JSNT2SA (2006) 443-467 Copyright 2006 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi) http://JSNT.sagepub.

.com DOI: 10.1177/0142064X06065694

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Why the Daughter of Herodias Must Dance (Mark 6.14-29) Regina Janes
Department of English, Skidmore College Saratoga Springs, NY 12866, USA rjanes@skidmore.edu

Abstract
To some modern scholars' disapproval, Mark's and Matthew's John the Baptist dies because oftwo women and a dance. Historically improbable, but theologically essential, the episode in Mark makes theology through narrative structure, juxtaposing the Baptist's death with the raising of Jairus's daughter through the dance of Herodias's daughter and paralleling Jairus's daughter's rising with Jesus' in Mark's original ending, 16.8. While the two daughters point to resurrection and Jesus' feeding the faithful, Herodias confirms John's identity as Elijah by acting the murderous Jezebel to Herod's sympathetic Ahab. Matthew and Luke embrace Mark's Elijanic identification of the Baptist but alter the Herod-Herodias story to accommodate different theological interests. Erasing the Herodian family altogether, John imitates Mark's structural placement of the Baptist as integral to the promise of resurrection.

Key Words
John the Baptist, death of, Herodias, Mark 6.14-29, narrative structure.

Why does John the Baptist die because of a dancing girl who demands his head on a platter? Why is this story in the Gospels at all, and why is it told only twice (by Mark and Matthew), rather than four times (by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John)? The answer to thefirstquestion used to be 'history', that is how the death of John happened, but scholars have become less confident of the episode's historicity since at least the early twentieth century. The Jesus Seminar represents one recent scholarly consensus when it rates the daughter's dance merely 'possible', and her request for an emplattered head 'improbable' (Tatum 1994: 13, 159-62). Yet if the episode has been reduced from historical fact to scandalous rumor that somehow found its way into Mark, we are no closer to knowing why

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Mark included it or why others did not. The historically improbable, for example, the resurrection of a dead body, is likely to be theologically essential, for example, the resurrection of the body of Christ. The dance (with the platter) clinches Mark's arguments about Jesus' identity and resurrection and illuminates the Gospel's original ending at 16.8. A stone that the builders persist in rejecting, the story of Herodlias's daughter is the chipped cornerstone of the Gospel of Mark. Recounting the prehistory of Jesus' resurrection, '[t]he beginning of the good news ' (Mk 1.1, NRSV), Mark designs the death of John both to double Jesus' death and to contrast with two resurrections, Jesus' own and Jairus's daughter'sa chiasmus: Jesus raises Jairus's daughter and John dies, later Jesus dies and rises. The two women who kill John, bracketed by two women Jesus heals and three who attend his body, are produced in the narrative by Mark's need to demonstrate John's identity as Elijah and to reaffirm through John's death Jesus' resurrection and power to raise others. As Walter Wink argues in his classic study (1968), Mark's Baptist is the secret Elijah to Jesus' secret Messiah. Jesus needs to be announced: it is not enough for the Lord to come suddenly, to his temple, on his own. Robert L. Webb remarks that without the Gospels' placement of John before Jesus, John wouldbe a 'minor character mentioned in Josephus... the subject of a footnote or two in academic writing' (1991:19), but without the Baptist there is either no one for Jesus to be or too many possible identities. Without the prophetic tradition and the scriptures that define God and Christ, Jesus would be no one at all! His life or death would signify no more than that of some anonymous Celt or Scythian crucified by Romans. Within that tradition, as Herod's interlocutors and Jesus' disciples indicate, Jesus could be Elijah, John the Baptist, or one of the prophets. If either Jesus or John is 'one of the prophets', his death at authority'shands is neither new nor surprising. The scriptures, particularly Jeremiah (Jer. 26.8-24; 11.18-23; 20.1-18; 38.4-6; also 1 Kgs 13.4; Josh. 13.22; Deut. 13.1-5), are littered with slaughtered, suffering prophets. Identifying JolmasElijah,Marknarrowsthefieldandsimultaneouslyidentifies Jesus as Lord. As the living John identifies Jesus as Christ, so a dying Elijah enables a dying Messiah, concepts equally unknown to the preChristian Jewish tradition(Wink 1968: 14;Ohler 1999:461-76; Kazmierski 1996: 82).1

1.

Wink observes that 'no non-Christian tradition known to us speaks of the

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A subject for paintings, sculpture and operas from the ninth to the twentieth centuries, the story of the Baptist's death is a flashback intercalated in the sending out of the apostles. Hearing of Jesus, whose 'name had become known' (Mk 6.14), Herod identifies Jesus as John risen from the dead. Arrested 'on account of Herodias, [Herod's] brother Philip's wife', John had attacked Herod's and Herodias's marriage as unlawful. Herodias wants John dead, but Herod 'liked to listen' to one he regarded as 'righteous and holy'. At Herod's birthday fete, the daughter of Herodias dances. Herod promises her whatever she wantsup to half his kingdom, a formula from Esther. She asks her mother, who suggests the head of the Baptist. The girl demands it, at once, on a platter; the king is sorry, but he has made an oath. The executioner beheads John in the prison, brings the head in charger, delivers it to the girl, and the girl gives it to her mother.2 'When his disciples heard about it, they came and took his body, and laid it in a tomb' (Mk 6.29). From that tomb the Baptist does not rise. The tale has not fared well with historical biblical scholars. Wink collected sneers at this 'gory story', sleazy 'bazaar rumor', historically improbable, legendary tissueofscandal woven around the Baptist's execution (1968:10-11). Terence Donaldson (1999:36) and Nicole Wilkinson Duran label the episode 'frankly lurid and gory.. .a brutal anecdote that leads nowhere' (2002: 278). Some scholars find the story so repulsive they skip over it altogether, as C.G. Montefiore did (1968:1,123). Jean Delorme observes that Mk 6.17-29 'could easily be removed from its context' (1998:116). Roger Aus calls it haggada that the author of Mark found 'ready-made' and inserted to explain Herod's action, attaching 6.1729 to w . 14-16 (1988: 69). Duran cites, but does not endorse, Rudolf Bultmann's assessment that the story is 'a legend exhibiting no Christian characteristics' (2002:278). Duran's own powerful reading restores one of Mark's intentions, glossed by a thousand years of painted 'Feasts of Herod': Herod's court illustrates the hopeless corruption of the world Jesus and John must leave, suffering violence (2002:278-84). For feminist critics, notably Jennifer A. Glancy, gender displaces theology as scholarly interetationreproducesthe misogyny of nineteenth-century artists (1994:
sufferings of Elijah'. The view that Elijah precedes the Messiah is now a common Jewish belief, but lacks biblical warrant. Kazmierski contrasts the bizarre notion of the rejected Elijah in Mk 9.13 with the common motif of the rejected prophet. 2. Flaubert and Ren Girard make the head circulate on its platter at the banquet. Flaubert is telling a story, 'Herodias', but Girard's subject is ostensibly Mark, accidentally overwritten by Flaubert (1984: 317).

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43-47). Susan Lochrie Graham, resigned to 'traditional' accounts of a seductive Salome, accepts the wicked women as 'foils' to the good women elsewhere in Mark (1991: 151). Theological readings do better with the elements of Mark's narrative, from John's initial witness to hisfinalplatter: John's death parallels Jesus' resurrection. Although he insists the episode 'is history', Philip Carrington observes that Herod's feast is analogous to Passover, and the episode introduces 'the thought of death and resurrection...openly for the first time'(1960:126,131). For Edwin K.Broadhead, John precedes Jesus 'in proclamation, in imprisonment, and now in execution... Jesus is seen in the image of John (6.14-16, 8.28)... John.. .provides the pattern for the story of Jesus' (2001: 64). The earliest images of Herodias's dancing daughter (ninth and tenth century) place on Herod's table bread and fish, Christ's presence in John's head.3 In the fourteenth century John's head became the host in the mass: both round, both offered for men's sins, both served on a plate. Without the head on a platter, offered at a feast, the parallel with the Last Supper breaks down. Still, there are other ways than a dance to put John's head on a platter. The lurid tale of the Baptist's murder is introduced by Herod's harping on resurrection and identifying Jesus with John. From Simon Peter's mother to Jairus's daughter, Jesus has raised the sick and the dead; he has cast out devils, calmed the seas and been rejected in his own country. Now his twelve have been sent out to exorcise and to heal. At this moment, with the word spreading through the twelve and the reader waiting for their return, Herod too hears of Jesus working wonders, and he remembers. He, or others around him, declare that 'John the baptizer has been raisedfromthe dead; and for this reason, these powers are at work in him' (Mk 6.14). Others offer alternative identificationsElijah, one of the prophetsbut Herod, certain, repeats, 'John, whom I beheaded: he is risen' (Mk 6.16, KJV; NRSV, 'has been raised'). Twice in thefirstthree verses of a sixteen-verse episode Herod identifies Jesus as Johnrisenfromthe dead: Mark seems to want us to notice.4 Is Jesus John raised from the dead? Is
3. The ninth-century evangelary at Chartres is reproduced in Dottin-Orsini (1996: 11); the tenth- (or eleventh-) century evangelary of Bamberg in Ewa Kuryluk (1987: 247). 4. Although few fail to notice that the story is aflashback,most literary readers fail to register what Herod says to introduce theflashback.Franoise Meltzer does notice, but oddly attributes the verse only to Matthew, who says it once, and denies it to Mark, who says it twice, even as she insists against Ren Girard that Mark's is not the

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Jesus the returned John? Who is Jesus? That questionwhich no one thinks any longer to askMark is intent on making sure we never ask again. Although Jairus's daughter has just been raised (Mk 5.21-43), Herod's question directs attention to Jesus in John's death. Graham observes that John'isdeliveredup', , while Jesus 'will be', (Mk 1.14,10.33; 1991: 152). John P. Meier notes the verbal parallels in the burial accounts. The words used when John's disciples 'took his body, and laid it in a tomb' (6.29) recur at Jesus' burial, 15.46: (1980:399 n.). To J. Duncan M. Derret, the repeated , suggesting 'monument', is an unusual word for 'tomb' () (1985: II, 281). In its last verse, the oldest form of the Gospel contains the same word for 'tomb' that closes on John: (16.8; 6.29). As important as the tomb is the resurrection. At 6.14 Herod says that John ('has been raised'). At 6.16, he shifts to (KJV, 'is risen'; NRSV, 'has been raised'), rising to the same word that will be used of Jesus' resurrection at 16.6. The young man in the tomb tells the women Jesus 'is risen': (KJV; NRSV, 'has been raised'. The renaissance editor who inserted these symmetrical numbers, 6.16,16.6, perhaps marked something we have forgotten to see.) Wink claims the verb for 'raised' that Herod usesis different from the one used for Jesus' resurrec tion (1968: 10). Wink was, however, misled by the Gospel's alternation of the two verbs. Although at Mk 9.9-10, Wink's focus, the verb (, ) is used for the discussion between Jesus and the disciples over rising from the dead, the Gospel regularly uses both verbs, as in the story of Jairus's daughter. Jesus uses the imperative, (KJV, 'arise'; NRSV, 'get up') to Jairus's daughter, who $ ('straightway arose', KJV; NRSV, 'immediately.. .got up'; 5.41). Both verbs are used to tell someone to rise and walk, for the sunrising,for children rising against parents, and so on. After the death of the Baptist, both verbs are used at once to 'raise and lift up' a single boy, who seemed dead after exorcism (KJV, Mk 9.27, ' , ; NRSV, Jesus 'lifted him up, and he was able to stand'). Meier points out that Mark uses the noun only in the dispute overresurrection with the Sadducees; other wise he uses forms of the verbs and (2000:5). Although

'richer text': 'So far as I can determine, Mark's text is "richer" only because it mentions the platter... ' (1984:329). Anderson raises the question, but does not return to it (1992:119).

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5

general discussions of resurrection as a topic use , the Gospel begins and ends with . When Jesus actually rises, the verb changes back to the one Herod used of John. AtHerod's feast, John's death is served indoors, in a prison, on a platter, to 'courtiers and officers and.. .the leaders of Galilee'. He is buried by his disciples, while Jesus' apostles return to him. The next event is Jesus' feed ing 'all the people...in groups of hundreds and fifties' outdoors on 'the green grass' (Mk 6.39-40). In the miracle of loaves and fishes, Jesus feeds five thousand, a larger party than Herod's. The double motif of death and the life-giving feast returns in the passion and the Last Supper, through which Jesus continues to feed his faithful. But still, why the women? What need is there for a peculiarly malevolent Herodias and her dancing daughter to bring John's death about? Usually regarded as an unaccountable doubling of her mother, the daughter gestures towards the action of the New Testament while her mother sums up the connection to the Old. As John Bowman observed (1965: 154), Herodias confirms the identification of John as Elijah to Jesus' Messiah. Her daughter links Jairus's daughter,risen,to the contrast between John's death and Jesus' rising. If, as Wink argues (1968) and Meier reaffirms, Mark's John is an 'Elijah incognito, a fitting forerunner of a secret Messiah' (Meier 1980:384), then

5. is used at 1.31 for Simon's mother and at 2.9,11,12 for the man healed of a palsy, comes in forrisingbefore day at 1.35, at 2.14 when Levi is called and at 3.26 when Satanrisesagainst himself, and are used in Jairus's daughter's story, in Herod's, dominates general discussions of rising at 9.9, 10 (at 9.27 both verbs are used, coming first), 31; 10.34 (except Bartimaeus, 10.49). The noun enters for discussions of resurrection with the Sadducees 12.18, 23, 25, but 12.26 has . In 13.8 is used for nations rising against nations, and a compound of at 13.12 for childrenrisingagainst parents. At 14, comes in exclusively, at 14.28 'after that I amrisen',; 14.42 'rise up, let us go', ; and 16.6 . The longer ending shifts at 16.9 to ?. Matthew uses () after the Transfiguration at 17.9, unlike Mark, in the discussion between Pilate and the Pharisees at Mt. 27.64 over what Jesus' disciples will say if the body goes missing, and in the encounter between the women and the angel at 28.6,7. Luke's two men use to the women at 24.6 to describe what has happened and in 24.7, to cite what Jesus said would happen. John 20.9 uses to refer to the scriptures saying 'he mustriseagain' and ? at 21.14 to refer to what Jesus did 'after he wasrisenfromthe dead'. If there is a pattern, attaches to the actual event, to discussion or writing.

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Mark needs scriptural evidence for that identification. Herodias supplies a scriptural antecedent by evoking Jezebel, Elijah's principal persecutor. Mark initially describes John as wearing 'the girdle of a skin about his loins' (KJV, Mk 1.6; NRSV, 'a leather belt around his waist'). That girdle not only belonged to Elijah the Tishbite, but also served as the code that identified Elijah to others when he was not present (2 Kgs 1.7-8). The reader identifying John as Elijahfromthe girdle reproduces Ahaziah's act of interpretation. Mark also invents unspecified, non-existent scriptural evidence toidentify John as Elijah. At the Transfiguration, when the disciples ask why it is said that Elijah must comefirst,Jesus answers that Elijah has already come and they have done what they listed, 'as it is written about him' (Mk9.1113). As Matthew recognized when he dropped the phrase 'as it is written', no such writing exists. Without Herodias, Mark's evidence for identifying John as Elijah is reduced by half, to a leather girdle. Herodias supplements the girdle and, in turn, produces Mark's oddly sympathetic Herod. Although Herod affirms his responsibility for John's death, 'It is John whom I beheaded', the episode lays the blame principally on Herodias, who sought John's death and told her daughter what to ask. Herod, by contrast, fears and hears John 'gladly'. In Kings, Ahab and Elijah meet with hostility, but respect; Ahab recognizes the prophet of the god of Israel. When Elijah demands the assembling of the prophets of Baal, Ahab calls them together (1 Kgs 18.17-20). When Elijah predicts rain after drought, he runs before Ahab's chariot to Jezreel (1 Kgs 18.46). When Elijah predicts that dogs shall eat Jezebel and the offspring of Ahab, Ahab repents, and Elijah turns the curse from him in his lifetime (1 Kgs 21.2129). When Ahab tells his wife Jezebel what Elijah has done, then, and then only, is the prophet's life endangered (1 Kgs 19.1-3). Jezebel, at more length, though to less effect than Herodias, also speaks her threat: 'So may the gods do to me, and more also, if I do not make your life like the life of one ofthem by this time tomorrow'(1 Kgs 19.2). Elijahflees;John cannot. Like Herod, Ahab's position towards the prophet is fundamentally sympathetic and respectful; the prophet's life is threatened only when he crosses Ahab's wife. What is narrative action in Kings, the narrator asserts in Mark, insisting on a sympathetic Herod no one else saw in Herod's actions relative to John: arrest and beheading. Every other source that mentions Herod (Josephus, Matthew, Luke, even Mark's Herod himself) rejects Mark's characterization. Yet without that characterization, the Ahab/Jezebel

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parallel diminishes, taking with it textual confirmation for John as Elijah. Mark knows what everyone knows: John was murdered by a ruler married irregularly to a wickedly adulterous woman, but Mark also knows that John is Elijah. It would be surprising if Mark had not tweaked the story to enhance the scriptural parallel. If Herodias is necessary, her daughter's dance is even more so. Allusion through Herodias links the Gospel to earlier scriptures (the old); her daughter'sdance links death to resurrection(thenew). Commentators usual ly veer offto the (unlikelihood ofthe dance, the source oftije king's promise in Esther, Girard's mimetic desire. Several have connected Herodias's daughter and Jairus's. Janice Capel Anderson mentions Jairus's daughter as the 'other Markan story involving a '(1992: 131). Dan Via sets corrupt sexualityHerodias and her daughteragainst restored fertilityJairus's daughter and the woman with the bloody issue (1985: 108-11; Glancy 1994:47-49). Linking Jairus's daughter to Jesus' empty tomb and contrasting Jairus's daughter to Herodias's, Mark argues life's overcoming death in minute narrative detail. In the episode of Jairus's daughter, 'one of the leaders of the synagogue named Jairus' asks Jesus to lay hands on his 'little daughter.. .at the point of death.. .that she may be made well, and live' (Mk 5.22-23). En route, Jesus' garments are touched by a woman 'which had an issue of blood twelve years' (KJV, Mk 5.25; NRSV, 'who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years'). Jesus feels power go out of him, a loss of life force that heals her, drying up her fountain of blood, making her whole. As the woman confesses to him and he commends her faith, word arrives that the daughter of Jairus is dead. There is no point in troubling 'the teacher any further'. Jesus insists that they should 'not fear, only believe' (Mk 5.36); the first phrase will be echoed twice at his empty tomb. Accompanied by three men, as by three women at the empty tomb, Jesus rebukes those at the door for weeping unnecessarily' [t]he child is not dead but sleeping'and they 'laughed at him'. Taking the girl by the hand, he says,
'Talitha cum... Little girl, get up!' [KJV, 'arise', ] And immediately the girl got up [KJV, 'arose', ] and began to walk about [] (she was twelve years of age). At this they were overcome with amazement. He strictly ordered them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat (Mk 5.41-43).

Point by point, commentators have puzzled over this narrative, for it produces only anomalies until its daughter meets her counterpart in

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Herodias's. Why are we told the age of Jairus's daughter (Mk 5.42)? Why is Jesus interrupted on his way to the dying girl by the woman with the bloody issue? Why has she been bleeding for twelve years, as long as the girl has been alive, as if the bloody issue were a daughter (Mk 5.25-34)? Why is the daughter to be given something to eat to end the episode (Mk 5.43)? Why does Jesus say to them all, 'Do not fear, only believe' (Mk 5.36)? All those details, her name, her age, her meal, Jesus' words, vanish in Matthew's retelling (Mt. 9.18-25), so if they serve a purpose, it was not one Matthew noticed. Yet precisely those otiose details establish a system of parallels, or contrasts, with the murder of John. Like the daughter ofHerodias (andEsther, who savedher people), Jairus's daughter is called , 'little girl' or 'young girl', the diminuitive of . Unlike Herodias's daughter, her age is specified: twelve years, and Jesus calls her by the gender neutral 'child',TO. Like the daughter 6 ofHerodias, she is known by the name of her influential parent. Like the daughter of Herodias, she responds to Jesus' command 'immediately' (), as the daughter acts on her mother's suggestion and asks for the head 'immediately' (eu6u)andthekingsends fortheexecutioner'immediately' (). After a commotion of wailing and grief, Jairus's daughter 'immediately got up [KJV, 'arose'] and began to walk about' (Mk 5.42, ). In a swirl of festivities and identical word order, Herodias's daughter 'came in, and danced' (Mk 6.22, ' \ , literally 'his daughter Herodias having come in and danced'). In both phrases, the second verb suggests expansive, room-covering movement, through and across space. Jairus's daughter does not just get up and walk (), she gets up and walks about (). Herodias's glides in
6. The divide between literary criticism and biblical scholarship is so deep that many literary critics writing on 'Salome' seem unaware that the 'nameless' daughter of Herodias is actually named 'Herodias' in the earliest Greek manuscripts (Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, fourth century). The preferred reading of the Nestle-Aland and UBS Greek texts is 'his daughter Herodias', ' , followed in the NRSV and other modern translations. Other early,fifth-centurymanuscripts read ' , 'the daughter ofHerodias herself or 'the daughter of the said Herodias' (KJV). The frequent complaint that 'his daughter Herodias' makes the girl Herod's biological daughter is anachronistic. As the daughter of his wife Herodias, the girl is his daughter, of his family (Anderson 1992: 121 n. 26; Aland 1966: Mk 6.22 n.;Nineham 1964:175). 'His' daughter reinforces the link between the dance and rising from the dead; 'her' daughter enhances female responsibility, but deprives the daughter of her own name, which is also her mother's name.

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participial verb forms. Jairus's daughter is to be given something to eat. Dancing at a banquet, Herodias's daughter wants a head in a dish, as if it were something to eat. Although the age of Herodias's is not specified, her actions, pleasing the king, identifying with her mother's desires, and adding her own details to the request for the head 'at once.. .on a platter', place her near womanhood, like the twelve-year old in the previous episode. The banquet itself is a birthday (or anniversary) banquet. Though Herod's age is not divulged, and it has been suggested that may refer to the anniversary of a death (Graham 1991:152), this celebration counts years. As Ren Girard observes, the text has very little descriptive detail, so the verse in which the daughter comes in 'immediately with haste to the king [asking] at once the head of John the Baptist on a platter' in direct, not indirect discourse, is especially striking for its suddenflurryof adverbs (emphasis added; 1984:314). Hearing that voice and seeing that movement dramatize the parallel between Herodias's and Jairus's daughters, turning one's numbered years into the other's behavior. With that voice and that movement the turns twin. The dancing daughter who brings death makes visible the dead daughter, rising to life. The woman healed of blood anticipates the bloody woman Herodias, to whom the head is delivered, while the woman healed and child revived are held in a mother-daughter relation by the number twelve. Unless Herodias's daughter dances foraplatter, Jairus's daughter walks and eats when she rises to no particular purpose, and Jesus antici pates theangel's warning without anyone's noticing. Mark's two daughters form the crux of the gospel message: life against death. The only other person this Gospel raises from the dead is Jesus himself. The resurrection of Jairus's daughter is the act by Jesus that heralds his own resurrection (like the resurrection of Lazarus in John), as the Baptist's death and tomb are those that Jesus overcomes. The two earliest endings of Mark recognize this structure. What we call 'the Gospel of Mark' Mark calls 'The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ' (1.1), that is, the Gospel's prehistory, what happened before the resurrection. Ending at 16.8 requires the 'belief that Jesus demands of Jairus to assuage the fears and undo the silence of the women at the empty tomb. At the tomb a young man says, 'Do not be alarmed [ ].. .he has been raised [, KJV, 'is risen', 16.6]'. The three women are not convinced; the Gospel ends with the women, afraid, . At the deathbed of Jairus's daughter Jesus says 'Do not fear, only believe', ,

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(5.36). Jesus uses not the angel's word, but that on which the Gospel ends: , . What remains to be spoken is the belief, the gospel, that motivates Mark's narrative: 'he is risen'. What Mark's auditors, and the women, must now do is 'only believe'. Pronounced by Herod, announced by the angel, that good news awaits articulation and fulfillment in readers and hearers. In the shorter ending, two verses added to 16.8, the women speak to those around Peter, and Jesus sends out the apostles again. The shorter ending recurs to the first sending out of the apostles, within which the Baptist's death is embedded. After Jesus dies, they do not come back to him as they did before, but go out from him forever: 'And all that had been commanded them they [the women] told briefly to those around Peter. And afterward Jesus himself sent out through them,fromeast to west, the sacred and imperishable proclamation of eternal salvation.' There is no body to lay in a tomb; there is, instead, the kerygma that rises from it. The current longer ending of Mark, 16.9-20, is a pastiche of elements from other Gospels that appears at the end of the second century. By then, Mark's structurehadbeenblurredby the other Gospels he inspired. Merged with them, he is, like John the Baptist, appropriated for a tradition he did not know but helped create. Two issues remain: what happens in the other Gospels, and does this account have any implications for Mark's historicity? The other Gospels take over Mark's meanings without perceiving the relationship between his meanings and his narrative structure. Luke and Matthew assert the Elijah-John identification and kick away the scaffolding that supports the identification in Mark. Matthew tells the story, Luke omits it. Oddly, the Gospel that most closely reproduces Mark's method is John. Generally praised for his revisions of 'Mark's rambling story', Matthew hashes Mark's careful structure of juxtapositions. The apostles are sent out four chapters earlier (Mt. 10); the daughter of Jairus is raised five chapters earlier, and loses her father's name, her age and her meal (Mt. 9.18-25). Nor does Jesus speak his remarkable words: 'Do not fear, only believe... Talitha cum... Little girl, get up [KJV, 'arise']'. Instead, in Matthew, 'he took her by the hand and the girl got up [KJV, 'arose']' ( TO , Mt. 9.25). Matthew does not require Mark's suggestive parallels because he makes what Mark implies fully explicit. John is identified as the voice in Isaiah: 'This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke' (Mt. 3.3). Jesus himself asserts that John is the Elijah so tentatively disclosed in Mark: 'For all the prophets and the law

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prophesied until John came; and if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah, who is to come' (Mt. 11.13-14). When Jesus says, 'Do npt be afraid', it is the risen Jesus speaking to the women fleeing the tomb, fearfully and joyfully ( , Mt. 28.10, repeating the angel's phrase at 28.5). Preserving the execution episode, Matthew diminishes female responsi bility whileretainingthepersistenceofHerodianhostility to Jesus, manifest from birth. As Wink puts it, 'All form a single rank of opposition' (1968: 28). Herod's father, Herod the Great, threatened Jesus' childhood at Bethlehem; his brother Herod Archelaus forced Joseph to settle in Nazareth, so Herod the tetrarch destroys John and threatens Jesus' maturity. Develop ing Wink's account, Meier argues a complex theological role for John in Matthew, as a parallel-yet-subordinate prophet, announcing with Jesus the kingdom prior to its creation in the church. Altering Mark and auguring the church's growth, John's disciples come after John's death to Jesus, who withdraws from the public scene, equally marked for martyrdom (1980: 400). Like Wink (1968: 27), Meier does not notice the narrative problems Matthew inadvertently introduces by his changes. Shrinking the now much less significant story from sixteen to twelve verses and seeming to smooth its positioning, Matthew introduces a logical problem at the beginning and a chronological one at the end. Instead of Herod's hearing of Jesus' mighty works as the apostles spread through the land, Matthew's Herod hears of Jesus as he fails to perform miracles in his own country. 'And he did not do many deeds of power there, because of their unbelief. At that time Herod the ruler heard reports about Jesus' (Mt. 13.58; 14.1). The skepticism of Jesus' countrymen abuts strangely with Herod's immediate conviction, stated only once, that 'This is John the Baptist; he has been raised from the dead... ' (KJV, 'is risen', ; Mt. 14.2). Mark's alternative identifications of Jesus asElijah or one of the prophets disappear, although they return prior to the Transfiguration (Mt. 16.13-14). Seeming smoother than Mark's, Matthew's conclusion introduces a chronological impossibility. As Terence Donaldson shows, wistfully desiring afirst-centuryreader who would reintroduce Herod to end the flashback, Herod's flashback never closes (1999: 35-48). After John's disciples bury his body, they go tell Jesus, who withdraws into a desert place and shortly feeds the five thousand. 'His disciples came and took the body and buried it; then they went and told Jesus. Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrewfromthere in a boat to a deserted place by himself (Mt. 14.12-13). The narrative that seems to be going forward now ends before

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it begins. Events take up from John's death, notfromHerod's memory of beheading John, where the account began. With his Herod hostile and Elijah disclosed, Matthew erases the strong lines of the Ahab/Jezebel parallel. Although Matthew's Herod puts John in prison 'for Herodias' sake', the verse on her quarrel with John is missing. Moreover, herfrustrateddesire to kill John becomes her husband's. Unlike Mark's sympathetic Herod, Matthew's Herod wants to kill John but fears the multitude: 'he feared the crowd, because they regarded him as a prophet' (Mt. 14.5). Although Matthew's fearful Herod resembles Josephus's aggressive Herod, who kills John for his popularity (Ant. 18.118), Mark may have suggested the variant. In the dispute with the Pharisees (Mk 11.29-33) Mark affirms that the crowd regarded John as a prophet and the Pharisees feared the crowd. Asked whether John's baptism was from heaven or 'of human origin', the Pharisees refuse to answer, unable to say 'from heaven' because Jesus will ask why they failed to follow John; unable to say 'of human origin' because 'they were afraid of the crowd, for all regarded John as truly aprophet'. The motive Mark assigns to the Pharisees, Matthew assigns to Herod. Having lost her good twin, the daughter ofHerodias becomes lessprominent, but more complicit. Losing her going and coming to consult about what to ask, she is 'Prompted by her mother' (KJV, 'before instructed of her mother' has been an influential translation of .) Herfluttery deleted, she demandsfirmly,'Give me the head of John Baptist here on a platter' (Mt. 14.8). Matthew takes the story fromMarkas almosthistory,freelychanges where he disagrees, and notices no meaningful connection between daughters or bloody women. Instead, the episode continues to contrast death and resurrection, the world and the kingdom ofGod, but narrates in its plotting the drawing of others' disciples to Jesus. Luke drops the story of the Baptist's death like a stone, while preserving in another place what evidently seemed its main point, the identification of John as Elijah to Jesus' Messiah. To make that identification, Luke replaces Herodias andher daughterwith a different pair of female relatives, the cousins Elizabeth and Mary. Like Herodias and her daughter, one is married and older (past childbearing), the other unmarried and virginal. Gabriel announces first to John's father, then six months later to Jesus' mother, the identities of Elijah (Lk. 1.17) and Christ (Lk. 1.32-33, 35), citing in full Malachi's Elijah passage (Mai. 4.5-6; Lk. 1.17). Thereafter

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Luke lets others' identifications of Jesus as the Christ or Elijah slip back and forth or vanish altogether.7 Like Matthew (whose John resists baptizing Jesus, but obeys him [Mt. 3.13-15]), Luke is embarrassed by the baptism. As has often been pointed out, he arranges his narrative so that Jesus is baptized by nobody in particular in the verse immediately after John is put into prison (Lk. 3.21 ). 'The baptism of John' recurs as an inferior baptism in Acts (Acts 18.25; 19.3-5), yet John also anticipates Jesus' teachings in the sharing of the cloak (Lk. 3.19)andthepracticeofprayerhismodel motivates the request for the Lord's prayer (Lk. 11.1). Compared to Mark, Matthew and John, Luke'streatmentofJolmiscompletelyincoherentandextremelyinteresting, but Mark's 'Elijanic secret' is Luke's starting point, even more explicitly than it is Matthew's. If Matthew identifies John as Isaiah's 'voice in the wilderness' and later as Elijah, Luke identifies him as Elijah before he is born. Luke's motive for deleting the story seems to be its misogyny. Not only does Luke make Mark's theological point through good women, but he also erases Herodias's responsibility for John's arrest. He diminishes the roleofthemarriageandsexualityinbringing about John's deathby attacking Herod for other crimes beyond the marriage: 'But Herod the ruler, who had been rebuked by him because of Herodias, his brother's wife, and because of all the evil things that Herod had done, added to them all by shutting up John in prison' (Lk. 3.19-20, emphasis added). Herodias's marriage remains irregular, but it no longer bears the responsibility for John's death that it does in Mark and Matthew. The marriage is only one
7. Because ofthat slippage, Kazmierski asserts that Luke doe&not apply the Elijah model to the Baptist (1996: 99,117). Accurate relative to the body of the Gospel, that argument requires ignoring the Gospel's opening assertion ofthat identity. In Luke, Jesus' disciples think he is Elijah. They expect him to burn up a Samaritan town's inhabitants 'as Elijah did'. (Firefromheaven protected ElijahfromAhaziah, 'the king of Samaria's', companies of soldiers [Lk. 9.54 n. g; 2 Kgs 1.10, 12].) When John is introduced baptizing, his followers wonder not if he is Elijah, but if he is the Christ (Lk. 3.15). In Luke, the angels and the reader know who is who in the Elijah/Christ contest, but among disciples and populace the question is open, and Luke suggests that fluidity of identification. Wink argues that Luke has an Elijah midrash, rather than an identification of Elijah as Baptist, Jesus as Christ (1968: 42-46). John's preaching resembles Jesus' more than in any other Gospel; he instructs his hearers about cloaksharing as Jesus does his (Lk. 3.19). Jesus' disciples ask him to teach them to pray the way John did his disciples, and the result is the Lord's prayer (11.1). Charles H.H. Scobie observes that these materials are unique to Luke (1964: 14).

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of'all the evil things' Herod has done, and not even the worst. Luke system atically provides meliorative images of women's conventional roles of motherhood, service, prophecy and discipleship. The demonized sexuality of the Herodias fable has no place among his Marys, Marthas, Elizabeths and Annas. So he drops it. Although he drops the wicked women, Luke does not drop Herod's hearing ofJesus or beheadingofJohn, themomentthat introduces theflashback to the execution in Mark and Matthew. Preserving Mark's placement of the episode immediately after the raising of Jairus's daughter and the sending out ofthe twelve, Luke omits only the skepticism of Jesus' country men. Herod comments on Jesus' identity and his beheading John, and then the disciples return, as in Mark and Matthew, to feed the five thousand (Lk. 9.10-12; Mk 6.30-32; Mt. 14.13). The flashback is simply excised from its place in Mark, as Delorme suggested might easily be done. Luke, however, radically transforms Herod's response. A first-century reader after Terence Donaldson's heart, Luke writes as if he were intent on closing the aperture opened by Matthew. Once again, Herod hears of Jesus, but this time the positive Herod of Mark and Matthew is 'perplexed'. Others have answers; Herod has only a question. Around him some say of Jesus 'that John had been raised [] from the dead; by some that Elijah had appeared, and by others that one ofthe ancient prophets had arisen []' (Lk. 9.7-8). Luke's Herod does not believe any of it. Mark's Herod twice repeated that Jesus was John risen again; Matthew's said it once. Luke's Herod changes the tune. Dismissing reincarnation, uninterested in resurrection, with no regrets over beheading the Baptist, he sets up his later encounter with Jesus, unique to Luke's Gospel: '"John I beheaded, but who is this about whom I hear such things?" And he tried to see him' (Lk. 9.9; KJV, 'desired to see him', , literally 'sought'). The superstitious identifications belong to those around Herod, who seems a skeptical empiricist, but becomes a miracle grubber himself when given the opportunity. When an excited Herod does meet Jesus, he finds Jesus' refusal to answer or to perform any miracle less gratifying than Mark's eager Herod (Lk. 23.8-9; the echo is not verbal, but semantic). Reintroduced into the narrative only to be disappointed, Luke's Herod takes over the mockery of Jesus that the other Gospels assign to Pilate and the Romans. Herod andPilate forge apolitical alliance over the condemned, gorgeously arrayed body of Jesus, making 'friends with each other' where 'before this they had been enemies' (Lk. 23.11-12). Characteristically,

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Luke contrasts the worldly power and wealth of Herod and Pilate with the gospel of sharing carried by Jesus and John. Reworking Mark, Luke's ironic structure proposes a Herod who never learns the answer to the ques tion the reader does not need to ask. The Gospel of John improves on Luke in finding the story ofHerodias andher daughter so completelybesidethepointthatnoteven Herod appears. Living in oblivion, the whole Herodian family vanishes. Herod does not even secure John's arrest. John 'had not yet been thrown [] into prison', a passive construction (Jn 3.24). When asked, John denies he is Elijah, his death is not narrated, his imprisonment is indefinitely deferred. Nor does John baptize Jesus or bear the designation 'the Baptist' (Meier 1980:3 85). He is merely 'John' (a designation not followed below, to avoid confusion between the baptizer and the evangelist). Stunningly, however, John uses the Baptist-as-if-living to precede the greatest of Jesus' signs, theresurrectionofLazarus. He thus reproduces Mark's juxtaposition ofthe Baptist's death and the raising of Jairus's daughter, but turns it entirely towards life. As in Mark, the Baptist's preaching in John is restricted to announcing the coming one and identifying Jesus as the one to come. In Mark, the Baptist preaches 'the baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins' and the coming of 'one more powerful than (Mk 1.4,7). When John is imprisoned, Jesus begins to preach 'the good news of God... "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news'" (Mk 1.14-15). Evidently, the One being come, the kingdom is near, the time fulfilled, a relation marked by the minimal differ ences between what Jesus says and what John says. In Matthew and Luke, the Baptist's preaching has much more scope: threatening and scourging in Matthew, sharing cloaks and prayers in Luke. In John, the Baptist is rerestricted to identifying Jesus as the bridegroom, before whom he must diminish. Although the Baptist's death is never mentioned, Jesus speaking of John slips from the present into the past tense, after 5.32:
If I testify [] about myself, my testimony is [] not true. There is [] another who testifies [] on my behalf, and I know that his testimony to me is [] true [all present tense]. Yousent [] messengers to John, and he testified [] to the truth [perfect indicative, some time in the recent past, as if that testimony could be repeated in the present]. Not that I accept such human testimony, but I say these things so that you may be saved. [The passage now moves entirely into past tense for John while the next sentence shifts back to present for Jesus.]

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He was [] a burning and shining lamp, and you were willing [, aorist indicative] to rejoice for a while in his light. But I have a testimony greater than John's. The works that the Father has given me to complete [, KJV, 'finish'], the very works that I am doing, testify on my behalf that the Father has sent me (Jn 5.31-36, emphasis added on verbs).

As in Mark, Matthew and Luke, the Baptist's presence is initially neces sary to identify Jesus, although Jesus later affirms that his own testimony to himselfis sufficient (Jn 8.14). Evenhere, where the Baptist's testimony is invoked, Jesus affirms that his works bear 'greater witness' than John's testimony. Of his works, the greatest is the resurrection of Lazarus. So too on the cross Jesusfinishesthe works he has been sent to 'finish' (): 'It is finished' (, Jn 19.30). Just before the raising ofLazarus, Jesus cites his works again. In Jerusalem he is asked, as the Baptist was, if he is the Christ (Jn 1.20-21 ; 10.24). Jesus replies that he and the father are one (a just inference from Mark's scrip tural citations and the prophecies of his Baptist, see below n. 9). About to be stoned for blasphemy, Jesus cites his works:
If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me [ ]. But ifI do them, even though you do not believe me [], believe [] the works, so that you may know and understand [; 'believe', (Vaticanus), (Alexandrinus and others)] that the Father is in me and I am in the Father' (Jn 10.37-38).

The great work he is about to do, that will bring on his death in this Gospel, is the raising ofLazarus. Yet before he performs it, in what seems a most unnecessary narrative splicing, Jesus withdraws across the Jordan,
to the place where John had been baptizing earlier, and he remained there. Many came to him, and they were saying, 'John performed no sign, but everything that J.ohn said about this man was true'. And many believed in him there. Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany... (Jn 10.40-42; 11.1).

This moment is commonly read as instancing John's hostility to and contentions with followers ofthe Baptist. Earlier in the Gospel Jesus and John compete over such matters as who had more water availableJohn (Jn 3.22-23)and who baptized more followersJesus (Jn 4.1-2). Here the people insist the Baptist gave 'no sign'. Jesus gives many, and he is about to surpass himself. Revealing his followers as deluded and signless, the episode seems to denigrate the Baptist. Yet the passage also juxtaposes the Baptist, as living, with the great sign of John's Gospel, Jesus' resurrection ofLazarus. Jesus, unbaptized

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by John, seems nevertheless to draw strength from the place where John was baptizing. Reworking Mark's contrast between life and death, Jesus withdraws to the water where 'John had been baptizing earlier'. Not only does Jesus return to that place but, hearing of Lazarus's sickness, he waits there: 'he stayed two days longer in the place where he was' (11.6). On the (third) day, Jesus moves to awaken Lazarus. Simultaneously invoking the Baptist's witness and leaving him behind, Jesus gives life to Lazarus, repeating more dramatically the raising of the daughter of Jairus, also interrupted until the sick person has died. As in Mark, Jesus affirms the dead is only sleeping and to be awakened (Jn 11.11). As in Mark, at issue is belief, made fully explicit by John:
Jesus said unto her, am the resurrection, and the life. Those who believe [] me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes [] in me will never die. Do you believe [] this?' (Jn 11.25-26).

From the place where the Baptist was, Jesus moves to offer his greatest sign and its requirement, 'only believe' [, Mk 5.36]. Although Mark's John baptizes Jesus without comment and John's Baptist comments at length without baptizing Jesus as a narrative event (Mk 1.9; Jn 1.3034), both confirm the indispensability ofthe Baptist to the identification of Jesus and thus to early Christian theology. For the 'historical' John and Jesus, the implications of this analysis are not helpful. The problem arises when we consider that the only evidence foranyconnectionbetween Jesusand John is Mark. If John is indispensable to Mark's argument, one must ask if Mark has not simply appropriated the Baptist for his own purposes and, in effect, taken his head as a Christian trophy. Josephus suggests no connection between Jesus and John, even as he makes clearthecontinuingprominenceof John in the Jewish community (Ant. 18.116,119). For the Jesus cult, Mark may simply have appropriated John as a prominent person to serve a signal role, the suffering Elijah to announce the suffering Christ. Not even the Gospel of John lets Jesus be the only witness to himself: he needs scriptural authority, he needs ante cedents, he needs a forerunner, even when he preexists the one who comes before (Jn 1.15). To the argument that the baptism of Jesus by John must be a historical fact because it so embarrasses the other Gospel writers (Kazmierski 1996: 47-48), Mark's having asserted the baptism is itself sufficient to generate

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the embarrassment.8 Certainly, Mark makes no claim for any connection beyond the baptism; the episode is entirely self-contained. The Baptist makes no comment about the dove or voicefromheaven; Jesus disappears into the wilderness and reappears only after John's imprisonment. John may have baptized or inspired Jesus, or Jesus may have been a disciple of John, who then went his own way (see Badke 1990; Mason 1992; MurphyO'Connor 1996; Vaage 1996). He may have, but it may equally well be the case that Mark appropriated John as Elijah for his Lord and so led the other Gospel writers inevitably into midrash, developing and disguising a non-existent relationship. To conclude with a return to the question from which we began, the story ofHerodias and her dancing daughter appears in only two ofthe Gospels because the Gospels are not histories, but Gospels, each of which has its own peculiar interpretation ofthe meaning of Jesus as Christ and its own view of what matters most in his message. For two ofthe Gospels, Luke and John, the story, which originates in Mark, has no place. Using Mark's Gospel as his narrative outline, Luke omits the story deliberately and so smoothly that no gaps or holes appear, as Delorme predicts. Although 'sweep[ing] away legendary material' and 'de-emphasiz[ing] the role of the Baptist' have been proposed as Luke's motives for deletion (Murphy 2003:72), far more probable is the misogynist thrust ofthe Markan story, given Luke's emphasis on meliorative roles for women throughout his Gospel. Replacing a story of wicked women manipulating a king, Luke resituates the Herod episode in the larger political context linking Rome and Judea, much as his account of Jesus' birth at the time of Quirinus's census connects events in Palestine with events in Rome. In removing Herodias's responsibility for the death of John, Luke re-characterizes Mark's superstitious Herod as a skeptic, curious about this new wonder8. Kazmierski observes that the 'problematic nature ofthe tradition' convinces 'even the most skeptical of modern scholars that the baptism of Jesus by John is indeed one of the most reliable historical traditions of the Gospels'. Grounds for that embarrassment are clearly laid out in other New Testament documents. At Corinth Paul confronted the problem that believers identified themselves with their baptizer rather than Jesus: 'each of you says, "I belong to Paul", or "I belong to Apollos", or "I belong to Cephas", or "I belong to Christ". Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? I thank God that I baptized none of you, except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one can say that you were baptized in my name' ( 1 Cor. 1.12-15). The Lukan account in Acts ends with a rebaptism in the name of Jesus: 'On hearing this, they were baptized in the name ofthe Lord Jesus' (Acts 19.5).

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worker Jesus. Luke follows up that shift with an episode unique to his GospelthemeetingofHerod and Jesus and the consequent reconciliation of Herod and Pilate, in which the powers-that-be come together through their opposition to Jesus (Lk. 23.6-12). Luke's graceful hostility to the great, his urbane preference for the poor and marginalized, his elegant inclusion ofthe great powers he despises are thus carried through at two levels by his omission of Mark's story. He elevates Elizabeth and Mary as carriers ofthe Elijah/John, Lord/Jesus identification, and he implicates Herod in Rome's deadly skepticism. The Gospel of John forgoes Mark's narrative outline, though it may use pseudo-biography as form because of Mark's influence and example. John enlarges theBaptist'sMarkanrolefrommessenger to witness and eliminates the Baptist's death along with his baptism of Jesus. Instead of baptizing Jesus, John talks about him on three days,firstto the Pharisees while he is baptizing, the 'next day' when he sees Jesus and 'bears record' that he saw the spirit descending upon him, and 'Again the next day' when he says, 'Behold the Lamb of God' (Jn 1.15-28,29-34,35-36). Although the Baptist was baptizing when he saw Mark's dove descend, John does not say the Baptist baptized Jesus (Jn 1.30-34). John also eliminates the entire Herodian family: the dispute in John is not between worldly powers and God's son and messenger, but between those who would make John the Messiah and those who recognize with John that Jesus is the son of God (Jn 1.19-21,25,34). Although John's imprisonment is mentioned, it has not yet occurred within John's Gospel and it is not performed by anyone; it occurs in a passive construction (Jn 3.24). The discourse that follows theimprisonment-that-has-not-yet-occurred,onJohn'sdecreasing,nevertheless motivates a withdrawal by Jesus like that in Mark, Matthew and Luke: 'Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard, "Jesus is making and baptizing more disciples than John"...he left Judea and started back to Galilee' (Jn 4.1-3). The Baptist reappears a third time in John, when Jesus delays for three days to return to raise Lazarus, at 'the place where John had been baptizing earlier, and he remained there' (Jn 10.40). Although the Baptist's death plays no role, the Baptist's witness remains indispensable to Jesus' identification and his works. John's Gospel is often taken as recording competition between John's disciples and Jesus'. That sense of competition may derivefromthe tension between a prexistent, self-manifesting Lord and the need for a witness to him in John. Not only is John (Baptist) necessary for the first revelation, but his occluded presence also enables the climax of Jesus' works, and he

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recurs in John's characteristic triads. John throughout is concerned with eternal life; he has no interest in working out a contrast between life and death. That is not his project. So the Baptist, who dies spectacularly in Mark and Matthew and offstage, beheaded, in Luke, in John fades away, neither living nor dead, merely 'decreasing'. Matthew takes the story from Mark and reduces it to dimensions appropriate to his projectJesus as king and son of David, harried by Herods, producing the new Torah as the basis for his church. Revising without re-imagining (as Luke did), he introduces several implausibilities in the placement ofthe episode within his own narrative, as if it were a tale good enough to include, but not important enough to think about. Asserting what Mark implies, Matthew finds other ways than Jezebel to attach Jesus to the scriptures, including genealogy and multiple citations. Interestingly, against the mother and daughter who procure John's death, Matthew introduces Pilate's wife, interceding to prevent Jesus' death (Mt. 27.19). This returns us finally to the point of origin, to Mark. As to historicity, Mark's account is confirmed at most points by Josephus: Herod executed John; his marriage to Herodias was irregular by current moral standards; ambitious, influential, meddling and power-hungry, Herodias had a daughter (named Salome); John was revered from Herod's time to Josephus's, more than half a century later (Ant. 18.116-19,109-10,13637, 240-55, 119). Herodias Josephus links to the Baptist's death only indirectly, through Herod's divorce from another man's daughter in order to marry her. Many, he reports, thought Herod's defeat by Aretas divine vengeance for John's execution (Ant. 18.116); Aretas attacked because Herod divorced Aretas's daughter to marry Herodias (Ant. 18.109-15). Josephus links the divorce and the execution, not the marriage and the execution. Other opponents ofthe marriage might have made more of it, yet although Josephus gives Herodias two long speeches on other matters (Ant. 18.243-44, 254), he attributes the Baptist's execution entirely to Herod. Josephus and Mark differ fundamentally over the points Mark makes climactic: Herodias's responsibility and her daughter's dance, with platter. Did the story of the dance, like the interpretation of John as Elijah, circulate in early Christian circles to be picked up by Mark? Although a shared supper and baptism already define the community in Paul's time, no evidence earlier than Mark exists for the dance or the return of Elijah. Paul is innocent of references to the Baptist, Elijah or the Herodian family.

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Later, the other evangelists, with Mark open before them, do not feel compelled by early Christian history or rumor mills to endorse Herodias's special culpability. Calling the story a sleazy rumor snatched up by Mark suggests that Mark was not a writer, but a compiler, and that the story is isolated from its context. Yet ofthe four Gospels, Mark's is the most compelling 'read' as its emerging secret unfolds, dramatically, ironically, known already to the reader, but not to the participants in the action. Comparisons to Sophocles' Oedipus TyrannosmGnotwimGrted9and9 as so often with great works, others itched to rewrite it, viz. Matthew and Luke. As to isolation, the story has seemed anomalous, salacious, uniquely gory (to scholars forgettingthecrucifixion),protruding oddly and horribly into the narrative. Yet the episode is not isolated thematically : it introduces the concept of resurrection and the question ofthe identities of Jesus and John, crucial at the Transfiguration. As Mark dramatizes the death, focusing on the women, he reconfirms John's identity as Elijah and links not only John's death, but also Jairus's daughter's resurrection to Jesus' own resurrection. Linking Jairus's daughter to Jesus as another resurrection would not seem important, except that the Gospel originally ends on echoes ofthe scene raising Jairus's daughter. Even when first expanded, the ending of Mark's Gospel recalls the episode in which John's death is intercalatedthe sending out of the apostles. Through Mark's careful structure of details, incidents, intercalations, juxtapositions and linguistic duplications, the two daughters, one linked to life, fear and belief, the other to death, create an antithesis that Jesus overturns. It might be objected that this argument hinges on an accidental verbal identity ofdifferent things. The incidents, called 'resurrection' or 'raising', conflate aresuscitation(Jairus's daughter), a reincarnation (Herod's remark about John), and a resurrection (Jesus), and the analysis treats them as though they are all the same. The objection forgets that Mark has an object in view in his narrative (specifically, the gospel of resurrection) and that Markuses the same word for each of these events. Mark is establishing connections by repetition and duplication for the gospel's sake; he is not writing a treatise on different forms of revival from the dead. If he wanted his readerto distinguishbetweenresuscitation, reincarnation andresurrection, he would have found different words for his different concepts. It might also be objected that this argument is purely inferential, created by the reader, not the text. This objection can be met only by more ofthe

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same: insisting on the appropriateness ofstudying Mark's narrative structure as a guide to Mark's meanings and observing that Mark's narrative power proceedsfromthe way he compels inferences. Mark's Gospel opens with scriptural allusions that require inferences now so obvious we forget they are inferences. So Jesus is understood as 'you' in Mark's misquotation 9 from Malachi and as the Lord in the quotation from Isaiah, while John is understood as the voice 'in the wilderness' (Mk 1.3) because in the next verse he appears 'in the wilderness', baptizing (Mk 1.4). Mark asserts no identities, but his structure makes the inference inevitable. That practice of inference makes any discoveries the reader's own, convincing more deeply than anything the reader may be told. Herodias's daughter must dance to make death visible, bodied and food for faith. The little girl, her bloody mother and her platter link horror to hope, thrusting John's severed head into women's hands. Three men accompany Jesus when he raises Jairus's daughter; three women stand at an empty tomb when Jesus is raised, of whom one bears the name of Herodias's real daughter, Salome (Mk 16.1), married to the Philip Mark mistakenly identifies as Herodias's husband (Mk 6.17). Accidental or purposeful, that coincidence marks yet again the difference between the women who destroy John and the women whom the body escapes.

9. Mark reads: 'As it is written in the prophet Isaiah, "See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way; the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, 'Prepare the way ofthe Lord, make his paths straight'," John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins' (Nik 1.2-4, emphasis added). Conflating Isa. 40.3 and Mal. 3.1, misquoted, Mark changes Malachi's pronouns and his meanings. Malachi's ' is God and speaks of'me' (not Mark's 'you'): ' See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple' (Mai. 3.1, emphasis added). In Malachi, 'me' is 'the Lord' who is suddenly to appear, in his temple. In Mark, the Lord speaks ofsomeone apartfromhimself, 'you', 'your way'. Mai. 4.5-6, repeating the phrase promising return, names Elijah in the place ofthe messenger, but Elijah too precedes not a person, but the very presence ofthe Lord. Although we no longer notice, Malachi and Isaiah would have found it very odd to be caught prophesying someone who wears shoes or sandals'the thong of whose sandals.. .1 am not worthy to stoop down and untie' (Mk 1.7)or with whom it made sense to compare themselves as 'mightier' or less so.

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