Matthew 14:6

γενεσίοις γενομένοις, for γενεσίων γενομένων. The dative has decisive authority. The gen. abs. a grammatical note, which has come into the text as the easier reading.

6. γενεσίοις γενομένοις. Dative of time, ‘marking precisely time when’ (Clyde); cp. τοῖς σάββασιν, ch. Matthew 12:2, Winer, p. 274. Plural, as usual in names of festivals, ἐγκαίνια, ἄζυμα, Παναθήναια, Saturnalia. Here τὰ γενέσια retains what must have been its original sense, ‘a birthday festival;’ but in classical Greek it meant a memorial feast in honour of the dead, celebrated on the anniversary of birth, and so distinguished from τὰ νεκύσια, the feast observed on the anniversary of death. See Rawlinson’s note on Herod. IV. 26. The classical word for a birthday feast was τὰ γενέθλια, this in turn came through the process of Christian thought to mean a festival commemorative of a martyr’s death—his birth into the new life—ἐπιτελεῖν τὴν τοῦ μαρτυρίου αὐτοῦ ἡμέραν γενέθλιον, Martyr. Polyc. 18, p. 1044 A. See Sophocles’ Lexicon on γενέθλιος and γενέσιος and Lob. Phryn. 104.

ὠρχήσατο. Some sort of pantomimic dance is meant. Horace notes as one of the signs of national decay that even highborn maidens learnt the voluptuous dances of the East, Hor. Od. III. 6. 21. Herod would recall similar scenes at Rome. See note Matthew 14:1.

ἡ θυγάτηρ τῆς Ἡρωδιάδος. Salome; she was afterwards married to her uncle Herod-Philip, the tetrarch, and on his death to Aristobulus, grandson of Herod the Great.