A small comment that I forgot to include was Mark's use of the title "King" for Herod Antipas. The writer betrays his unfamiliarity with the political situation by doing so. Herod the Great was titled King whereas when the Romans divided his Kingdom into 3 sections, his son Herod Antipas was merely a tetrarch not a King. Antipas craved the title "King" till eventually Caligula has him exiled for attempting to acquire it through manipulation. The Matthean redactor (followed by the author of Luke) corrected this mistake, correctly addressing him as Tetrarch.
Fancy Dancer....JTB's Death
by peacefulpete 16 Replies latest watchtower bible
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peacefulpete
OK, back to the daughter, "Salome". I mentioned briefly above that there are textaul manuscript variants here again.
In some authoritative manuscripts, such as Sinaiticus, Vaticanus and Codex Bezae, the text reads as follows: καὶ εἰσελθούσης τῆς θυγατρὸς αὐτοῦ Ἡρῳδιάδος (Nestle-Aland 1979:107). This reading is printed in Nestle-Aland since the 26th edition. The word αὐτοῦ is striking here. The Holy Bible New Revised Standard Version (1989:41) prefers this reading and translates this verse as follows: ‘When his daughter Herodias came in’. This choice implies that the young girl is the daughter of Herod Antipas himself, and that her name is Herodias, just like her mother, who is (also) called Herodias. The reading with αὐτοῦ is the lectio difficilior and ‘must be adopted on the strength of its external attestation’ (Metzger 1975:90). Because according to Mark 6:24,28, Herodias is the mother of this girl, this girl must be the daughter of Antipas and Herodias. Antipas is not her paternal uncle but her father. (Wim J.C. Weren, Herodias and Salome in Mark’s story about the beheading of John the Baptist)
So we have a alternate tradition that that daughter was not Salome (the daughter of Herodias and Herod II) but rather the daughter of Antipas and Herodias whose name was also Herodias. Now we have to ask why might these variants exists.
Some have suggested the tradition that the daughter was not Antipas's daughter is due to the impossible timeline it creates.
continue later
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peacefulpete
A further note by way of correction. I uncritically accepted a comment on a Christian website that located the fortress Machaerus (built by King Herod the Great) as being in Galilee. In fact, it is over 100 miles south on the eastern side of the Dead Sea.
This and a number of other elements are suggestive that there is a conflation of Herods going on. John the Baptist is baptizing in Judea, gets arrested by Herod the Tetrarch of Galilee to the north/east so Jesus hears this and flees to Galilee?????
Matt 4:12When Jesus heard that John had been imprisoned, He withdrew to Galilee.
Did the Matthean author correctly believe that his source (Mark) identified Herod the Great (King Herod) in Judea not Tetrarch Antipas had JTB arrested and killed?
This would then mean the alteration the present text of Matthew was later redacted at the dancing girl scene to conform with the Josephus version that identifies Herod Antipas as his killer?
It's all very confusing.
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Phizzy
JTB has always been a figure who interested me immensely, even when I was a believing J.W, I found him mysterious, other-worldly.
As you rightly say, confusing ! a number of Scholars rely too much on the Gospel and other N.T. info, not only with JTB, but with things like dating events.
I wonder if JTB has become so entwined in pre-first Century expectational Myth to unravel who he was, and when he lived ?
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peacefulpete
Hey Phizzy....I have had a similar fascination with the JTB character.
About 20 years ago we used to discuss this stuff on this site. I stumbled across an original copy of "The Lost Book of the Nativity of John" by H. Schonfield, signed by him no less. Anyway, it opened a new way for reconstructing Christian origins. It was surmised by Schonfield that the nativity stories in Matt and Luke were, if not originally directed toward JTB then at least parallelled by him. Yes they ultimately were drawn from the OT but history seems to have forgotten how JTB inspired similar if not identical legends to those associated with "Jesus/Joshua".
Given the abundant evidence for a preChristian anthropomorphism of divine aspects/emanations/hypostases of God combined with popular belief that a "Joshua/Jesus" would return to defend Israel and the "Messiah son of Joseph" (one of the 4 craftsmen who was to reunify Israel) The Qumran texts, that demonstrate similar expectations, link the Essenes who many regard JTB as being from. IOW, all the ingredients are there. It might just be that we have in fact long known the historical Jesus, he was right in front of us.
Some years ago, again on this site, Leolaia remarked about how the death (by "Herod") and claims of resurrection of JTB find a larger typology in that of Jesus. More and more it appears the author of Mark was a brilliant fellow, he packaged some deeper spiritual concepts into a theatrical style narrative. The Christ was a hypostasis of God and his narrative drawn from typological usage of the OT and in more recent times JTB.
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Phizzy
I agree fully with your post above, I think it is a pity that many XJW's do not get in to this kind of Scholarship and Thinking.
So many have vestiges of "belief" that leave them in a painful Limbo, once you see how the O.T and N.T were put together, all of that goes, and you are free to appreciate the literary value of the Bible. And of course extra-Biblical works, and Ancient South West Asian literature too, which of course is the basis of much of Scripture, the O.T. of course, but the N.T too, as the incomparable Leolaia pointed out years ago !
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peacefulpete
yep