jezebel the untold story of the bible's harlot queen

The books of Kings-except for the postscript about Judah’s destruction-were likely written in the sixth century BC, after Israel had recently fallen to the Assyrians and its southern neighbor, Judah, feared a similar fate at the hands of the Babylonians. Jezebel’s story appears in 1 and 2 Kings, which tell the saga of the Israelite monarchy from its creation under David, through its division into Israel and Judah, to the eventual dissolution of those two kingdoms at the hands of mighty neighbors. Hazleton, a one-time Middle East journalist and former psychologist, seeks not merely to rinse the mud off the old girl but to elevate her as a paragon of enlightenment and tolerance for the 21st century.

Rather, it’s the product of a smear by the ancient authors who told her story in the books of Kings. Without Airbrushing.” But the ignominy that trails the woman is undeserved, insists Lesley Hazleton. Since this memorable cameo in the ninth century BC, Jezebel’s name has become synonymous with wickedness and promiscuity, right down to the present day, when it attaches to a line of midpriced lingerie and a recently launched blog that flogs “Celebrity, Sex, Fashion.

But it may be that none has lodged more firmly in the imaginations of Good Book readers than Jezebel, the idolatrous foreign queen who led the king of Israel astray and then got hers when she was thrown from her palace balcony by double-crossing eunuchs, trampled by horses, and finally devoured by dogs. It’s the bad girls of the Bible we remember best: the deceitful Eve, the perfidious Delilah, the ex-sinner Mary Magdalene.

Jezebel the untold story of the bible's harlot queen