Jezebel: The Untold Story of the Bible's Harlot Queen

Was Jezebel really evil? Or has she been misconstrued throughout the ages? In this retelling of the biblical woman’s life Lesley Hazleton takes the position that Jezebel was not a bad woman and that her life, like that of many women of the bible, has been changed to suit those who wrote the bible centuries after the actual events. Portraying Elijah not as the savior of the Jewish people, but as a fundamentalist religious fanatic, she turns the known story topsy-turvy. Although this is fiction she uses the device of historical imagination to determine the thoughts and emotions of the characters in reaction to the events surrounding them. I found that a little distracting, thinking it was more on the lines of fiction. Though I did learn a great deal about Elijah and Elisha, I didn’t really learn as much about Jezebel as I would have liked, it seemed whole decades of her life were skipped over until we got to the more tantalizing parts of her story-in particular her brutal death. While the reviews I've read have been raves, I found the book at times a bit boring and I think the historical imagination device led to a lot of leeway with the story.

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