reflected Jewish prophecy regarding the new kingdom. Herod Antipas would not have missed the seditious symbolism. He wanted to be “King of the Jews” like his father, not a mere “Tetrarch,” sharing quarter-power with his half-brothers. Furthermore, his Roman patrons expected him to demonstrate absolute control. Make no mistake: Antipas would not quibble over executing a potential troublemaker.
Blaming Salome and Herodias for John’s murder probably represents later, patriarchal fiction designed to absolve Antipas. Notice the similarity with the gospel depictions of Pilate as a reluctant executioner. By virtue of the historians’ criteria of convergence with the known cultural milieu, Josephus appears trustworthy here: John drew a rebellious crowd and lost his head for it. The young women served as playthings, pawns, and a convenient excuse.
- – -
Michelangelo Caravaggio completed several versions of John the Baptist and Salome. Here is the painting referred to above, Salome with the Head of John the Baptist, completed in 1607 and now held in the National Gallery in London. Caravaggio.
The Josephus passages on John the Baptist, from Antiquities of the Jews XVIII, Chapter 5, compiled by Dr. James D. Tabor, University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
Books about John the Baptist:
The social context of John the Baptist and Jesus: Richard Horsley: Bandits, Prophets, and Messiahs: Popular Movements in the Time of Jesus (Trinity, 1999) and Archaeology, History, and Society in Galilee (Trinity, 1996);
Helmut Koester: Introduction to the New Testament, Volume II: History & Literature of Early Christianity (Walter de Gruyter, 2000) and Ancient Christian Gosepls (Trinity Press, 1990)
The Historical Jesus, John Dominic Crossan (1992), Chapter 11, “John and Jesus.”
Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, The New Complete Works of Josephus (Kregel, 1999), see Book XVIII, Chapter 5.