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.”
So I suppose the biblical narrative about Jezebel was not fictional but fictitious? The reclamation of Jezebel has been ongoing for several years in liberal theological academia. I first noticed it at meetings of the American Academy of Religion a couple of years ago, in papers seeking a “feminist reading” of the Jezebel texts.
This rehabilitation actually tells us much about the revisionist project of feminist theology. When confronted with the authority of the word of God regarding a rebellious and idolatrous reign, these theologians would rather have the role model of a “strong woman,” whatever the cause. They listen then to whatever archaeological “findings” might show in a positive light. Such has always been the case, so much so that the prophet Elijah wondered if he was alone in not bowing the knee to Jezebel’s idols (1 Kings 19:10). But the gods and goddesses of Ahab and Jezebel never answer. All that one hears are the chanting of the cultists around the altar. Sometimes the chanting is on Mount Carmel, and sometimes it is in an academic symposium. But the fire from heaven never comes.
Years ago, I heard a politically-incorrect preacher refer to the goddess-worshiping feminist theologians of some “mainline” Protestant seminaries as “a group of Jezebels.” That might have seemed a bit harsh at the time. What does one say when the feminist theologians call themselves “Jezebels,” and mean it as high praise?
