One of the New Testament’s most unpleasant stories tells of how the great prophet John the Baptist came to be beheaded by the Jewish ruler Herod. Mark 6:14–29 relates that Herod’s wife, Herodias, had earlier been married to Herod’s brother, Philip.
She divorced Philip and married Herod, a violation of Jewish law. John spoke against this, and Herod threw John into prison, though he hesitated to execute John because the public believed John to be God’s prophet.
Herodias despised John for calling her and Herod adulterers, and she found a way to bring about John’s execution: The daughter by her first marriage fascinated Stepfather Herod, and one evening her dancing pleased Herod so much he offered her anything she wished.
She could have had land, palaces, anything. But at her mother’s urging she asked for the head of John the Baptist on a platter. Herod granted the wish, then later wondered if Jesus was John the Baptist brought back from the dead.
Herodias’s daughter is not named in the Bible. The Jewish historian Josephus tells us her name was Salome. According to legend, her famous dance before Herod was the “Dance of the Seven Veils,” in which (we assume) she gradually removed each veil in the manner of a striptease.
See 734 (Oscar Wilde).
