Let's check out Matthew 14:9
6 On Herod’s birthday the daughter of Herodias danced
for the guests and pleased Herod so much 7 that he
promised with an oath to give her whatever she asked. 8 Prompted by her mother, she said, “Give me here on a
platter the head of John the Baptist.” (NIV)
The king
heard this and his heart was distressed. But he thought of the strong promise
he had made and he didn't want to be shamed in the eye of all the people who
were sitting and eating with him. So he told the soldiers to do as
the young girl had said. (English translation of Tok Pisin Translation of Tok
Ples Translation)
Now, in Papua New Guinea, it's a common thing to want to avoid shame. If you ask someone for directions and they don't know, they'll give you some anyway because they don't want to be shamed. So I figured I should ask about Herod avoiding shame to see if it was coming across as a good thing to do.
The answer:
This must not be Herod's daughter. It must be the daughter of Philip. If it was Herod's own daughter, he could tell her "no" without shaming himself.
An interesting implication the text has led them to! I don't think it's a major problem, but we have to research and figure out who's the father of the girl. We always read things through the lens of our own culture, but if the words we choose for this translation are leading them to believe something that's wrong, then we need to figure out if there's other ways we can word it so they don't think that wrong thing. Of course, if research does not provide a solid answer for paternity, then it probably doesn't make a major difference at all. But that's for someone wiser and with more experience than me to decide.
(They did decide that while avoiding shame is a perfectly acceptable thing, Herod killing John the Baptist was a bad thing. I didn't quite get to whether it was a bad thing because murder is bad or because John the Baptist is a good guy, but we did confirm that Herod's actions were not being praised in this passage.)
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