PRAYER contemporary language Almighty God, who called your servant John the Baptist to go before your Son our Lord both in life and death; grant that we who remember his witness may with boldness speak your truth and in humility hear it when it is spoken to us, through Jesus Christ, the firstborn from the dead, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns one God forever and ever. Return to Lectionary Home Page. Webmaster: Charles Wohlers. Last updated: 29 June According to the Synoptic Gospels, Herod, who was tetrarch, or sub-king, of Galilee under the Roman Empire, had imprisoned John the Baptist because he reproved Herod for divorcing his wife Phasaelis, daughter of King Aretas of Nabataea and unlawfully taking Herodias, the wife of his brother Herod Philip I.
John Commentaries for John Acts He was a learned man, with a thorough knowledge of the Scriptures. Commentaries for Acts He told the people to believe in the one coming after him, that is, in Jesus. Debbie McDaniel. Walk the Land in the Footsteps of John the Baptist. Rebekah Montgomery. Ray Pritchard. John the Baptist. The Moody Church: Sermons. John Ankerberg. The Bible Study Hour - Dr. James Boice. The Death of John the Baptist.
The Presentation of John the Baptist Part 1. Real Radio - Jack Hibbs. Sandra Hamer Smith. Emma Danzey. Characters undergo transformations. My perspective here is limited to the textual aspects of Wilde's play and of the libretto by Strauss. In Wilde's play, four characters from Mark's story Herodias, Salome, Herod and John have been joined by new characters, who play supporting roles and, above all, function as discussion partners for the main characters.
In Wilde's play, the story goes as follows. On his birthday, Herod organises a festive dinner at his residence. During that dinner, he shows an unsavoury interest in the youthful and beautiful Salome, his stepdaughter. She leaves the party room in disgust. Outside, on a spacious terrace, she meets Narraboth, who is silently in love with her. There is also an old well in that area, in which John, who carries the Hebrew name Jochanaan here, is imprisoned.
From the cistern, he continues to criticise Herodias loudly because of her illegitimate relationship with Herod. Salome wants to see this ascetic prophet, and Narraboth gets him out of the pit, even though Herod had strictly forbidden to do that.
Jochanaan continues to grumble at Herodias and speaks about the coming Saviour. Salome instantly falls in love with Jochanaan, who is still a young man, and she wants to kiss him, but he takes no notice of her advances. Narraboth is so upset by the princess's tender feelings for the prophet that he commits suicide on the spot.
When Jochanaan descends back into the pit, Herod comes out with his retinue. He is looking for Salome, and he finds her sitting next to the dead Narraboth.
Herodias wants her husband to kill the raving prophet, but he does not do so, because he knows that John is a holy man. He tries to win over Salome by promising that he will give her a place next to himself on the throne, instead of her mother. He would also like to see the princess performing a dance for him. She agrees to perform only if her stepfather declares under oath that he is willing to give her whatever she wishes.
The unsuspecting Antipas swears that he will do that, and then Salome dances the titillating 'dance of the seven veils'. Then, she asks for the head of Jochanaan. The executioner comes back with the cut-off head of Jochanaan on a silver platter. Salome begins to talk to that head, and she kisses it passionately, upon which Herod orders his soldiers to kill the princess. She dies shortly after her beloved one.
Strauss has shortened this long story by deleting a number of lengthy dialogues. In this way, he creates space for the insertion of songs and instrumental music. These forms of expression can sometimes evoke strong emotions from the audience. As a result of these textual changes, Wilde's image of Salome as an inexperienced and fairly innocent young girl is shifting more and more towards a sex-seeking woman.
Continuity and discontinuity. It is still recognisable that Mark's story is based on Wilde's play and Strauss's opera. At the same time, the ancient story has clearly been 'detached' from the biblical original on a number of points:. Salome is now playing the leading role. She has grown into an attractive young woman who still has to find her way on the path of love. Men easily fall in love with her, but she pledges her heart only to Jochanaan.
Her love for Jochanaan in Wilde's version is innovative in comparison with the description of her role in Mark's story. When Jochanaan rejects her, she pursues her own interests. She must and will kiss the head of the prophet, and she manages to do so by claiming his head when she can get everything she wants through Herod's promise under oath. She knows very well what to ask for. She does not have to consult her mother about that, although she makes Herodias happy with her bizarre wish.
That she kisses the severed head of Jochanaan might be a shocking form of necrophilia. New is not that Salome performs a dance during the party Mark tells us that as well , but new is that her dance is a sensual dance, performed on the urgent request of her stepfather, who has been undressing her with his eyes from the start of the dinner and regards her purely as an object of sexual pleasure.
Not all these new elements are as original as they seem. For example, kissing the severed head of Jochanaan is also to be found in the poem Atta Troll by Heinrich Heine, but there it is Herodias who kisses his dead lips. It is remarkable that Wilde attributes this deed to Salome. Such a confusion often occurs in intertextual chains. Characters can be mixed together in the course of a long process of recycling old material.
That is also the case with Salome. That's how she turned into someone she never was, neither in Mark's gospel nor in Josephus' Jewish Antiquities. Recent performances of the opera Salome and The performance of the opera Salome under the direction of Peter Konwitschny in in Amsterdam was positively assessed, but also very negative.
He provided the opera with a happy end, which is very different from the final scene of the Salome by Oscar Wilde and Richard Strauss. In the new staging by Konwitschny, John is beheaded, but he comes back to life later. Is the superstition that Herod Antipas shows in Mark to blame for this? Furthermore, now Salome is not killed at the end as in Wilde and Strauss , so that she can start a new life with Jochanaan. Herod's birthday party has been converted into one large orgy, full of sexual excesses, in the new staging.
The new performance of Salome under the direction of Ivo van Hove in was reacted to with more enthusiasm. At the same time, a film was projected in which she performed this dance naked with Jochanaan, with whom she had fallen in love. There was less praise for the final scene, in which the head on a platter was replaced by a huge bowl with a bloody corpse in it.
Salome takes a bath in that bowl, a kind of baptism, which marks the beginning of a new life for her. Over the top is also that the corpse crawls out of the dish alive and well. These two examples show that most intertextual connections with a biblical story as background are deleted and that the old story is loaded with new content.
This form of deconstruction also regularly occurs in other re-performances of classical plays, for example, from Greek Antiquity. In this article, I have discussed a classical example of a powerful biblical story that can repeatedly be rewritten and reworked into new creations. That may go so far that the new story drifts far from the original.
This is certainly the case in the play by Wilde and especially in the Strauss opera. The fact that Herod and Herodias have an illegitimate and incestuous relationship is already present in Mark.
Wilde and Strauss transformed Mark's story into a new story, in which the characters are keen on sex and eroticism. In recent performances of Strauss' opera, these aspects are sometimes further blown up, to the absurd. By transforming Salome into a licentious young woman, they want to make the oppressive sexual ethics of their own time ridiculous.
These transformations may lead later readers to project the sultry role that Wilde and especially Strauss attribute to Salome, and the sexist image of women connected with it, back to Mark's story. In that case, the message of Mark's story threatens to be silenced.
However, the special matter about intertextuality as a literary phenomenon is that the opposite is also possible. The old story can continue to raise its voice against interpretations made by later readers, preachers and artists.
It remains always possible to reject new interpretations in the light of the original. The author has declared that no competing interests exist.
Author s contributions. This article followed all ethical standards for a research without direct contact with human or animal subjects. This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors. Data availability statement. Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the authors. Bach, A. Bocian, M. Delorme, J. Fischer, B. Flaubert, G. Freedman, D. Getty-Sullivan, M. Hainz, J. Heine, H. Auflage, Atta Troll. Hoffeditz, D. Janes, R. Books , transl. Karakolis, C. A Christian theological strategy', Journal of Biblical Literature 2 , Marcus, J.
A new translation with introduction and commentary , Doubleday, New York. Massenet, J. Opera in four acts , music by J. Massenet to a French libretto by P. Milliet, H. Zanardini, Hartmann, Paris. Meier, J. Rethinking the historical Jesus , vol. Merkel, K. Ikonographie im Wandel , Lang, Bern. Metzger, B. Moreau, G. Neginski, R. The image of a woman who never was. Nestle-Aland, , Price, S. Rotman, M. Strauss, R.
Streete, G. Vander Stichele, C. Van Henten eds. Herodias and Salome at the opera', Lectio Difficilior. De receptie van een Bijbels verhaal in de negentiende eeuw', Vooys. Tijdschrift voor Letteren 7 2 , Weren, W. Wes, M. Wilde, O. A tragedy in one act , transl. En een Florentijns treurspel , transl. Wereldbibliotheek Correspondence : Wim Weren w.
Project Leader: A. This article is an adaptation and extension and English translation of Chapter 10 of my recently published book written in Dutch Weren These cards are consistent with the data from Josephus' Jewish Antiquities.
Some historians assume that Herod Boethos was the first husband of Herodias and Salome's father. In my analysis, I am indebted to Delorme This is an echo of the promise made by King Ahasuerus during a meal to Queen Esther see Es , 6;
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