Flaubert and the Bible

I've been thinking about Flaubert - I always return to thinking about him from time to time. Everyone knows him as the author of Madame Bovary, a work that (according to his own account) bored him to near-suicide during the writing of it. He really wanted to write imaginative works, principally The Temptation of St. Anthony, which appalled his literary friends when he read it to them. They persuaded him that he should write about his own time - the result was Madame Bovary. Another book that he wanted to write was the three novellas published under the title Three Tales. I've long wanted to imitate him by writing (before the darkness closes in) a Biblical tale modelled on Herodias (the third of the three) - something totally unpublishable, of course, except on the Internet. Unfortunately, I've also come to fear that Flaubert collared the only tractable subject-matter in the Bible, that is, the only story amenable to fictional treatment.
   Biblical characters fall into two main kinds: people who are legendary, and have no insides, like mobile statues; and supernatural beings, whose bodies are mere simulacra, and have no 'lives' in the human sense at all (in The Library of Babel, Borges quips about 'the autobiographies of archangels'). You have to rewrite the Bible, like Robert Graves in King Jesus, in order to deal with them. In contrast, Herod Antipas and Herodias were historical characters: we know something about them, apart from their brief appearances in the New Testament (Antipas puts John the Baptist to death at the instigation of Salome and Herodias, and later turns up during the last days of Jesus). We even know something about their end. Antipas was banished to Gaul by Caligula, who suspected him of plotting rebellion, and was voluntarily accompanied there by his wife Herodias. They never returned to the Holy Land. This, by the way, is evidence that the Herod family was not always wildly dysfunctional. But where else in the Bible can one find literary inspiration? I've written a short story about 'life' in the Heavenly City called The Crystalline Piazza (the title story of my recently published collection), but that's a treatment of a Biblical idea rather than a Biblical tale. Nevertheless, I still have hope that inspiration lies there, in some tiny seed, perhaps consisting of a single verse.
   In conclusion, let's just remind ourselves of how little Flaubert's story was based upon:

3. For Herod had laid hold on John, and bound him, and put him in prison for Herodias' sake, his brother Philip's wife.
4. For John said unto him, It is not lawful for thee to have her.
5. And when he would have put him to death, he feared the multitude, because they counted him as a prophet.
6. But when Herod's birthday was kept, the daughter of Herodias danced before them, and pleased Herod.
7. Whereupon he promised with an oath to give her whatsoever she would ask.
8. And she, being before instructed of her mother, said, Give me here John Baptist's head in a charger.
9. And the king was sorry: nevertheless for the oath's sake, and them which sat with him at meat, he commanded it to be given her.
10. And he sent, and beheaded John in the prison.
11. And his head was brought in a charger, and given to the damsel: and she brought it to her mother.

(Matthew 14:3-11)