This is the kind of stuff John the Baptist was preaching about. Pleasures of the flesh kind of stuff.

Some may remember the vixon named Salome. She is not the same woman married to Zebedee. She is somehow in the Herod lineage.

As with the violence (click here) associated in most biblical tales, the appearance of women in the Bible, not the most feminist of books, has been expanded into many theatrical tickets sales for decades. It’s worth noting that John the Baptist is one of the New Testament’s greatest heroes. He foretold the Christ’s arrival before the messiah appeared and is believed to be the man who baptized Jesus Christ as an early follower of his teachings. And yet, while appearing in many films, including in one as biblical triple-threat Charlton Heston with The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), there is not a single movie named after pious John or his journeys. Conversely, Salome, the woman believed to order John the Baptist’s head on a silver platter after an erotic dance performed for father King Herod’s court, has had at least six films made where she is the titular star. It is a remarkable achievement when she is not even actually named in the Bible as the female dancer who ordered John’s head à la carte, but like the myth of Mary Magdalene being a prostitute, many know the story of the devilishly dangerous succubus named Salome. In fact, she was a box office draw when she got the glam treatment as played by Rita Hayworth in 1953’s Salome. Based on the 1891 Oscar Wilde play of the same name, the auburn-haired star, who turned Gilda into a classic simply with the suggestive flick of a glove off her wrist, played Salome as a tragic heroine, one whose sexy “Dance of the Seven Veils” was performed to save John the Baptist’s life! It may not have been scripture, but it was a hit, just like the movie that inspired it, Cecil B. DeMille’s Samson and Delilah(1949), a picture that turned Delilah’s (Hedy Lemarr) seductive manipulation of Hebrew judge Samson into an epic love story, and the biggest hit of that year.

There is one thing very true about the stories told about or out of the Bible, they do demonstrate a good deal of violence. The Romans really did not think much of the Jews. They had no regard for them.

Jesus and John the Baptist were rebels. Jesus was Hebrew, so was John the Baptist. Who were they to tell a Roman Governor his days as the supreme voice of the land is soon to be over?

But, nowhere in the Bible is anyone carrying a gun. A sword, but, never a gun.