Dancing for decapitation -- stop me if you've heard this one

Gustave Moreau, La fille de Jared dansant devant Akish (1876)

1. The dancing daughter of Jared

Here's a tale of Jaredite devilry from the Book of Ether. See if it reminds you of anything:

And it came to pass that he begat Omer, and Omer reigned in his stead. And Omer begat Jared; and Jared begat sons and daughters.

And Jared rebelled against his father, and came and dwelt in the land of Heth. And it came to pass that he did flatter many people, because of his cunning words, until he had gained the half of the kingdom. And when he had gained the half of the kingdom he gave battle unto his father, and he did carry away his father into captivity, and did make him serve in captivity;

And now, in the days of the reigns of Omer he was in captivity the half of his days. And it came to pass that he begat sons and daughters among whom were Esrom and Coriantumr; and they were exceedingly angry because of the doings of Jared their brother, insomuch that they did raise an army and gave battle unto Jared. And it came to pass that they did give battle unto him by night. And it came to pass that when they had slain the army of Jared they were about to slay him also; and he plead with them that they would not slay him, and he would give up the kingdom unto his father. And it came to pass that they did grant unto him his life.

And now Jared became exceedingly sorrowful because of the loss of the kingdom, for he had set his heart upon the kingdom and upon the glory of the world.

Now the daughter of Jared being exceedingly expert, and seeing the sorrows of her father, thought to devise a plan whereby she could redeem the kingdom unto her father. Now the daughter of Jared was exceedingly fair. And it came to pass that she did talk with her father, and said unto him: 

Whereby hath my father so much sorrow? Hath he not read the record which our fathers brought across the great deep? Behold, is there not an account concerning them of old, that they by their secret plans did obtain kingdoms and great glory?

And now, therefore, let my father send for Akish, the son of Kimnor; and behold, I am fair, and I will dance before him, and I will please him, that he will desire me to wife; wherefore if he shall desire of thee that ye shall give unto him me to wife, then shall ye say: 

I will give her if ye will bring unto me the head of my father, the king.

And now Omer was a friend to Akish; wherefore, when Jared had sent for Akish, the daughter of Jared danced before him that she pleased him, insomuch that he desired her to wife. And it came to pass that he said unto Jared: 

Give her unto me to wife.

And Jared said unto him: 

I will give her unto you, if ye will bring unto me the head of my father, the king.

And it came to pass that Akish gathered in unto the house of Jared all his kinsfolk, and said unto them: 

Will ye swear unto me that ye will be faithful unto me in the thing which I shall desire of you?

And it came to pass that they all sware unto him, by the God of heaven, and also by the heavens, and also by the earth, and by their heads, that whoso should vary from the assistance which Akish desired should lose his head; and whoso should divulge whatsoever thing Akish made known unto them, the same should lose his life. And it came to pass that thus they did agree with Akish. And Akish did administer unto them the oaths which were given by them of old who also sought power, which had been handed down even from Cain, who was a murderer from the beginning. And they were kept up by the power of the devil to administer these oaths unto the people, to keep them in darkness, to help such as sought power to gain power, and to murder, and to plunder, and to lie, and to commit all manner of wickedness and whoredoms.

And it was the daughter of Jared who put it into his heart to search up these things of old; and Jared put it into the heart of Akish; wherefore, Akish administered it unto his kindred and friends, leading them away by fair promises to do whatsoever thing he desired (Ether 8:1-17).

2. The dancing daughter of Herodias

I assume anyone with even a passing familiarity with the New Testament will immediately recognize the dancing-for-decapitation plot point in Ether as being strangely similar to one found  in the Gospels:

This obviously calls to mind the story of the daughter of Herodias, as told in Mark 6 (and Matthew 14):

And when a convenient day was come, that Herod on his birthday made a supper to his lords, high captains, and chief estates of Galilee; and when the daughter of the said Herodias came in, and danced, and pleased Herod and them that sat with him, the king said unto the damsel, 

Ask of me whatsoever thou wilt, and I will give it thee.

And he sware unto her, 

Whatsoever thou shalt ask of me, I will give it thee, unto the half of my kingdom.

And she went forth, and said unto her mother, 

What shall I ask? 

And she said, 

The head of John the Baptist.

And she came in straightway with haste unto the king, and asked, saying, 

I will that thou give me by and by in a charger the head of John the Baptist.

And the king was exceeding sorry; yet for his oath's sake, and for their sakes which sat with him, he would not reject her (Mark 6:21-26).

Essentially the same story is told in Matthew 14, but I have quoted the Mark version because it has more in common with the story in Ether. (Matthew omits the reference to "the half of my kingdom" and does not say Herod is "exceeding" sorry.)

3. Two different types of parallels

I think it's important to recognize that the story in Ether parallels that in Mark in two very different ways.

First, and most obviously, there is the core similarity of the plot itself: Someone wishes to be rid of an enemy but does not have the power to do so themselves, so they have their daughter ingratiate a powerful person by dancing for him, which leads to that person agreeing to bring them the enemy's head. This core parallel is reinforced by some incidental similarities in the way the story is told. For example, in both stories "the daughter" is unnamed (only in extrabiblical tradition is the daughter of Herodias called Salome), is said to have "pleased" the man she danced for, and so on.

The other parallels are of the type discussed in this blog's inaugural post, "Lehi, Nephi, and the pillar of fire that 'dwelt upon a rock': A case study of hard-to-define biblical parallels." I have yet to coin a suitable term to refer to parallels of this kind, and so they remain as "hard to define" as ever.

As you will recall if you've read that post, the Book of Mormon's opening verses introduce two characters, Nephi and Lehi, and relate Lehi's vision in which "a pillar of fire . . . dwelt upon a rock" (1 Ne. 1:6). Searching for Nephi and Lehi in the King James Bible, you will find that Nephi (i.e., naphtha) was the name given to a liquid that was "poured on the great stones" and "kindled a flame" (2 Macc. 1:31-32), while Lehi is a place name, introduced one verse after we are told that Samson "dwelt in the top of the rock" (Judg. 15:8). So in both the Bible and the Book of Mormon, Lehi is connected with someone or something that "dwelt" on a "rock," and Nephi is connected with a fire burning on a rock -- but the stories incorporate these elements in entirely different ways, so that the stories themselves are not similar at all.

The two dancing-daughter stories are similar, but in addition there are parallels of this Lehi-Nephi type (for lack of anything better to call them), where biblical elements appear in the Book of Mormon story but fit into that story in a completely different way:

• Herod promises up to "the half of my kingdom" to the dancing daughter. Jared first gains "the half of the kingdom" before being removed from power; it is the desire to regain this lost half-kingdom that motivates the decapitation scheme.
• Herod is "exceeding sorry" because he has to kill John, whom he fears and respects. Jared is "exceeding sorrowful" (unnecessarily "corrected" to exceedingly in later editions) because he has lost his kingdom. 
• The dancing daughter of Herodias requests the decapitation at the prompting of her mother. Jared requests the decapitation at the prompting of his dancing daughter.
• Herod swears an oath to give the dancing daughter ""whatsoever thou shalt ask," which turns out to be the decapitation of John. Akish has all his family and friends swear an oath to assist him and keep his secrets; this is to facilitate his plan to decapitate Omer, and it results in their doing "whatsoever thing he desired."

One major difference between the two stories is that only one of the decapitation plots is successful: John is in fact beheaded, while Omer escapes that fate. Even in this difference there is a biblical parallel, though, when you consider how Omer is saved: "the Lord warned Omer in a dream that he should depart out of the land; wherefore Omer departed out of the land with his family" (Ether 9:3). After the deaths of Jared and Akish, who had plotted to kill him, Omer returns (Ether 9:6, 12-13).

Compare this passage from Matthew:

And being warned of God in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they [the wise men] departed into their own country another way.

And when they were departed, behold, the angel of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word: for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him. When he arose, he took the young child and his mother by night, and departed into Egypt:

And was there until the death of Herod: . . . But when Herod was dead, behold, an angel of the Lord appeareth in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and go into the land of Israel: for they are dead which sought the young child's life. (Matt. 2:12-15, 19-20).

This is not part of the Bible's dancing-daughter story -- it's not even the same king Herod -- but it's another story about a murderous "Herod," and it, too, has echoes in Ether 8. The link seems to be the name Herod (which is also phonetically similar to Jared). The expression "warned . . . in a dream" appear only in Ether 8 and Matthew 2, and nowhere else in the Bible or Book of Mormon.

4. Skeptical explanations

Obviously, skeptics are going to explain any biblical parallels in the Book of Mormon as plagiarism or "borrowing" on the part of Joseph Smith: Smith took the main theme from the story of the daughter of Herodias and adapted it for his story about Jared and Omer. It's puzzling that Smith would plagiarize so heavily from the Bible, though -- the one text that he knew most of the potential readers of the Book of Mormon would be intimately familiar with, making his plagiarism extremely easy to detect. If Smith wanted to lift material from the Bible, we would expect him to at least try to disguise it. Instead, we have lots of very obvious Bible plagiarism -- including, in other parts of the book, extensive copy-and-pastes from famous passages in the epistles of Paul. Why would a fraudulent Joseph Smith -- who was obviously neither stupid nor lacking in creativity -- have done that?

And the Lehi-Nephi type parallels can't easily be explained as conscious plagiarism. If Smith made a conscious decision to plagiarize the main story of Salome, it would make no sense to add in other elements from that story -- half the kingdom, exceeding sorrow, oaths to do whatever is requested -- but to work them into the story in a completely different way. This would obviously be more difficult than either straightforward plagiarism or original storytelling, and what purpose would it serve but to make the plagiarism more obvious? What does the "half the kingdom" reference add to the Jared story, except as another telltale sign of the biblical source?

I think the only explanation is that the Lehi-Nephi parallels were added subconsciously: Thinking of the daughter of Herodias story primed Smith's mind, by subconscious free-association, to think of other themes and expressions from that story, and also from another murderous-Herod story. He put these into his text because they just appeared in his mind, without being consciously aware that they had their source in the New Testament.

5. Believing explanations

Coincidence is always a possibility. One need only peruse one of those lists of Lincoln-Kennedy coincidences to be persuaded that two very real events can be connected in multiple ways be sheer coincidence. Some of the similarities are straightforward (each president was shot in the head on a Friday and succeeded by a Southerner named Johnson who was born in '08) and others are more of the "Lehi-Nephi" variety (Lincoln was shot in Ford's Theatre; Kennedy was shot in a Ford automobile, a Lincoln). Other explanations are obviously to be preferred, though.

The beginnings of an explanation for the basic story similarity can be found in the fact that the daughter of Jared's dance-for-decapitation scheme was inspired by "an account concerning them of old, that they by their secret plans did obtain kingdoms and great glory" (Ether 8:9), and of these secret plans Moroni writes, "it hath been made known unto me that they are had among all people" (Ether 8:20). Based on this, we should positively expect to see similar schemes being carried out among other people. It is hardly a stretch to suggest that the wicked Herods might have been involved in Gadianton-style secret combinations. The story of Esther might be a (partially disguised) account of another such scheme. Although she does not dance, Esther is "fair and beautiful" (Esther 2:7) and with that beauty extracts from Ahasuerus the very promise -- "even to the half of the kingdom" (Esther 5:6, 7:2) -- that Salome extracted from Herod. Like Salome and Jared, Esther uses that promise for murderous ends, getting the king to execute Haman and declare open season on the Jews' enemies. Is Esther -- whose book contains not a single reference to God or prayer -- less of a heroine than popularly believed? "For I, Nephi, have not taught them many things concerning the manner of the Jews; for their works were works of darkness, and their doings were doings of abominations" (2 Ne. 25:2). The daughterly dance of death could well be some established ritual among the workers in darkness.

Could the "unto the half of my kingdom" wording also be part of an established secret-combination oath? If so, the inclusion of similar wording may be not a coincidence but an allusion. We know that Moroni is unwilling to "write the manner of their oaths and combinations" (Ether 8:20) directly, so perhaps he is deliberately saying "the half of the kingdom" as a hint to those with ears to hear.

That would leave only "exceeding sorrowful" and "warned in a dream" as seemingly coincidental parallels. They could be just that, coincidences, or they could be instances the sort of "biblical contamination" I proposed in my first post here.