Head on a Platter Hard to Believe?

29 August 2025  Mark 6:17-29

“And she went out and said to her mother, ‘What shall I ask?’ And she said, ‘The head of John the Baptist.’”  Mark 6:24

“I want you to give me at once the head of John the Baptist on a platter” (Mark 6:25).

The grotesqueness of Salome’s request has led many commentators to doubt the historicity of Mark’s account of the death of John the Baptist. It is almost comically lurid, they say, the kind of thing that shows up in comic books, or legendary accounts that have abandoned any pretense of historical accuracy.

It is fiction, plain and simple, written by people who have a political or religious axe to grind. Maybe both.

They are much more inclined to accept the account of the ancient historian Josephus, who was writing a generation after Mark. He says that Herod had John executed because he was likely to stir up an insurrection of the people(Antiquities of the Jews, 18:116-119). It is a brutal explanation, but far simpler, and without the gruesome details of Mark and Matthew.

But are the two accounts incompatible? It is a fact that Herod had divorced his wife and married his brother’s wife. It is a fact that that this was a violation of the Jewish Law, and would have stirred up opposition. It is a fact that John the Baptist was the kind of Jewish leader who would have called attention to this violation. It is a fact that such a provocative action could have motivated some to rebel against the king, which Josephus saw as the real motive for John’s execution. It is certainly plausible that there might have been some disagreement about what to do with John the Baptist. Some might reasonably have thought that executing John might cause the rebellion they feared. Others, just as plausibly, might have thought that the revolt was inevitable as long as John was alive. It is also plausible that one side might have used social pressure to achieve a political end, like creating a situation where the king would lose face among the aristocracy if he didn’t do what they wanted, viz., execute John. Aristocrats have used social pressure to achieve political ends as long as there have been aristocracies.

There isn’t any necessary disharmony between the accounts of Mark and Josephus. Each one fits plausibly within the boundaries of the other.

But a head on a platter? Really?

The part of Mark’s account that strikes some as most doubtful is the surreal depravity of Herod, Herodias and Salome, to say nothing of their guests. The spectacle of John’s head being delivered alongside the appetizers doesn’t even seem to have broken up the party: “Oh look, a head on a platter. Pass me some more of those lobster rolls.” But is it really that unbelievable? We live in a time when sentient adults, in full possession of their wits, support the people who killed over a thousand Jews just for being Jews. We live at a time when violently deranged transexuals slaughter children at Mass in Minneapolis, and in the hallways of a Christian school in Nashville. Sentient adults, in full possession of their wits, then try not to talk about any connection between transexual rhetoric and violence against Christians. Is a head on a platter really that hard to believe?

Herod, Herodias, and Salome have not gone far, and surreal depravity is not just in comic books. Maybe the real fictions are the accounts that are too tender to notice it.