René Girard and the Oath of Herod

Abstract

There is nothing better than René Girard’s mimetic desire and scapegoat’s theory to interpret and understand the enigmatic episode of the death of John the Baptist at the climax of Herod’s birthday celebration. Before Girard, many literary pieces have dealt with this same subject. Among them, Oscar Wilde’s Salome and Gustave Flaubert’s Hérodias, which offer a fascinating approach to the story told both by the Gospels and by historian Flavius Josephus. In this paper, several aspects are taken into consideration, namely, the historical and political context, the secondary “characters”, the events before, during and after the banquet, the apparently inexplicable bloody ending and its terrible aftermath.