20. The dance of the seven veils
One of the tales of an erotic nature attributed to the Bible is Salome’s dance of the seven veils, which so pleased Herod that he acceded to her request to have John the Baptist beheaded. Salome is not named in the account, which is from the fourteenth chapter of Matthew, nor is there any mention of veils, of any number. Matthew recounts that the “daughter of Herodias danced before them, and pleased Herod. Whereupon he promised with an oath to give her whatsoever she would ask”. After Herodias instructed her to ask for the head of John the Baptist “in a charger” she did as bid and Herod ordered the beheading of John.
There is not even an implication that the dance was of an erotic nature, but it has come to be considered a slow striptease before Herod and his guests, who were celebrating Herod’s birthday. It was Oscar Wilde, of all people, who created the dance of the seven veils in his play Salome, written in 1891. Josephus identified Salome as the daughter of Herod II and Herodias. Wilde took the name, which does not appear in the gospels, and was influenced by other writers who had written of the dance, each embellishing on the rather spare account in Matthew. At the time of writing Salome, veil dances were a popular entertainment in Europe, a striptease which gradually revealed the dancer’s body. The nature of the dance performed by the “daughter of Herodias” is not described in Matthew at all.
Where do we find this stuff? Here are our sources:
All Biblical sources are from the King James Version of the Bible Online
Exodus 21:10-24 and Deuteronomy 21:15 and 21: 17
Joshua 2: 1-24, Matthew 1: 1-5, Hebrews 11:31, James 2:25
