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Yoruba Girl Dancing: A Nigerian/British Women's Reading of Herodias’s Daughter in Mark 6:17-28 and Matthew 14:3-12

Obamakin, Olabisi

Authors



Abstract

This paper seeks to offer a Nigerian/British women’s reading of Herodias’ daughter’s dance in Mark and Matthew by reading it alongside Simi Bedford’s Yoruba Girl Dancing. In this paper the dominant Western interpretation of Herodias’s daughter’s dance being erotic is shown to have been heavily influenced by hypersexualised art reception history in the face of no biblical evidence. By combining insights from Simi Bedford’s novel (that depicted Yoruba dance on British soil to be a public statement of resistance against European colonialism), and the important role that dance played within Yoruba life and death rituals, this paper, from a Nigerian/British women’s perspective, reconfigures Herodias’s daughter’s dance to be a form of resistance against the patriarchal gaze, a prophetic ritual lament of the death of John the Baptist, a means to communicate to a higher deity, and finally a means to mark the end of the John the Baptist era.

Citation

Obamakin, O. (in press). Yoruba Girl Dancing: A Nigerian/British Women's Reading of Herodias’s Daughter in Mark 6:17-28 and Matthew 14:3-12. Horizons in Biblical Theology,

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Jan 21, 2025
Deposit Date Jan 22, 2025
Journal Horizons in Biblical Theology
Print ISSN 0195-9085
Electronic ISSN 1871-2207
Publisher Brill Academic Publishers
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Keywords Nigerian/British Women’s Interpretation; Herodias’s Daughter; Mark 6:17-28; Matthew 14:3-12; Dancing; Simi Bedford, Yoruba Girl Dancing (1994)
Public URL https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/3344554
Publisher URL https://brill.com/view/journals/hbth/hbth-overview.xml?language=en