Frequently Asked Questions

Q:  Is the queen’s name Jezebel or Jizebul?

A:  She is called Jezebel in the Bible, but this is probably a very derogatory form (something to do with dung) used by the writers to insult her.  She probably would have called herself Jizebul, since zebul means “prince,” a title of her god Baal.

Q:  Are the documents in The Jezebel Letters real?

A:  The letters and memoirs of Jizebul are fictional, composed for this book in the style of early Phoenician and Hebrew letters.  The biblical documents are “real” in the sense that they are ancient, but there is no “original” manuscript of the Bible.  It is likely that the form of 1 and 2 Kings that we use today was composed and edited over several generations beginning two hundred years after Jizebul’s time (the 800s bce), and Chronicles is even later.  The oldest manuscripts of the Hebrew text come from the period of 150 bce to 70 ce, from the Dead Sea Scrolls collection.  The ancient Near Eastern documents used in The Jezebel Letters are inscriptions carved in stone very close to the time of the events they describe in the ninth century.

Q:  Are you trying to make Jezebel seem more righteous than the Bible says?

A:  Most popular ideas about “Jezebel” center on some sort of sexual wantonness and undermining of male authority.  As the story demonstrates, I don’t think the Bible supports that interpretation of her personal behavior, but there are even more serious charges that are overlooked if one focuses on these aspects.  The prophets were responding to major changes in Israelite culture under the rule of the Omride family.  The Israelite family farms and local economic patterns were being replaced by royal policies of land redistribution, relocation of people, and intensive production for surpluses and export.  These policies were probably implemented for an economic alliance with Jizebul’s native city of Tyre, whose chief deity is called Baal in 1 and 2 Kings.  “Jezebel” and Baal became symbols for the injustices of that system, in conflict with traditional Israelite values promoted by the Yhwh-centered religion.  The Jezebel Letters tell the story of that conflict from the queen’s perspective.

Q:  How have you adapted the biblical passages that appear in The Jezebel Letters?

A:  I started with the English translation of the Bible in the New Revised Standard Version (nrsv) and then examined the Hebrew.  Several kinds of changes resulted:

• Some instances of word order and vocabulary were changed to reflect a rougher, more literal sense of the Hebrew.

• Spelling of kings’ names was changed for consistency, instead of one person’s name having multiple versions.

• Where the nrsv uses “the Lord,” I returned to a more literal rendering of the Hebrew Name of God, Yhwh, which is now not supposed to be pronounced but which may have been more freely spoken in antiquity.

• More substantial changes were made in some Psalms, to reflect the pre-Israelite background of the poems.

Q: Haven’t you gone too far by changing “the Lord” to Baal in the Psalms?

A:  Study of the vocabulary and grammar of several Psalms shows that they probably came into the Jerusalem temple’s songbook from other traditions—Phoenician, Canaanite, northern Israelite.  I was actually reinstating an earlier divine element to indicate these origins, which were later modified to fit the Jerusalem worship of the Lord.  The Jezebel Letters attempts to demonstrate how much of the Jerusalem establishment—architecture, political institutions, and even worship practices—may have originated in the northern kingdom, despite later criticism of the north.