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by Gail P. Streete (Author)
We are not even sure of her name: it might have been Salome; it might have been Herodias, like that of her mother. She appears very briefly in only two Gospels of the New Testament, to dance at the birthday party of her mother's husband, Herod, the ruler of Galilee. We do not even know what kind of dance it was, but we are told that it pleased him so much he promised to give her anything she asked for. What she asked for was the head of the prophet John the Baptist on a platter. Although she disappeared from the pages of the New Testament, Salome and her dance have puzzled, intrigued, and dominated the imaginations of artists and writers for two millennia. Was she just a little girl doing a dance performance to please her stepfather and his guests? Was she a nubile teenager bent on seduction? Was she a femme fatale who aimed at the death of a man she could not possess? The Salome Project is the result of a quest to answer these questions and find the real Salome.
Author Biography
Gail P. Streete is Professor Emerita of Religious Studies at Rhodes College, Memphis, Tennessee. Streete is the author of Her Image of Salvation (1992), The Strange Woman (1997), and Redeemed Bodies (2009).
