The Head of John Baptist

The Classical Review http://journals.cambridge.org/CAR Additional services for The Classical Review: Email alerts: Click here Subscriptions: Click here Commercial reprints: Click here Terms of use : Click here The Head of John Baptist Jane Harrison The Classical Review / Volume 30 / Issue 08 / December 1916, pp 216 - 219 DOI: 10.1017/S0009840X00010842, Published online: 27 October 2009 Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0009840X00010842 How to cite this article: Jane Harrison (1916). The Head of John Baptist. The Classical Review, 30, pp 216-219 doi:10.1017/S0009840X00010842 Request Permissions : Click here Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/CAR, IP address: 138.251.14.35 on 19 Mar 2015 2l6 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW iyevpeiv \ avyjiypoZo Oepevs ov wore there, and would be an enigma to the iravadfievov. L.S. spade. Stephanus' unlettered Athenian. The fourth word nasiterna is nearer, but the ceaseless fiolpas needs no explanation, nor is it flow is more probably from a fountain- relevant to the ritual of preparing meat. basin. (2) Anth. Pal. 6. 297, paTTTa? But the sense requires that all the <yeio<j>6pov<! cr/ca(f)i8as. L.S. spades.words in v. 42 should be unfamiliar Rather baskets ? Stephanus, vas inter to an average -Athenian, and 8i-7nvx& instrumenta rustica. Synesius 66d, almost demands the rare p.7)pow, the SCCKTUXOI Se ovroi (TKcupLoi teal Trpo/SoXwu? thigh-bones with flesh adhering, over dvrl KoXdficov TeTpuparai • el fir/ KaXa/nov which the fat was doubled for sacri- Xeyoi? avrl rov ypa<f>ea><} rbv iv /3eXetficial. purposes (II. I. 460 and II. L.S. spade. From the context oveaî? 423). In the previous section the is an instrument used in <pvTr)/cofj,[,a,point of the proverb was shown to be but that does not justify the confusion the substitution of pera<f>opd for the with <nca(f>eiov (res cavata with res Kiipiov ovofia. Another variation for cavans). On the analogy of the last the usual word, according to Aristotle, example, it is some kind of vas. is the yX&TTa,1 in this case a word with an archaic sense. This is why the II. STRATO COMICUS, Phoinikides 40-4. master needs Philetus' Glossary. No doubt the corruption occurred because . edvev, eXeyev dXXa p-qfiara the scribe had seen fiolpa<{ and ofieXovs Toiavd' a fid Tr\v yfjv ovS' av els rjKovaev together in another setting. hv A. S. FERGUSON. fiCoTvWa, fioipa<;, SCvrvx', o/8e\ot/9, mare Queen's University, Ta>v TOV <f>i\7)ra Xa/iftdvovTa ftifiXliov Kingston, Canada. <TKoitelv eicaa-ra rv BvvaTai ra>v p In the exercise of his profession the 1 Ar. Rhetoric 1406b 3, at de yXSrrrai rois cook uses archaic terms which are quite iiroiroidis • (rcjivbv yap icai avBa8fs • r) /ifTa(j>opa beyond his employer. It is plain that di Tois lafifieiois ; cf. Poetics 1459a 9. The study of yKoTTw. was part of the literary education of the whole passage (vv. 34-42) is based the Athenian youth, and to make a cook talk in on Iliad I. 449-65. Three of the words yAmrrai is again a case of the l repeated or mutilated in v. 42 occur virepov. THE HEAD OF JOHN BAPTIST. rivos irpoirairov §)} T' iv ayKciKais ?xcls > (Eur- Bacch. 1277). No one, I suppose, reads the story of dance of Agave with the head of Pentheus. the daughter of Herodias and the Head It is the dance of the daimon of the of John Baptist without a sense of New Year with the head of the Old sudden jar. In the Old Testament it Year, past and slain. might stand ; in the New its licentious But, I shall be immediately told, there savagery seems an outrage. But for the is no dance of Herodias' daughter with familiarity of Holy Writ we should the Head of John Baptist. To speak probably long ago have asked what lies of a dance with the Head is to put the behind. My object is, not to challenge loathsome performance of the modern the authenticity of the story, but to dancer—e.g. Maud Allan—in place of suggest that we have here a singular the Gospel story. I have lately met and instructive instance of a widespread with more than one person who—such process; we have the legend of a is the power of suggestion—had actually historical personage cast in the mould made the transition—actually believed of a primitive ritual. The dance of the dance with the Head was part of Herodias' daughter with the Head of John the Gospel story. I need not stress the Baptist is, mutatis mutandis, the ritual error. Both S. Matthew (xiv. 3) and THE CLASSICAL REVIEW 217 S. Mark (vi. 17) are at one. The Head efiirpoaOev TOV 'HpdbSov.' However late is not the motive of the dance, but its the Greek, the words et? op^qa-pM can guerdon. Yet by an odd chance the only bear one meaning—the Head is modern dancer hit on the horrible truth given not as guerdon after the event, — the original dance was with the but for the purpose of the dance. And Head, was motived by the Head. Only the purpose of the dance is the ritual the motive was not amorous license, but rejoicing (the ®pidfi/3o<;) over the dead an intense religious need, a ritual. daimon. In ritual legend, the ritual motive It has not escaped the notice of pre- once forgotten, the reward motive is a vious investigators that the legend of frequent substitution. What should it John Baptist was marked by various mean, a dancer with a severed head ? daimon traits. In his brilliant tract, She must have wanted the head for re- Friihlingsfest der Insel Malta? Dr. R. venge, and then comes another time- Wuenschhas shown conclusively that on honoured motive, the spretae injuria the island of Malta the Christian Saint formae. Is this mere conjecture ? took over an old Adonis festival. The No. We turn to an early Apocryphal two figures were easy of contamination. Scripture and all is clear. Adonis was worshipped by the sea coast In a MS.1 of the eleventh century and on river banks, John baptises on A.D., now in the Library of the Monas- the banks of the Jordan, the sacred tery of Monte Cassino, one section is dove that descended on the head of devoted to a Maprvpiov et? r-qv airo- Jesus has its parallel in the dove of the TOfir/v TOV wyiov Jeodvvov TOV Tlpohpofiov. Syrian cult. Adonis was a beauteous Here, after many apocryphal details as youth beloved by a goddess, and in to the childhood of the Baptist, to some early youth he died; so, too, John of which I shall later return, the story Baptist died, according to the Apocry- of the beheading is given in the same phal legend, young, beautiful and fashion as in the Gospels—the head is the victim of his own asceticism. the reward for the dance. But the Last — and for us most important — story of the beheading is immediately special sanctity is on the head of Adonis followed by a curious dialogue between which swam in magical fashion from the devil and Christ at the time of the Alexandria to Byblos, paralleled itself Temptation. In it, urging his supreme by the magic head of Osiris and of power, the devil says, inter alia, ' Did I Orpheus.4 To the head we shall im- not cause John, who baptised Thee, to mediately return. be slain and TTJV /ce<f>a\r)v avrov viro When Dr. Wuensch wrote his tract, <yvvaiKo<; 6pj(t)<TTplho5 8pia.fi/3ev0rjvai. The the general analogy • between such words are not very easy to translate, figures as Tammuz, Adonis, Osiris, for we have no exact equivalent for Orpheus, Dionysos, was clearly seen, and dpia/iftevdrjvai. Taken in conjunction the fact that countless historical or quasi- with 6px7)<TTpl8o<;, a triumphal danchistoricae l figures were moulded and with the head seems almost implied. coloured by the influence of these We note in passing the reply of Jesus : 2 dairrion-settings was beginning to be 'John is not dead, but lives.' clear, but the life-history of the year A later passage in the same MS.— daimon had not yet been clearly set out, the devil's answer to Christ—turns con- his plot was not yet unravelled. This jecture into certainty. The devil's life-history is now plainly known,6 and statement gains in precision: ical eya> we know precisely what steps and stages . Iwdvvtjv TOV âirriaavrd ere eVotT/cra diroKe^>aki<j6r)vai KOX Sofffjvcu r-qv Ke<paXrjv 3 P. 50. avrov 67Tt TTLvaieos eh opîjafia KopaaLov 4 See my Prolegomena, p. 464. Mr. F. M. Cornford draws my attention to the interesting 1 I owe my knowledge of this MS. to the parallel of the severed head in the Miracle Play kindness of Professor Bury, who lent me Vas- of Hasan and Husain (Sir L. Pelly, London, siliev's Anecdota Graeco-Byzantina (Moscow, 1878). 1893), in which the MS. is edited. 8 See Professor Murray in Excursus to my 8 Cf. Matt. xiv. 2. Herod thinks Jesus is Themis, 1912, p. 34c ff. ; and F. M. Cornford, John risen from the dead. Origin of Attic Co?nedy, 1914, P- 59- 2l8 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW to expect in a year daimon; and they are is ' Rachel,' not Mary, nor yet Eliza- simply the stages of the year itself, or beth ; the substance of the rude little rather the fertility of the year.

Load more