Age of Salome

The Biblical Story of Salome, I saw the opera in New York, goes like this. Herod, the King, imprisons the good truthful man John.  John has criticized Herod’s sex life. He was having sex with his brothert’s wife Herodious. I’ve always wondered if somehow the word ‘odious’ in her name isn’t a Biblical ‘cue’ like the ugly villains in later shows.  Herodious ‘s daughter was Salome. John was just saying what everyone was saying but Herod imprisoned him because he was a good man and other good men and women tend to believe good men and women.  Incest has always been frowned upon since early man saw the effects of in breeding. (Another really great story about sex is David and Absolon but that’s neither here or there.)

Salome , the Odious’ daughter was desired by Herod. The language in the Bible is generally family rated but it’s reasonable to assume that Herod wanted his wife’s daughter or a little three way mother daughter King action.  Anyway after she got him all excited ‘dancing’ for him he offered to give her what she wanted.  She said she wanted John the Baptist’s head on a platter.  It was an era of pigs heads delicacies so maybe she wanted a cannibal treat or just to have him beheaded.  You never know with odious people. She might have wanted the dead head for necrophiliac entertainment. They didn’t have batteries in those days. But the Bible is not X rated.  It’s a bit American gory television and sexually like American tv rather than the French tv who hide the violence and gore but expose the sex parts.  

John the Baptist was called ‘the Baptist’ because he was cleansing people in the rivers , baptising them, to make them ‘new’ men and by this ritual get a new start.  He Baptised Jesus who asked him to do this but when he did the skies opened and John the Baptist was the one who was ‘baptised’ some might say.  He thereafter proclaimed Jesus as the Messiah.

Herod had killed thousands of babies when he head the Messiah had been born so he wasn’t a nice guy by any stretch of the matter.  He was loved by the authorities and a favourite of Rome who was like the Brussels of the day or Washington or Beijing or Moscow.  Roman was the world global empire and Israel was like any department in a big Walmart.  The whole was a sum of it’s parts but the parts didn’t count compared to the whole.  Jesus came and said that the Person mattered to a loving god, ABBA, Papa. As God he washed the feet of his men, creating the term ‘servant god’ and talking a whole lot about ‘grace’ as we know it today. Very alien and earth shattering in it’s day.

But now we have women calling for men to be beheaded .It’s the age of Salome. No doubt she’d have other men beheaded but like ISIS she beheaded indiscriminately. IT was an age of ‘false accusation’ and ‘lies’ and Salome was the greatest liar of her day.  She was obviously a little lust creature, a sex goddess, a woman who could entice men and then if they refused her could get other men to behead her. There’s no doubt she tried to seduce John and tried to get him to say she was lovely and her mother lovely and that Herod was a good man. But he wouldn’t.  

Good men see beyond the sexy attractive exteriors of the Hollywood dirty girls to the clean or dirty heart. It’s like they can see or smell that this utterly seductive creature has Trichomonas.  So despite the appearances the smell gives her away.  Good men have more self respect where they put themselves especially pre antibiotic era and probably John thought there was no river wide or deep enough that would cleanse any man after he’d slept with that filth.

Ironically S.A.L.O.M.E. Was the drug trial ‘Study to Assess Longer -term Opiod Medication Effectiveness. You really do have to wonder when aetheist scientists use a historically famous Biblical name to designate their study.  What were they thinking?  They might capture the irony if theists scientists called their study to counteract addiction the ‘EVA BRAWN” trial but its all marketing and only the politically correct believe you can package a gourd in ribbon and no one will notice the smell.  Not that the drug study isn’t beneficial and maybe it’s good that men are being beheaded. That was the entertainment during the French Revolution with the Guillotine.  The British had been big on hanging so French wanting to be fashionable re introduced beheading which as Salome shows was old news by the time of the Guillotine. The Guillotine was just a wedding of the beheading with industrial machines efficiency.

Salome exchanges sex and lies and convinces men in power by provocative dances to behead good men.  Bad men get beheaded but the issue here is that the best man of the day, John, who wouldn’t accept her lies, or go along with incest and pedophilia, Herod was like so many powerful men of that day and today especially those who are so easily seduced for sex by the Salome and Herodious seduction.  

Jesus said when they kllled him ‘Forgive them for they know not what they do.”  He also said “My god, my god why hast thou forsaken me.” But that wasn’t the end of the either story.  

I just think that Today is the Age of Salome and the parallels are pretty obvious. I’m just not sure what I’m supposed to learn from it.  Maybe that sexy young women and their ugly mothers can seduce stupid dirty old men to kill good men.  That’s just one lesson. There’s a whole lot more. Like ‘thou shalt not bear false testimony’ and ‘liars never prosper in the long run.’  

Evil is not rewarded really in this life or the next.  Herod might know lust but he would never know love.  Bob Dylan sang ‘you’ve got to choose.”