<p>14:8&nbsp;<em>And she, being encouraged by her mother, said: Give me here</em>- The emphasis on &ldquo;here&rdquo; is strange. She wanted the head brought in before everyone. This rather strongly contradicts Josephus&rsquo; claim that John was beheaded in the Machaerus fortress, a long way from Herod&rsquo;s court.</p>
<p><em>The head of John the Baptist on a platter-</em>&nbsp;The feast would have been full of plates with various dishes. The idea was that the head would be offered for eating. The implication is that the head would've been brought immediately, which suggests that John was imprisoned nearby. This again rules out Josephus' claim that John was beheaded in the Machaerus fortress, far from Herod's palace in Tiberias. The offering of a head on a platter is full of allusion to pagan ritual. Herod, as one who claimed to be an observant Jew, was now forced to choose- between being a serious Jew, following Divine principle, or a pagan. He was forced to decide- and chose wrongly. He had earlier wanted to kill John, and now his evil thought was being brought to action, in a powerful outworking of the Lord's principle that the thought is indeed counted as the action.&nbsp; We ask, naturally, why it all had to be as it was. John would've carefully reflected upon the life of Elijah, and John would've seen the parallel between Jezebel and the manipulative women behind his own death- and taken comfort from that in his last moments: that he was in fact the Elijah prophet.</p>