Tool Beta
The Ancient World Behind the Text
Pick a passage anywhere in the New Testament. See the customs and ideas a first reader knew without being told.
Mark 6:14-29, Herod's banquet and John's death
Herod hears of Jesus and thinks John has risen. Mark then tells how Herod, at his birthday banquet, had John beheaded.
Mark 6:14-29, in every translation this tool compares.
People guess Jesus is John raised, or Elijah, or a prophet. Herod is sure he is John, and Mark explains why: Herod had jailed John for condemning his marriage to Herodias. At a banquet Herodias' daughter dances, Herod swears to give her anything, and at her mother's urging she asks for John's head. Herod does not want to break his oath in front of his guests.
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- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/herod-and-herodians\/","n":"Herod Antipas and the Herodians","s":"Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great, ran Galilee for Rome as a tetrarch, not a king. The Herodians were his backers.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/reclining-at-table\/","n":"Reclining at table","s":"At banquets men lay on couches, propped on the left elbow, and where you lay showed your rank.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/honor-and-shame\/","n":"Honor before a crowd","s":"Public standing was the currency of the ancient Mediterranean. People competed for honor and dreaded being shamed in front of others.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/burial-and-mourning\/","n":"Burial and mourning","s":"Mourners came at once, the dead were buried the same day, wrapped in linen in rock tombs, and family carried the duty of burial. Pagan mourning, with little hope beyond a shadowy underworld, could be bleak.","r":""}
Keener notes that beheading was considered the most merciful form of execution because it was quick, and that ancient readers of stories about rulers executing prisoners at banquets as a favor regarded the ruler as wicked. He puts Herodias' daughter between about 12 and 14. Machaerus stood five miles east of the Dead Sea, and archaeologists have found two large dining rooms suitable for a banquet and "a small one where the women would have eaten during the banquet", which fits the girl going out to ask her mother (Garland). Augustus had denied Antipas the title king, and he was later deposed after asking Caligula for it, so Mark's King Herod may be ironic (Garland; the Zondervan Bible Dictionary). The Zondervan Atlas doubts that a birthday banquet was held at Machaerus and prefers the palace at Tiberias. The cultural backgrounds article on Herod's successors adds that Antipas ruled from Sepphoris and later Tiberias until Caligula banished him in AD 39.
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, notes on Mark 6:14, 6:15, 6:17, 6:20, 6:22, 6:23, 6:24, 6:25, 6:26, 6:27 and 6:29
- Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 18.5.1-2, trans. William Whiston
- N. T. Wright, Mark for Everyone, comments on Mark 6:14-16 and Mark 6:17-29
- ESV Study Bible, study notes on Mark 6:14a, 6:14b-15 and 6:17
- David E. Garland, Mark, in Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary, ed. Clinton E. Arnold, on Mark 6:17 and sidebar Herod Antipas
- J. D. Douglas and Merrill C. Tenney, Zondervan Illustrated Bible Dictionary, entry Herod
- Carl G. Rasmussen, Zondervan Atlas of the Bible, The Life of Christ
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, article Herod's Successors and Uneasy Relations Between Rome and Judeans
