Each month I focus my article on one of my Holy Women Icons with a folk feminist twist. Virginia Woolf , the Shulamite, Mary Daly, Baby Suggs, Pachamama and Gaia, and Frida Kahlo have reputations that match their lived realities relatively closely, so my paintings have attempted to reflect these realities. The subject of this month’s article, however, has been misrepresented and misunderstood throughout the ages. Her “name” is Salome and we read of her dancing story in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark.
If you carefully read Mark 6:17-29 or Matthew 14:3-11, you’re probably wondering why this article features an icon of someone named Salome. There was no mention of anyone named Salome in the text. Rather, in the Markan text both the dancing daughter and her mother are named Herodias. In Matthew’s text, the daughter is nameless. It wasn’t until later when Josephus, a Jewish historian, named her Salome and stated that she was responsible for the beheading of the John the Baptist.
Continue reading “Painting Salome By Angela Yarber”