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

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