The Return of Jezebel

A few years ago, when the evangelical book fad The Prayer of Jabez was in full swing, I joked that the feminist revisionists would respond with their own small devotional volume: The Prayer of Jezebel. Well, now it is here.

Fortress Press, the publishing house of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, has announced the publication of The Jezebel Letters, which "combines top-notch biblical scholarship with a fictionalized first-person account of the biblical character." According to the Fortress press release, the book "transforms the stereotype of the notorious biblical queen into a more historically based portrayal of a powerful, literate royal woman."

How is she "transformed"? Well, in this reading, Jezebel is the protagonist. According to a Hebrew and Old Testament professor at the University of Amsterdam, the book uses "fictional but not fictitious letters and memoirs written by the ancient Queen herself," allowing us to "reverse our "cultural opinion of 'Jezebel' and see her for what she probably was: a regal, wise, politically active wife, mother and queen in Israel." A biblical studies professor at Claremont laments that "biblical narrative castigates Ahab and his Queen Jezebel as depraved idol worshipers who led their country to ruin." In fact, he writes, she was "the urbane and thoughtful Queen of Israel who gives voice to her efforts and those of her family in guiding Israel through one of its most challenging, and least understood, periods."
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