The Days of Our Loves, Herod Style

If you like those soap opera type stories of dysfunctional families or maybe royal palace intrigue, you need look no further than the New Testament, the histories of Josephus, and the lives of the Herod Family.

Herod the Great was the patriarch of this particular and peculiar family and, as you may recall, he ruled Palestine from about 36 BCE to 4 BCE. History records that he was, quite literally, an evil genius. He was a great builder who was responsible for rebuilding the temple of Jerusalem, the fortress at Masada, and many other colossal projects. He was a savvy business man and a partner of Cleopatra in a business venture that extracted tar from the natural tar pits near the Dead Sea and used it to create a sort of primitive asphalt which they sold all over the Roman empire.

He was also criminally insane – paranoid and depressive — seeing conspiracies threatening his rule, everywhere he looked, and, as a result, was responsible for the execution of several of his wives and sons.

This is the Herod who met the three Magi and was responsible for the slaughter of the innocent children of Bethlehem shortly after the birth of Jesus.

He died in 4 BC, about the time of Jesus’s birth, and, by all accounts, his death from chronic kidney disease and gangrene was long, slow, and excruciatingly painful as befits a villain of his stature but adding to his depression and paranoia.

When he finally died, his will divided his kingdom among three of his sons:   

Herod Archelaus was given the territories of Samaria, Judea, and Edom but, within a very short time, proved himself to be totally incompetent and was deposed by Caesar Augustus in favor of a Roman prefect named Valerius Gratus who was replaced in 29 CE by Pontius Pilate.

Herod Philip received the “territories east of Jordan,” the specific boundaries of which we do not know, today.

Herod Antipas was given the region known as Galilee where he reigned for 41 years.

At some point, around 30 CE, Herod Antipas traveled to Rome on some unspecified business and, since his half-brother, Philip, had a house there, he was invited to stay with Philip and his wife, Herodias, for the length of this stay.

It wasn’t long before Antipas and Herodias found themselves drawn to each other and engaged in a torrid affair behind Philip’s back and before Antipas left, he and Herodias pledged to divorce their respective spouses and marry each other. As anyone who has seen more than a few episodes of “Dallas” or “The Guiding Light” can tell you, this was a bad idea.

Antipas’ wife heard about the plan and, knowing that the Herod men had, in the past, practiced a kind of divorce that involved having their wives accused of treason and then having them executed, she fled to her father, Aretas, king of Nabatea, who could not countenance such an insult to his daughter and vowed revenge against Antipas, a story that is also fascinating but need not concern us, here.

Meanwhile, Herodias declared herself divorced from Philip.

Jewish law, at this time, did not allow a woman to divorce her husband but Herodias and Philip and Antipas were all Roman citizens and Roman law did allow it. So she filed the appropriate papers and off she went to join Antipas in Galilee. (The historian, Josephus, allows that she also had another husband before Philip from which she never bothered to get divorced but, again, that does not concern us here.)

What concerns us, here, is that she married her husband’s brother while her husband was still alive and, according to Jewish law, in those days, that was considered incest.

Enter, John the Baptist…

Coda: Flashback by Mark

Before we go there, we need to pause for a moment and find this story in the text so we can appreciate Mark’s understanding of context.

Last week’s story ended with Jesus giving his disciples instructions for going out to spread the gospel. He told them to travel light, be a good guest wherever they stayed, and, if their ministry was rejected, to shake it off and move on to someplace else.

As the disciples walked off into the sunset, Mark paused to bring us up to date on the life and ministry of John the Baptist using a literary device known as a flashback. We know it’s a flashback because earlier, in chapter 1, verse 14, Mark told us that Jesus did not start his ministry until “after John was arrested.”

In chapter 6 Jesus’ ministry is well underway, so this is a flashback to chapter 1. As soon as the flashback ends, Jesus’ disciples will return from their missionary journey and tell Jesus how it went, but while they’re gone and we’re waiting for them to return, Mark takes a few moments to fill in some narrative holes.

Now, Back to the Story

Up to this point John the Baptist and Herod Antipas have enjoyed a fairly tolerable, if not cordial, relationship. We are told that Herod “liked to listen to him.” Some scholars believe that means that Herod listened to John from a distance and was a fan of his rhetorical skills. Others believe that he may have invited John into the palace for lively discussions about theology and Jewish law and whatnot. (They didn’t have television or Facebook^®, so those kinds of discussions were a popular form of entertainment among the aristocracy of that time and place.)

All that is about to end, however.

John told Herod that his marriage was an incestuous one, illegal and immoral, and he must divorce himself from Herodias and send her, and her daughter, (now, Herod’s stepdaughter and niece) away.

Herodias caught wind of this and got scared. She had gone “all in” with Herod Antipas. If he kicked her out she has nowhere to go. She has burned her bridges with her ex-husband. She and her daughter will be, literally, on the street. There’s also that thing that has to be in the back of her mind about the Herod men having their ex-wives executed on trumped up charges.

She went to Antipas, threw a hissy fit and told him that she was deeply offended by John the Baptist and, who does he think he is, anyway? Why, in any other country if a man — prophet or not –— said something like that about the king and the queen he would be put to death, immediately. And that is what she thought should be done to the Baptist.

But Herod Antipas was reluctant to do this because he kind of liked John and he enjoyed their talks. Besides, John was a righteous and holy man who, according to Jewish law, at least, was right. So instead of having him killed, he took John into what many scholars believe was a kind of protective custody. He was under arrest but probably treated pretty well, considering. This way Herod and John could continue to have their talks and play chess or whatever.

But Herodias didn’t like her husband talking to John, at all, so she held a grudge and bid her time.

A few weeks later, Herod threw himself a big birthday party. He invited all his courtiers, officers, the satraps, governors, and other high ranking officials of Galilee and, in the Roman tradition, it was a multi-day, drunken, blowout of a party.

At one point during the party his stepdaughter/niece, who was named Herodias, after her mother, came in and danced for Herod and his guests.

She was not named Salome, by the way.

Coda: Whence “Salome”?

Salome was the name given to her by the Jewish Roman historian, Josephus who wrote his Antiquities of the Jews in about 93-94 CE. By the mid to late 1800’s the story of the palace intrigue that led to John the Baptist’s execution was the stuff of much fascination for artists and writers in Europe.

 It was in1891 while visiting France and experimenting with the styles of the symbolist and decadent movements that Oscar Wilde wrote his play, Salome which was loosely based on the biblical account. It was also Wilde’s version of the events which dubbed Salome’s dance the “Dance of the Seven Veils,” a kind of seductive striptease.

In the play, however, it was Salome herself (not her mother) who called for John’s execution because she was angry with him for being immune to her seductive charms and, in return for her duplicity and cruelty, Herod had her killed by his bodyguard.

As I said, it was “loosely” based on the biblical account.¹

Now Back to the Story, Again…

Whether Herod was simply an enthusiastic patron of the art of dance, or a drunken letch being seduced by his teenage stepdaughter, we cannot know, but he offered to reward the girl for her wonderful dance and told her she could name her own prize, anything she wanted, up to half of his kingdom.

Confused and a little taken aback by the generosity of Herod’s offer, she ran to her mother and asked for her advice and, here, Herodias saw her chance and took it.

“What shall I ask for?” the girl asked.

Mother replied, “The head of John the Baptist.”

The daughter wasted not a minute in returning to Herod. “I want you to give me, at once, the head of John the Baptist on a platter.”

Mark told us that Herod was “deeply grieved yet, out of regard for his oaths and his guests, he did not want to refuse her.” He sent a member of his bodyguard with orders to see to the execution and when the head of the Baptist was brought forth, the girl received it without a qualm or a hesitation and, in turn, gave it to her mother.

Mark concluded the story by telling us that, when John’s disciples heard about his death they came, took his body, and laid it in a tomb.

The Story, Then

The story of the death of John the Baptist achieved several things for Mark and his immediate audience who were very probably dealing with a cult of John the Baptist who were still, even thirty years after his death, revering and even worshiping him as the messiah.

First it shows us that Jesus was not the reincarnation of John the Baptist or Elijah or one of the other Old Testament prophets. He was a unique individual as was his cousin, John the Baptist.

Second, it shows that John the Baptist was not raised from the dead as some were, no doubt, claiming was the case. Here, in the story, Mark puts that claim right out on the table. Herod says, along with some unnamed others, that they think Jesus may be John the Baptist raised from the dead.

With this story, Mark laid that notion to rest.

Here, Mark made it clear that John was a prophet of God who was martyred for speaking truth to power as was sometimes the case with prophets. The Lives of the Prophets, an apocryphal book written at some time during the life of Jesus, said that many of the ancient prophets died this kind of death.

Isaiah of Jerusalem was, according to legend, sawed in half for confronting King Manasseh.

Jeremiah was allegedly stoned to death for speaking an unpopular truth to the ancient Egyptians.

Ezekiel was supposedly “killed by the Chaldeans.”

Micah was ordered executed by King Jehoram.

Amos was said to have been tortured by Amaziah the high priest and murdered by Amaziah’s son.

Zechariah Ben Jehoiada was beheaded beside the altar in the temple by order of King Jehoash.

It didn’t stop there, in the Old Testament; by the time Mark wrote his gospel it is likely that Paul had been beheaded, Peter had been crucified, James the brother of Jesus, had been thrown from the wall of the temple, then stoned and beaten to death, James the son of Zebedee had been executed by Herod Agrippa, Andrew was crucified in Greece, and Stephen had been stoned to death, all for speaking truth to power.

John the Baptist was one in the endless line of splendor that was the prophetic tradition.

But he was not the messiah. And that was, to a great degree, Mark’s point in telling us this story. But he had another point as well.

The Story, Now

For us, the story of John the Baptist’s death is the story of two men and two promises.

Herod Antipas was the king whose worldly power was the power of life and death over others. He had the power to take a life but he was powerless to save the life of an innocent man whose only crime was telling the truth.

Desperate, afraid, and exposed, Herod was willing to sacrifice the life of another, an innocent, in order to maintain his honor, his prestige, and his power.

John the Baptist, on the other hand, was the innocent, the exact opposite of Herod, who was willing to sacrifice himself in order to maintain God’s word and God’s will for the sake of all the people.

Herod was the king whose promise became his prison, who found himself bound hand and foot by his own words, unable to act except in the cause of self-preservation.

John was the pauper, the desert hermit, dressed in animal skins, who was so detached from his sense of self that he was able to speak truth to power with no thought of the personal consequence.

Herod was a symbol of the old way, the empire who ruled by the power of violence, oppression, and despair.

John was the harbinger of the one who was coming, the one who would announce the dawn of a new kingdom, a kingdom of love, and light, and life, even Jesus, the messiah, the Christ, the Son of the living God, in whose name we are this day come together, and whose name we have taken upon ourselves when we choose to be called Christian.

Amen.

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1. Because it was illegal, during his lifetime, for biblical characters to be portrayed on stage, Wilde never saw Salome performed. Richard Strauss did bases his opera, however, upon a German translation of Wilde’s play. A movie version of the play, directed by Al Pacino, was completed in 2013 but released theatrically only in the United Kingdom. DVD versions are available but not widely.