SOURCE: Mitchell, Jason P. “A Source Victorian or Biblical?: The Integration of Biblical Diction and Symbolism in Oscar Wilde's Salomé.” Victorian Newsletter 89 (spring 1996): 14-18.

In the following essay, Mitchell asserts that Wilde's diction in Salomé was borrowed from the Old Testament as well as the Belgian author Maurice Maeterlinck.

The Salomé legend has its beginnings in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark (Matthew 14: 3-11, Mark 6: 17-28), which relate the beheading of John the Baptist at the instigation of Herodias, wife of Herod, who was angered by John's characterization of her marriage as incestuous. In both accounts, Herodias uses her daughter (unnamed in scripture but known to tradition, through Josephus, as Salomé) as the instrument of the prophet's destruction. According to the Gospel of Mark:

… when a convenient day was come, that Herod on his birthday made a supper to his lords, high captains and chief estates of Galilee...