There is no woman with a worse reputation than Jezebel, the ancient queen who corrupted a nation and met one of the most gruesome fates in the Bibl...
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Dec 20, 2007
Jason
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(The full review I wrote of this book is much larger than GoodReads' word-count limitations. Find the entire essay at the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com].)
So are you familiar already with the story of Jezebel? It appears in both the Jewish bible (Tanakh) and the Christian one (Old Testament, Books of Kings), based extremely loosely on the real woman who served as one of the queens of Israel back in ancient times. As the traditional legend goes, Jezebel More...
So are you familiar already with the story of Jezebel? It appears in both the Jewish bible (Tanakh) and the Christian one (Old Testament, Books of Kings), based extremely loosely on the real woman who served as one of the queens of Israel back in ancient times. As the traditional legend goes, Jezebel More...
Oct 23, 2007
Janeadams's review
recommended for: everyone
Here's what I learned from JEZEBEL, Leslie Hazelton's fascinating new book!
1. My favorite Passover prophet was a fire-breathing fundamentalist - I'm not inviting him to my next Seder.
2. The authors of the Book of Kings had a political agenda in portraying Jezebel as an evil harlot bent on destroying monotheism and the ruination of Israel.
3. Far from being a Harlot, Jezebel was a vulnerable, virgin More...
recommended for: everyone
Here's what I learned from JEZEBEL, Leslie Hazelton's fascinating new book!
1. My favorite Passover prophet was a fire-breathing fundamentalist - I'm not inviting him to my next Seder.
2. The authors of the Book of Kings had a political agenda in portraying Jezebel as an evil harlot bent on destroying monotheism and the ruination of Israel.
3. Far from being a Harlot, Jezebel was a vulnerable, virgin More...
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Aug 02, 2011
A remarkably insightful and eye-opening book! Hazleton transports you back to to ancient Samaria and helps you walk in the footsteps of the mythic and legendary Biblical figures. She humanizes both the characters of the book of Kings, opening their minds and motives to our eyes, and the Biblical authors, uncovering the editorial hands with which they shaped the story; they become real people, in ways that we often take for granted or overlook. Most importantly, she humanizes the 'villainous' J
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Jan 20, 2012
Stephanie
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Eminently readable book that's part non-fiction, historical fiction, travelogue and rant. It has a similar agenda to Cleopatra: A Life and suffers a bit in comparison. I think the passages where Hazleton tries to get inside Jezebel's head ultimately weaken the book. How much do we know about the polytheistic religious practices of the time period? How much do we know about what female rulers acted like? Is there information on all this? As of reading this book I'm not 100% sure. I think it would
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Mar 01, 2010
Mark
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This is a biography, aiming to provide the political and social context of Jezebel's life beginning when, as a child princess, she was married away from Tyre to mighty Israel as peace treaty collateral.
Hazleton carries her essential point, that our literal interpretation of largely metaphorical biblical text reveals we moderns as the unsophisticates, missing the point that Jezebel represented tolerance and liberalism, which ideas, pantheism in particular, bible authors as well as sub More...
Hazleton carries her essential point, that our literal interpretation of largely metaphorical biblical text reveals we moderns as the unsophisticates, missing the point that Jezebel represented tolerance and liberalism, which ideas, pantheism in particular, bible authors as well as sub More...
Dec 20, 2011
Aeren
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I never thought of Jezebel as anything other than an evil woman. But over the past year I've been questioning lots of the male dominated theology with what Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza calls the "hermeneutics of suspicion." Hazleton's book turns the story of Jezebel on it's head. She writes: "How do you destroy a woman’s reputation? The tactic is familiar in today’s world of spin. You sexualize her. You spread innuendo. You do a smear job. And you do so repeatedly, to the point of
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Jan 23, 2010
Jeweleye
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My professor of Old Testament studies would have liked this book, I think. He usually had a different take on biblical stories, such as the parting of the Red Sea might have actually been the Reed Sea, and the chariots pursuing the Israelites got stuck in the mud of the shallow waters. Likewise Ms. Hazleton presents the story of Jezebel through a scholastic eye to reveal the biases of the writers of the book of Kings.
Ms. Hazleton uses this story to explain the beginnings of monothei More...
Ms. Hazleton uses this story to explain the beginnings of monothei More...
Nov 14, 2010
J.S.A.
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I started to say that this was poorly written—it's not, it's just neither acute scholarly prose nor NYer quality profile-journalism. What it did do was, from approximately pages 70-75, severely mess with this idea which I've had—which most of us have, I think—about so-called "sacred prostitution" or "temple harlots" or whatever you want to call them. Namely, that they DID NOT EXIST, EVER, but were an Orientalised otherization on the part of Western male writers from Herotodus
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May 21, 2011
Suzanne
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I read this for my biography book discussion, and found myself really engrossed in the story. I had to pull out a Bible and reread Kings. This is not the Jezebel I remembered. This factual account does make much more sense. This was a woman who was villified as a harlot by the
prophet Elijah, when her crime seems to be pragmatism, polytheism and tolerance of other religions and cultures, and the sharing of these beliefs with her husband, the king. In reality, the religious fanatacism shown More...
prophet Elijah, when her crime seems to be pragmatism, polytheism and tolerance of other religions and cultures, and the sharing of these beliefs with her husband, the king. In reality, the religious fanatacism shown More...
Jun 01, 2009
Laura D.
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I really got into this book. I picked it up because I was curious about the name Jezebel. Why don't you ever meet people with this name? I thought it was a pretty name, so why wouldn't it be used? As it turns out, it is not a pretty name and there is good reason for not giving this name to little girls. As you can tell I am not a bible reader. I didn't know about King Ahab and Jezebel. All of my questions were answered in this book to my satisfaction, and better.
Lesley Hazle More...
Lesley Hazle More...
Aug 22, 2009
Bucket
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This book was extremely easy to read and contained a lot of interesting well-researched information without being dry. In fact, much of the writing was full of emotion. I thought that there would be more about Jezebel here (Elijah, especially, and also King Ahab got just as much focus; both were also recast as being different than we think). However, it didn't really bother me that the book was a description of the whole history of Israel from Jezebel's marriage until her death and even a lit
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Aug 05, 2010
Lee Anne
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Well-written & researched study from a totally different perspective for one who is a believer. Interesting how all of us find our own views to be unbiased, including the writer of this Jezebel book. I'm enjoying the linguistic expertise of this liberal, neo-pagan polytheist(?)agnostic(?). Evidences no concept of the holiness of God, His clear expectations/plans, or the fact that prophecies have been fulfilled & are continuing to be so before our very eyes to confirm that THE BIBLE IS TRUE =)
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Jan 24, 2009
A.C.
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An interesting historical biography of one of the Bible's greatest villains. Hazleton examines archeological findings, current Holy Land environs, biblical and modern sociology, and historical texts in her exploration of Jezebel as a woman, character, and ruler.
The book is written from a clearly modern and clearly feminist perspective, giving a refreshing and occasionally jarring view of what it means to be a harlot. So much is explored through language and derivative meaning that at poi More...
The book is written from a clearly modern and clearly feminist perspective, giving a refreshing and occasionally jarring view of what it means to be a harlot. So much is explored through language and derivative meaning that at poi More...
May 27, 2008
Jessica
rated it:
Jezebel was a very interesting book about an infamous woman from the Old Testament of the Bible. Jezebel was known as the "Harlot Queen", so this book seeks to find out who Jezebel really was. The history of Jezebel's family and where she came from was very interesting. But, the most interesting thing about her is that she was thought to be seductive and an overly sexualized woman (especially for her day) and her name is still used today as an insult to women. But, in the Bible the
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Nov 03, 2007
With Jezebel: The Untold Story of the Bible's Harlot Queen, Lesley Hazleton has done it again.
Maybe she's succeeded even more -- it's hard to judge because both her recent books are so stunningly good.
Her last -- Mary: A Flesh-and-Blood Biography of The Virgin Mother -- looked beneath the myth
of "the perfect woman," discovering the reality behind someone that history re-crafted and cult-ified for a symbol of purity. Jezebel explores the other side of the wo More...
Maybe she's succeeded even more -- it's hard to judge because both her recent books are so stunningly good.
Her last -- Mary: A Flesh-and-Blood Biography of The Virgin Mother -- looked beneath the myth
of "the perfect woman," discovering the reality behind someone that history re-crafted and cult-ified for a symbol of purity. Jezebel explores the other side of the wo More...
Oct 22, 2007
Morgan
rated it:
Let us thank Lesley Hazleton for bringing the logic of drama--character, motivation, plot--to the Bible stories of saints and sinners. The sketchy saga of Jezebel as we know it, filled with historical inconsistency, linguistic inaccuracy, and moral nonsense, swells with detail as Hazleton frames Jezebel's life and death in the religious and economic politics of her time.
Using impeccable scholarship and direct translation from Hebrew texts, Hazleton explores Jezebel as a political her More...
Using impeccable scholarship and direct translation from Hebrew texts, Hazleton explores Jezebel as a political her More...
Oct 22, 2007
Kate
rated it:
Lesley Hazleton tells readers the story of a 15-year-old girl, branded like Kleenex as a harlot. But through her scholarship and use of “historical imagination” the story becomes much more layered. Married off to Ahab, the King of Israel by her father, Jezebel comes from her seaside home of Tyre to the harsh desert. She brings with her, her polytheistic beliefs and that is when Elijah, Israel’s ragged prophet of Yahweh, the one and only god, goes to war against her. Sound familiar?
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Oct 21, 2007
Lesley
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It's a pleasure to read this hot-off-the-press, gorgeous creative work of nonfiction. Hazleton is a magical writer who brings long-dead women and men and cultures back to life with evocative, sensual prose and imagery that seems to breathe and flower like a garden. I wish I'd had history books like this - Jezebel and Hazleton's earlier award-winning Mary: A Flesh-and-Blood Biography of the Virgin Mother- when I was a young girl intrigued by the ancient world but repelled by the arid, patriarchal
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Dec 03, 2007
Monty
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I read this book soon after reading Mary: a flesh-and-blood biography of the virgin mother. Both books add a balance to the Bible stories by putting them into historical perspective and correcting some of the faulty translations. It turns out that Jezebel was no harlot and Elijah was a crazed fundamentalist. I'm not sure about inviting him to our next Seder table after reading this book. Towards the end of the book, the author describes how true monotheism originated, how about 150 years aft
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Jun 26, 2011
Miles
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I have long been fascinated by the lies that have been told about Jezebel. I have long realized that no, she was not a whore, she was a princess. And that "paint" was not make-up, to seduce anyone with, it was warpaint.
Hazleton does a marvelous job of presenting the story as it is told in 'kings,' and debunking and explaining historical implausibility of that narrative, while still demonstrating respect for its power. And ultimately, revealing what we know of the story tha More...
Hazleton does a marvelous job of presenting the story as it is told in 'kings,' and debunking and explaining historical implausibility of that narrative, while still demonstrating respect for its power. And ultimately, revealing what we know of the story tha More...
Mar 09, 2011
Amie
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A slightly biased but well-researched and interesting take on one of the Bible's "bad girls."
Sep 22, 2010
Marie
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Lesley Hazelton was a visiting professor at PLU when I was there--an expert in Israeli culture and history--so I was particularly interested in this book. I read one of her earlier books, Israeli Women, years ago.
Outstanding biography of the woman whose name has come to symbolize harlotry and idolatry. Through historical research and analysis, Hazleton proves that Jezebel represented tolerance and open-mindedness, and she was framed in the bible. And Elijah, who has come to be consid More...
Outstanding biography of the woman whose name has come to symbolize harlotry and idolatry. Through historical research and analysis, Hazleton proves that Jezebel represented tolerance and open-mindedness, and she was framed in the bible. And Elijah, who has come to be consid More...
Nov 06, 2008
Kate
rated it:
This was a very interesting historical look at the infamous Jezebel. The author describes what was going on that the Bible doesn't go into detail over. I thought she was a bit reluctant to show her in any sort of negative light, but she did point out biases that the authors would have thrown in. But having a contextual look at the Bible and such a well-known woman of the Bible is always interesting. Very interesting if you like reading the background information about what was happening and why
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Jul 19, 2008
Susan
rated it: 
I thought this was a fiction book (the librarian mistakenly had it labeled as such, but I'll get that changed), but it's one of those tricky books that mixes biblical information with other facts. It's not fiction, but it's not fact either. It assumes that Jezebel was called a harlot on trumped up charges, then makes the case for her being a powerful leader, and worthy of our respect, not contempt. Not recommended as Judaica non-fiction.
Oct 15, 2008
I finally called it quits on this book at page 130. This is just not my cup of tea. I prefer fiction though this seem to have snippets of fiction when the author interjected emotions and thoughts onto people who lived thousands of years ago. There a few interesting tidbits of info and theories, but overall not enough to hold my attention.
Apr 13, 2009
Michalea
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Fiction and fact about another one those badly-behaved women. Interesting juxtaposition of ancient and modern middle-eastern sensibilities. And a rather sobering view that things haven't changed all that much when it comes to politics, gender, and religious fanaticism. Who knew the ancient Israelites had fatwahs and jihads?
Apr 12, 2008
Anita
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Although you'll never look at Elijah quite the same way again, this author has a fascinating perspective and well-written approach to the Omrid dynasty and gives us a look at the agenda of the authors of Kings. Really enjoyed her insights.
Oct 22, 2007
Joan
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This is a wonderful, captivating, hard-to-put-down book. The story of Jezebel is a brillant eye opener! This will be on every Book Club's list in 2008. Lesley Hazleton has written a masterpiece. I recommend it to everyone !
Aug 19, 2008
Bocephus
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What I learned - Everything. Must read for any woman who was ever 1) forced to go to church, 2) called a slut, whore, Jezebel, etc., and any guy who has ever called a woman such a name.
