Abstract
The story of John the Baptist’s execution in Mark 6:14–29 has intrigued artists and biblical interpreters alike. The daughter’s dance, Herodias’s grudge, and Herod’s impulsive oath have proven to be fertile ground to speculate on internal motivations and private conversations absent from the Markan account. The daughter has been blamed for John’s death because her erotic dancing tricked Herod into making his promise. Herodias gets blamed for orchestrating the events of the banquet that lead to John’s death. Herod gets blamed for losing control of himself and making an oath without considering the implications. This article reconsiders this scene with attention to the function of the dinner guests who legitimate Herod’s authority, thereby implicating them as much as anyone else in John’s death. Furthermore, John’s execution is compared with the commutation of Julius Jones’s death sentence in Oklahoma in 2021 to highlight the role of the public in determining the exertion of power.
On the evening of July 28, 1999, Paul Howell, a businessman in Edmond, Oklahoma, was gunned down in his parents’ yard in front of his sister and children. The gunman then stole his vehicle. Three suspects and the alleged co-conspirator accused Julius Jones of murdering Howell as part of the carjacking. Jones was tried and convicted in 2002 despite a lack of hard evidence connecting him with the crime. The Oklahoma courts sentenced Jones to death and forty years in prison. His execution was scheduled for November 18, 2021, but with mere hours to spare, Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt commuted his sentence to life without the possibility of parole.
Jones maintains his innocence but has exhausted his appeals. As a cause to reconsider Jones’s role in the homicide, his defenders cite a mishandling of the original evidence, racial bias throughout the investigation and trial, and the professional record of the district attorney who handled Jones’s case. 1 In both September and November of 2021, the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board recommended three to one that Jones’s sentence be commuted to life in prison with the possibility of parole, citing concerns about the evidence used to convict Jones. 2
Jones’s case garnered the attention of The Innocence Project, a nonprofit that works on behalf of the wrongfully convicted, as well as that of celebrities with large social media followings and plenty of public influence, including Baker Mayfield and Kim Kardashian West. More than 1800 students across thirteen different Oklahoma City public schools staged a coordinated walkout on November 17, 2021, to protest the scheduled execution. Protesters gathered in the Oklahoma state capital for four days leading up to Jones’s scheduled execution; their chanting putting pressure on the Governor to grant Jones clemency. 3
Jones was scheduled for execution at 4:00 p.m. CST on November 18, 2021. Governor Stitt’s order to commute Jones’s sentence to life without the possibility of parole was timestamped for 11:47 a.m. and made public at 12:09 p.m. that same day. The statement issued with his executive order reads “After prayerful consideration and reviewing materials presented by all sides of this case, I have determined to commute Julius Jones’s sentence to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.” 4
Jones’s case is an example that under the right conditions, powerless protesters who do not have direct access to determine or interpret policy can and do influence public policy and decision-making. Wouters and Walgrave observe that bringing an issue out in the open by means of protest can influence elected officials directly, by changing their perception of what the public wants (be it accurate or not), or indirectly, by setting in motion and activating public opinion itself, which in turn can put pressure on representatives, either in line with what the protestors want, or against their claims, by encouraging counter-movement mobilization.
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The public’s pressure, especially by their presence at the Oklahoma capital building in the days and hours leading up to Jones’s scheduled execution, likely contributed to Governor Stitt’s last-minute decision.
The Julius Jones protests and Governor Stitt’s subsequent commutation of Jones’s sentence underscores the ways in which political power is legitimated in the United States. Zeynep Tufekci has examined the importance of legitimacy for propping up powerful people. Tufekci writes, “Losing legitimacy is the most important threat to authorities, especially in democracies, because authorities can do only so much for so long to hold on to power under such conditions.” 6 The decisions that politically powerful people make directly impact the legitimacy of their position. Perhaps Governor Stitt’s decision to commute Jones’s sentence did not change the opinion of his committed supporters or staunch opponents, but it likely had an impact on those who were undecided. With 55% of Oklahomans agreeing with Stitt’s decision in the Jones case, nearly the precise margin by which he won his gubernatorial position, his political legitimacy remained intact. 7
The need for powerful figures to maintain their legitimacy is not new. Early American colonists claimed “manifest destiny” to justify their violent and genocidal westward expansion, the English monarchs cited their “divine right” to rule, and the Roman emperor Augustus was declared the son of a god.
Mark 6:14–29 tells another tale of a ruler trying to maintain legitimacy. Herod Antipas was a tetrarch appointed to rule Galilee on behalf of Rome. Herod’s legitimacy, therefore, was primarily derived through his relationship with Rome, a relationship that was not guaranteed. If Rome deemed him a weak or poor ruler, he could be deposed. 8
Herod Antipas is likely best known for his role in the beheading of John the Baptist. Other characters held responsible for John’s death are Herodias (Herod’s wife) and the unnamed daughter (elsewhere named Salome), presumably from Herodias’s first marriage to Antipas’s brother Herod II. While some scholars have discussed the role Herod’s guests play in ensuring John’s execution, I have not found one that explores in detail how the guests participate in Herod’s deadly dinner. I argue, therefore, that Mark’s account of John’s execution highlights the precarity of power and how its performance is never without an audience, an audience that grants or declines legitimacy to that power. Herod’s decision to execute John was an exercise in power performed for and because of his dinner guests and for the purpose of maintaining his legitimacy as a ruler appointed by Rome.
Mark 6:16–29: The blame game
Interpreters have pointed accusing fingers at the various actors in this tale. Herodias is frequently blamed for her role in wanting and asking for John’s death. She is routinely described as wicked, manipulative, conniving, depraved, corrupt, and/or intent on killing John. René Girard reads this entire scene as an illustration of mimetic desire: “the entire text illustrates all of its stages, each produced by the demented logic of the escalation dictated by the immediately preceding stage.” 9 Girard’s reading implicates Herod, Herodias, the daughter, and the guests in John’s death, as they were all participants in the ritualistic sacrifice of John that resolves the conflict caused by the mimetic desire.
Alice Bach argues that Herodias is a femme fatale and that she choreographed the entire performance. 10 Bach blames Herodias, not only for John’s death but also for starting all the trouble with John to begin with: “the killing of the prophet is clearly assigned to the female Herodias. First, her act of adultery has ignited John’s wrath, and then her machinations result in his death.” 11 Problematically, there is no indication in her reading of Herod’s culpability in the “adultery,” that is, their marriage; there is no textual evidence of Herodias choreographing anything, and there is no recognition that Herod compromises himself with his oath.
Pheme Perkins compares Herodias to Jezebel, stating, “As in the Ahab and Jezebel story, this tale shifts the blame away from the king onto the wicked queen.” 12 Mary Ann Tolbert describes Herodias, along with the high priests and Jerusalem religious leaders, as the “epitome of evil for the Gospel of Mark.” 13 Although Florence Gillman attempts a more gracious reading of Herodias, she describes her as “powerful, manipulative, and intent on evil,” even if “Mark appears mostly interested in her cleverness, her determination to take matters into her own hands and to exercise power via the only avenue open to her, familial manipulation.” 14
Jennifer Glancy helpfully analyzes several readings of the passage that unfairly blame Herodias. She cites historical critics Charles Scobie, Carl Kraeling, and Eduard Schweizer, who each read Herodias as scheming and merciless. Glancy notes that literary critics often do the same, citing Mary Ann Tolbert (referenced above), Frank Kermode, and Dan Via as examples. These interpreters read Herodias as a “trickster” and having a “blood greed,” as “cruel and sexually depraved,” and as being sexually corrupt, respectively. 15
Glancy analyzes the text through a gender-critical lens. She writes, Whether or not Mark demonizes women and their capacity for power may be an undecidable question; we can more certainly establish that modern readers have offered interpretations molded by their own fears about female subjectivity.
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Glancy notes that in Mark 6:16, Herod’s fear that “the one whom I decapitated, John, has been raised” frames the execution as being Herod’s responsibility: “The women in the scene have no power that Herod has not given them.” 17 Thus, her reading blames Herod for John’s death. W. J. C. Weren underscores this point, stating “not [the daughter’s] dance but the oath of Herod causes the fatal outcome of the story.” 18
Susan Miller, however, is not convinced by Glancy’s analysis, arguing that “Glancy’s interpretation, however, ignores the cruelty of the women: Herodias instigates the plot to put John the Baptist to death, and her daughter adds that his head should be brought in on a dish.” 19 Miller highlights the implication that Herodias holds some power since John requires protection from her, but that power is the result of her marriage, which John threatens. 20 For Miller, Herodias and her conspiring daughter are responsible for John’s death, with Herod’s responsibility only resulting from his refusal to deny their request. 21
Warren Carter’s reading of the scene recognizes that no one person is to blame for John’s death. He recognizes Herod’s culpability in commanding the execution of John, a result of his failure to perform his masculinity. Carter, however, also notes how Herodias and her daughter act to bring about the execution by negotiating “patriarchal power to accomplish their own goals contrary to Herod’s.” That is to say, the women also act to ensure John’s death. 22 For Carter, this scene reflects the demonic, deadly, dangerous, and destructive nature of Roman power and Herod’s power as Rome’s patron. 23
While some interpreters have recognized that Herod’s dinner guests played some part in John’s death, the guests are often treated as collaterally responsible since they did not step in on John’s behalf. I, however, argue that, because of their status within the Roman order, their silence implicates them as primary actors in John’s death, equally responsible with the Herodians in propping up and legitimating a violent system of power.
Implicating Herod’s guests
The Gospel of Mark is undoubtedly a story about Jesus, yet one of the longest and most detailed scenes in the book is not about Jesus at all. Mark 6:14–29 narrates the circumstances surrounding the execution of John the Baptist. This story reveals Herod as one who acts foolishly regarding his kingdom and who bows to social convention, which, I argue, implicates his party guests as much as anyone else in John’s death.
The setup
The presence and placement of this story is surprising in several ways. As already mentioned, Jesus is not a featured character, quite the twist in a story about Jesus. Second, the story interrupts the mission of the twelve, coming between the narrative account of their actions (6:12–13) and their report to Jesus of those actions (6:30). Finally, John has not appeared in the text since 1:14, in which his arrest appears to be the catalyst for Jesus’s public ministry.
The story’s placement in the middle of the commission of the twelve does raise questions about Mark’s purpose. Lamar Williamson argues that the connection between John and the initial commission of Jesus’s disciples is similar to the connection between John and the initial preaching of Jesus’s own ministry.
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Bach states, In the final version of the Markan account the effect of intercalating the story between two stories of Jesus’ expanding ministry underscores the deep connection between the baptizer John and the one who shall baptize by fire and the Holy Spirit.
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Weren sees the story as both filling in narrative time while the disciples are out doing their ministry works and as heightening the drama around the riskiness of the disciples’ ministry. 26 Glancy notes that, whatever Mark’s intent was, “its length gives it a peculiar importance—it takes only two verses for Judas Iscariot to betray Jesus, for example, (14:10–11).” 27
After six chapters focusing on Jesus, his ministry, and his following, Jesus sends the twelve out as an extension of his ministry. News of this mission and Jesus’s reputation makes its way to Herod. The king, seemingly at a loss for what to think of one so powerful, concludes, “John, whom I beheaded, has been raised” (6:16b NRSV). Herod’s conclusion that Jesus is the risen John moves the narrative that, via a flashback, explains in surprising detail the who and the how of John’s death.
Power and its performance permeate this Gospel. John, described as being influential and comparable to Elijah (1:5–6), declares that Jesus is more powerful than he (1:7), and Jesus’s power is demonstrated throughout the next several chapters through healings and authoritative teaching. At 6:7, Jesus sends his disciples out with authority over unclean spirits, and 6:12–13 indicates they preached repentance and healed the sick. “The principal activities of Jesus—proclamation, exorcism, and healing—characterize the mission of the disciples.” 28 The flashback to John’s execution is no less concerned with power. The “powerful” characters, however, are not Jesus and his disciples. Instead, power is performed by a child, a woman, and an entourage of elite men, including a king. 29
The problem
The primary conflict in this story is Herodias’s grudge against John because he called her marriage to Herod Antipas unlawful. Sometime around 21 to 23 CE, Herod Antipas, while waiting to sail to Rome, visited his brother Herod II and sister-in-law Herodias. Antipas was Herodias’s half-uncle as well as her brother-in-law, endogamy being common. During this visit, according to Josephus, Herod asked Herodias to marry him. 30 She agreed to do so after he returned from Rome, and “it was stipulated that he must oust the daughter of Aretas” (Josephus, Ant. 18.109–11). The divorce of his first wife eventually cost him an embarrassing military defeat at the hands of his former father-in-law, but that episode is beyond the scope of this article.
Josephus does not indicate who initiated Herodias’s divorce from Herod II, but the typical assumption is that she did. Although, according to Jewish custom, women were not allowed to initiate a divorce, Gillman notes that the Herodian family’s “status gave them leeway to depart from the tradition, to make adaptations that would have accorded with Roman custom and perhaps with the customs of various other non-Jewish groups as well.” 31 In short, John’s potential issues with Herod and Herodias’s marriage are three-fold. First, Herodias potentially acted outside the norms of (nonelite) Jewish folks by divorcing her husband Herod II and by entering into marriage with Herod Antipas. Second, the men were half-brothers, which, according to Torah, made the marriage unlawful. 32 Third, Herodias was Herod’s niece. In some Jewish circles, an uncle was forbidden to marry his niece. 33
Herodias’s problem with John’s criticism likely had less to do with differing interpretations of Jewish law than with his threat to her power. Gillman argues that, although Herodias perhaps did love Herod (who can know?), the political benefits of entering into marriage with him were abundant. At the time of Herod’s proposal to Herodias, Antipas had been the tetrarch of Galilee and Peraea for more than two decades. Long established in his client role under the Romans, Antipas had built numerous cities and erected various new palaces for himself.
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John was a threat to her marriage, and therefore her position of power. And Herodias responded as any Herodian worth their salt would: by seeking her opponent’s death.
What if Herod decided to listen to John and divorce Herodias? The fact that Herod had to protect John from Herodias shows both the extent of her power and the regard in which Herod held John. Mark 6:20 illustrates the ambiguous way that Herod viewed John; Herod feared him, recognized he was holy and righteous, protected him, was perplexed by him, and enjoyed listening to him. It is this dynamic between Herodias’s decided hatred for and Herod’s ambiguous fear of John that threatens the king’s honor and leads to John’s death.
The banquet
Once Herodias’s grudge against John has been revealed and readers are told that John is imprisoned (perhaps implying this imprisonment was a form of protection against Herodias), Herod throws himself a birthday dinner, inviting the crème-de-la-crème of Galilee to attend (6:21). These guests, called “those who were reclining together with him” (συνανακειμένοις), are listed as his high officials (τοῖς μεγιστᾶσιν), military commanders (τοῖς χιλιάρχοις), and the elites of Galilee (τοῖς πρώτοις τῆς Γαλιλαίας). This guest list indicates to Susan Miller “that Herod is attempting to portray himself as an imperial ruler and to model his court after the Roman administrators.” 35 Although the group participates in little of the action, they become passively powerful players in the story and are perhaps the most pivotal characters in the scene.
The unnamed daughter is introduced in 6:22 as Herodias’s daughter. 36 As the subject of nine verbs, she, more than any other character in this passage, is the primary acting agent in the narrative. Sharon Betsworth notes, “It is her actions of coming in, dancing, going out, asking, coming in again, and speaking which propel this story forward and which are the catalyst for the death of John the Baptist.” 37
The daughter’s dance has been dramatized and overinterpreted by artists and biblical scholars alike. Janice Capel Anderson, however, reminds readers that “the text itself does not describe the dance. The dance does not even take up a whole sentence.” 38 Two questions arise regarding the daughter’s dance. First, what is the nature of the dance? Is it the innocent dance of a young girl or the sexual dance of a woman? Those who argue for the innocent dance of a young girl often focus on the description of the daughter as κοράσιον. Mark uses this same word to describe Jairus’s twelve-year-old daughter in 5:41–42; in the LXX, the word describes Esther and the other women gathered as potential brides for King Artaxerxes. The term thus denotes a young woman approaching marriageable age.
It is difficult for modern readers to fully grasp that a twelve-year-old girl would not have been thought of as a “child” in the ancient world. Girls could legally be married as young as twelve years old, with the typical elite daughter being married between thirteen and fifteen years of age. 39 Girls were groomed to be married young, manage households, and bear children as soon as possible. When the κοράσιον danced, if she was at least twelve years old, she did not do so as a child; she danced as a young woman of marriageable age. This detail complicates the picture. If she was not a child dancing innocently, at least not by the standards of her culture, was she then a woman dancing sensually?
A sensual dance performed by a woman is by far the more common interpretation of the daughter’s dance. Scholars argue the daughter’s presence at a male-only banquet would be unlikely; the only women present at such events were courtesans and sex workers. Bach argues the daughter “performs as a hetaira (courtesan or party girl).”
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Anderson refers to the Doubleday Illustrated Children’s Bible that portrays the dance as erotic: Then, on the night of the banquet, the beautiful young Salome, daughter of Herodias, had taken up her beads, her bells and her veils, and she had performed an exquisite dance before all the company. It was late in the evening, and wine flowed freely, and Herod found himself overcome by Salome’s charms.
41
Kathleen Corley calls the daughter a “fledgling courtesan.”
42
Particularly interesting, however, is that Corley’s own research into women at meals can lead one to a very different conclusion. She writes, “It was not unreasonable to expect the presence of matrons at a dinner party, albeit in small numbers, but should they remain for the συμπόσιον or participate in frivolous or drunken behavior they could be characterized as prostitutes.”
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Carter argues, This scene is a banquet (6:21), and the term συνανακειμένοις, translated “guests,” literally means “the ones reclining with” (6:22). Corley’s larger argument means we should understand women and men to be present at Herod’s banquet.
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Is the daughter a young child dancing innocently or a woman dancing seductively? I maintain that the age of the daughter and the nature of her dance are ambiguous at best. Anderson sees the daughter and her dance as “mirrors in which Herod, Herodias, and interpreters are reflected.” 45 Whatever the daughter’s intentions may have been in dancing, Herod and his guests were pleased (ἤρεσεν) by the dance (6:22a). This observation raises the second question concerning the dance: What kind of pleasure did Herod and his guests experience?
On one hand, ἤρεσεν can refer to “accommodating someone, or doing something that someone will approve, or find pleasant.” 46 This nonsexual sense of the word can be found in 1 Macc 6:60, 8:21; Rom 15:1–3; and Gal 1:10. On the other hand, it can denote sexual satisfaction, as in Gen 19:8 and Esth 2:4, 9. Carter ponders other possible reactions: “male nonsexual delight? enjoyment of somatic beauty? admiration of artistic skill?” 47 Again, the text is ambiguous. There is no description of the dance, the daughter’s attire, the daughter’s motivations, who instigated the dance, Herod’s reasons for allowing the dance, Herod’s physiological reaction to the dance, or Herod’s private thoughts. There is no indication of how Herodias or the daughter felt about the dance, whether it was improper or amoral. There is no indication as to who initiated the dance or how it fit into the larger birthday festivities. The text only describes Herod’s response with the ambiguous term ἤρεσεν and an oath to give the girl whatever she asks.
The oath
Mark 6:22b transitions the way in which the characters are termed. Herod, being named explicitly seven times in 6:14–22a, is now only called “the king.” Herodias, named three times, now becomes “the mother.” The unnamed daughter is now referred to as “the girl.” The guests of the banquet, referred to initially as those “who were reclining together” (τοῖς συνανακειμένοις), become simply those “who were reclining” (τοὺς ἀνακειμένους), perhaps indicating a degree of separation from Herod.
For Herod and the daughter, the shift to “the king” and “the girl” recalls Greek Esther 5:3, 6; 7:2, in which Artaxerxes thrice makes a similar oath to that of Herod (which Herod makes twice). Herod acts rashly out of response to his pleasure at 6:22b–23: “‘Request for yourself of me that which you want, and I will give it to you.’ And he swore to her, ‘whatever you ask of me, I will give you, as much as half of my kingdom.’” While Esther’s request brings freedom for the Jewish people, the daughter’s request of the king results in the death of a prophet of God. Herod, although identified as a king, was actually a tetrarch appointed by Rome over the region of Galilee. As a tetrarch, he “had no authority to subdivide his kingdom.” 48 In contrast to Artaxerxes, Herod cannot deliver as much as his oath could require.
Gillman suggests that the daughter and the banquet guests would have understood Herod’s oath as hyperbolic speech, 49 but this suggestion underestimates the weight of an oath in the ancient world. An oath is a weighty matter in the biblical texts, and rash oaths are often made at someone else’s expense. In Judg 11, Jephthah makes a vow to God that, in exchange for victory over the Ammonites, he will give the life of whom/whatever first greets him at home upon his arrival. Jephthah returns home from a successful military encounter to be greeted first by his only child. His rash oath results in a death sentence for his daughter. First Samuel 14:24–46 tells of Saul’s rash oath before his troops. He forbids his soldiers from eating until after his vengeance against his enemies is satisfied. His son Jonathan, unfortunately, does not hear the oath and eats some honey. When Saul goes to kill Jonathan, Saul’s soldiers intervene and provide a ransom for Jonathan’s life. 50 Herod, who is juxtaposed to Artaxerxes, is also aligned with two other impulsive and foolish men.
The New Testament indicates that oaths are not to be taken lightly. Matthew’s Jesus forbids any sort of oath at 5:33–37; James 5:12 makes the same prohibition. Within Mark, one finds a second instance of oath making: Peter swears an oath that he does not know Jesus (14:66–72). Although not explicitly forbidden in Mark’s Gospel, one might conclude that swearing is something to avoid.
Herod’s oath puts him in a vulnerable position and threatens the legitimacy of his rule. Carter sees Herod as “impulsive and uncontrolled . . . Being out of control is, in Greco-Roman gender constructions, unmanly, unkingly, feminizing, and womanly.” 51 Herod has publicly handed his power to a κοράσιον. The girl, perhaps unaware or unsure of her power, consults Herodias, now simply “her mother,” saying, “What will I ask?” Although the daughter still retains the power to ask of Herod what she will, she invites her mother to exert it. Herodias’s opportune time has arrived. She replies, “The head of John the Baptist” (6:24). Although Herodias has made her wishes known, she does not do so with a command. The daughter maintains her power.
The story quickens to the typical Markan pace at 6:25: “Immediately, she went in with haste to the king.” The girl not only returns quickly to the king, but her request is impatient and commanding: “I want, right now” the head of John the Baptist. Although she asks the king what her mother suggested, she makes the request her own by adding that she wants his head “on a platter.” In essence, the girl requests that John’s head be presented as one of the dinner courses.
At 6:26, as in 6:20, one encounters a divided Herod. The girl’s request causes the king to be “deeply grieved” (περίλυπος), but “on account of his oaths and because of the ones reclining, he did not want to refuse her.” The term περίλυπος is used one other time in Mark describing Jesus’s intense emotion in Gethsemane. Herod is described as being fearful of John at 6:20. Herod must now decide of whom he is more afraid, John or his dinner guests. Herod’s honor is on the line.
Herodian legitimacy
Honor, authority/power, and legitimacy were intricately linked in the ancient Mediterranean. Authority “involves the ability to exert control over others. This ability extends not just to the sheer power to do so, but the social legitimacy of one’s actions.” 52 Honor is two-fold: “the value of a person in his or her own eyes (that is, one’s claim to worth) plus that person’s value in the eyes of his or her social group.” 53 Bruce Malina describes how a public court of reputation assesses honor for the individual: “publicity, witnesses, are crucial for the acquisition and bestowal of honor . . . public praise can give life, and public ridicule can kill.” 54 Zeba Crook argues that although the public court of reputation may change from situation to situation (or gender to gender), it ultimately determines a person’s honor. The one whose honor is challenged must act according to the public court of reputation’s expectations or else be shamed. 55
James Scott illustrates this idea in his examination of George Orwell’s essay “Shooting the Elephant.” Orwell, as a subinspector of police in colonial Burma, was called upon to deal with an elephant that was in heat and wreaking havoc. When an armed Orwell found the elephant, it was behaving peacefully and no longer appeared threatening. With over 2000 locals watching him, however, he realized that he would have to shoot the elephant anyway. Orwell says in his essay, “The people expected it of me and I had got to do it; I could feel their two thousand wills pressing me forward, irresistibly.” 56 Scott makes an important and relevant point in regard to this story: “the necessary posing of the dominant derives not from weaknesses but from the ideas behind their rule, the kinds of claims they make to legitimacy . . . Actions by elites that publicly contradict the basis of a claim to power are threatening.” 57 Orwell, as an official of the colonizing nation, was a representative of a system that made certain claims to justify its dominance. His decision regarding the fate of the elephant would result in reinforcing that claim or in ridicule. Orwell writes, “And my whole life, every white man’s life in the East, was one long struggle not to be laughed at.” 58 Orwell had to shoot the elephant to legitimate his power.
Consider again the story of Saul and Jonathan in 1 Sam 14. Saul is prepared to fulfill the requirements of his oath, even at his son Jonathan’s expense. Fortunately for Jonathan, the other soldiers intervene and do not allow Saul to kill Jonathan. The soldiers function as Saul’s public court of reputation. They recognize Jonathan’s military value, which causes the group to essentially reassess what is most honorable in the situation. Saul stands at the ready to kill Jonathan (his “elephant”), but his soldiers (the “locals”) do not require the death. Although the text is silent regarding Saul’s motivation for staying his hand, it does state that Jonathan was ransomed and did not die. Saul’s public court of reputation, not Saul himself, determined Jonathan’s fate.
Bach claims that “there is no ethical or ‘right’ voice to guide Herod, since Herodias is as corrupt as her husband and the courtiers do not figure into the story.” 59 This view, however, does not take seriously the influence of a public court of reputation on legitimating authority and honor. Herod has promised the girl up to half of his kingdom. Although it is not technically his to give, it is a claim to (imagined) power and authority, a claim made publicly. Fortunately (or unfortunately) for Herod, the girl requests something he can deliver, the Baptist’s head on a platter. Although some commentators have characterized Herod as weak by giving in to the girl’s request, this episode is an example of a dominant figure conforming to the ideas legitimating his authority. Tolbert notes that Herod “begins well by protecting John but then fails when his own honor and reputation are at stake before his guests.” 60 For Herod, his elephant is John, and his locals are his dinner guests who act as his public court of reputation to assess and ascribe his honor. 61 To act publicly in a manner contradictory to his oath would threaten Herod’s legitimacy. Like Orwell, Herod “is no more free to be himself, to break convention, than a slave would be in the presence of a tyrannical master.” 62 The passive silence of Herod’s public court of reputation seals the fate of John the Baptist.
Herod may have exercised power in making an oath; the girl exercised power by deciding to honor and embellish her mother’s suggestion, but neither have the final say in John’s execution. Herodias, the character most often held responsible, does little more than answer her daughter’s question. Although she may find the most satisfaction in John’s death, she has no power in the outcome of the oath, and her reaction is not mentioned. Herod’s dinner guests, however, the elite of Galilee who sit silently, ensure that Herod fulfills his word. None “calls Herod to his senses (6:22–23), or ‘releases’ him from his oath (6:26), or reminds him he can’t execute the oath because he rules at Rome’s pleasure.” 63 They are the “2000 wills” pressing Herod forward. They exercise an enormous amount of power by their presence; their silence ensures John’s execution.
John is executed in a dishonorable manner. Donahue and Harrington note, “beheading . . . was a type of execution designed to defame the person so treated.” 64 While Herod finds honor in the execution through the fulfillment of his oath, John is shamed. This shaming, however, is not the final word for John. His disciples hear of his execution and “took up his corpse and they laid it in a tomb” (6:29). Donahue and Harrington remind us that “since proper burial was a sign of honor and of divine favor John is honored in death.” 65 In the sight of John’s disciples, a new public court of reputation, his honor is restored.
Conclusions
Mark reveals Herod to be a pawn in a greater social agenda of honor, authority, and legitimacy. Although the king’s rash oath and, at her mother’s suggestion, the girl’s revised request of John’s head create the opportunity and likelihood of John’s death, the guests, functioning as Herod’s public court of reputation, seal John’s fate. As Ched Myers succinctly states, “The dilemma created by the oath is a parody on the shameless methods of decision-making among the elite, a world in which human life is bartered to save royal face.” 66 And among these elite, Herod, Herodias, the daughter, and the guests, none are innocent.
While the circumstances of Governor Stitt’s power and Julius Jones’s incarceration are different from those of Herod and John, the power of public pressure has not changed. The popular movement in support of Julius Jones created a public court of reputation composed of the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board, Republican and Democratic state legislators, media and sport celebrities, and thousands of everyday people in Oklahoma and beyond, all to whom Governor Stitt was subject. Governor Stitt, through his office and the perceptions of power that prop it up, has, in a very real sense, the power of life and death. Fortunately, in this case, the “2000 wills” pressing him forward decided no one needed to die.
Footnotes
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Ruud Wouters and Stefaan Walgrave, “Demonstrating Power: How Protest Persuades Political Representatives,” American Sociological Review 82.2 (2017): 365.
6.
Zeynep Tufekci, “Do Protests Even Work?” The Atlantic, June 24, 2020, https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/06/why-protests-work/613420/?utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share.
7.
8.
According to Josephus, Caligula, Roman emperor from 37 to 41 CE, did exactly that. Josephus claims that Herod wanted Caligula to grant him the title of King as he had done for Herod’s nephew Agrippa. Agrippa convinced Caligula that Herod was conspiring against Caligula; Caligula gave Agrippa Herod’s money and property and exiled Herod to Lugdunum. Ant. 18.181, 240–52; JW 2.181–83.
9.
René Girard, “Scandal and the Dance: Salome in the Gospel of Mark,” New Lit Hist 15.2 (1984): 312.
10.
Alice Bach, “Calling the Shots: Directing Salome’s Dance of Death,” Semeia 74 (1996): 109–10.
11.
Bach, “Calling the Shots,” 106.
12.
Pheme Perkins, “Mark,” in NIB VIII, ed. Leander E. Keck (Nashville: Abingdon, 1994), 598.
13.
Mary Ann Tolbert, “Mark,” in Women’s Bible Commentary, ed. Carol A. Newsom and Sharon H. Ringe (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1998), 359–60.
14.
Florence Gillman, Herodias: At Home in That Fox’s Den, Interfaces, ed. Barbara Green (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2003), 97. Warren Carter reads Gillman’s analysis as suggesting that “the system made Herodias do it—at least in part.” Carter, Mark, Wisdom Commentary, ed. Barbara Reid (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2019), 153.
15.
Jennifer Glancy, “Unveiling Masculinity: The Construction of Gender in Mark 6:17–29,” BibInt 2.1 (1994): 45–49. Glancy cites Charles H.H. Scobie, John the Baptist (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1964); Carl H. Kraeling, John the Baptist (New York: Scribner’s, 1951); Eduard Schweizer, The Good News According to Mark (Atlanta: John Knox, 1976); Tolbert, “Mark”; Frank Kermode, The Genesis of Secrecy: On the Interpretation of Narrative (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979); Dan O. Via Jr., The Ethics of Mark’s Gospel in the Middle of Time (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985).
16.
Glancy, “Unveiling Masculinity,” 34.
17.
Glancy, “Unveiling Masculinity,” 42.
18.
19.
Susan Miller, Women in Mark’s Gospel, JSNTSup 259 (London: T & T Clark, 2004), 78–79.
20.
Miller, Women in Mark’s Gospel, 76.
21.
Miller, Women in Mark’s Gospel, 79.
22.
Carter, Mark, 161–62.
23.
Carter, Mark, 162.
24.
Lamar Williamson Jr., Mark, Interpretation (Atlanta: John Knox, 1983), 123.
25.
Bach, “Calling the Shots,” 105.
26.
Weren, “Herodias and Salome,” 3.
27.
Glancy, “Unveiling Masculinity,” 38.
28.
John R. Donahue and Daniel J. Harrington, The Gospel of Mark, SP 2 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2002), 192.
29.
The “Herodians” are mentioned at 3:6. It is unlikely that this mention refers to Herod and Herodias specifically, as Donahue and Harrington note that “they are supporters of Herod Antipas.” Mark, 116–17. Therefore, chapter 6 is the first introduction to Herod’s family in the Gospel.
30.
Determining the date of Herod and Herodias’s wedding is difficult. See Gillman, Herodias, 26.
31.
Gillman, Herodias, 24.
32.
Lev 18:16 reads, “You shall not uncover the nakedness of your brother’s wife; it is your brother’s nakedness,” and Lev 20:21 says, “If a man takes his brother’s wife, it is impurity; he has uncovered his brother’s nakedness; they shall be childless.” Citations are from the NRSV.
33.
The Damascus Document 5:9–11, 4QHalakhah fragment 12, and the Temple Scroll 66:15–17 all forbid uncle-niece marriage, taking the logical next step from Lev 18:12–14, in which aunt-nephew marriage is forbidden.
34.
Gillman, Herodias, 19.
35.
Miller, Women in Mark’s Gospel, 76.
36.
Some manuscripts indicate that she is Herod’s daughter, also named Herodias. For my argument, her familial relationship with Herod is less significant.
37.
Sharon Betsworth, The Reign of God Is Such as These: A Socio-Literary Analysis of Daughters in the Gospel of Mark (New York: T & T Clark, 2010), 120.
38.
Janice Capel Anderson, “Feminist Criticism: The Dancing Daughter,” in Mark and Method: New Approaches in Biblical Studies, ed. Janice Capel Anderson and Stephen D. Moore, 2nd ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2008), 132.
39.
Betsworth, Reign of God, 54.
40.
Bach, “Calling the Shots,” 107.
41.
Capel Anderson, “Feminist Criticism,” 132.
42.
Kathleen Corley, Private Women, Public Meals: Social Conflict in the Synoptic Tradition (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1993), 95.
43.
Corley, Private Women, 53.
44.
Carter, Mark, 158.
45.
Capel Anderson, “Feminist Criticism,” 129.
46.
Capel Anderson, “Feminist Criticism,” 122.
47.
Carter, Mark, 159.
48.
Donahue and Harrington, Mark, 199.
49.
Gillman, Herodias, 82.
50.
This ransom may have been an animal sacrifice, but Lev 27:1–8 allows for money to be offered instead of a human life.
51.
Carter, Mark, 159.
52.
David Watson, Honor Among Christians: The Cultural Key to the Messianic Secret (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2010), 90–91.
53.
Bruce J. Malina, The New Testament World: Insights from Cultural Anthropology (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 30.
54.
Malina, New Testament World, 40.
55.
Zeba Crook, “Honor, Shame, and Social Status Revisited,” JBL 128.3 (2009): 591–611.
56.
James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 10.
57.
Scott, Domination, 11.
58.
Scott, Domination, 11.
59.
Bach, “Calling the Shots,” 112.
60.
Tolbert, “Mark,” 359–60.
61.
Donahue and Harrington, Mark, 201–202. Donahue and Harrington call this story “a chilling tale of court intrigue and human weakness,” and in their interpretation of the pericope they call Herod “weak-willed” twice.
62.
Scott, Domination, 11.
63.
Carter, Mark, 160.
64.
Donahue and Harrington, Mark, 200.
65.
Donahue and Harrington, Mark, 200.
66.
Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus (New York: Orbis, 1988), 216.