My spouse was taking a class about some stories by Gustave Flaubert. This was one of them. She and I had quite some discussion about the background of the story, which comes from the Bible. It seems that I've spent more time reading the Bible than she, so I was able to comment on some of the goings on from a Biblical perspective. Whoa! It seems one's Biblical perspective is colored by the version one reads. I knew the NIV, favored by American, Southern, white Evangelicals, was unreliable, in that it had very clearly been mistranslated in a number of places so as to coincide with Evangelical political positions. But, even comparing KJV and NRSV shows differences in this particular story. Who knew?

Anyway, the book reads like the outline for a Cecille B. Demille block buster from the 1950s, starring Charlton Heston, Yul Brenner and Debora Kerr. Not very interesting reading. So, it's really 3*-, were that a thing.
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Dans Hérodias, l'un des Trois Contes (recueil publié en 1877), Flaubert mêle avec habileté , de manière indistincte, données historiques présumées exactes et affabulations. Conter, n'est-ce pas ajouter du mensonge pour parvenir à une crédibilité paradoxalement plus grande ?Flaubert recrée donc la splendeur de l'Orient et les moeurs scandaleuses de la Palestine au temps de Jésus, et recompose les portraits d'Hérodiade et d'Hérode, de Salomé et de Jean le Baptiste, tous soumis à de violentes passions.