 |
| · · · · · · · · · |
|
Pomona College Magazine is published three times a year by Pomona College
550 N. College Ave, Claremont, CA 91711
Online Editor: Mark Kendall
For editorial matters:
Editor: Mark Wood
Phone: (909) 621-8158
Fax: (909) 621-8203
PCM Editorial Guidelines
Contact Alumni Records for changes of address, class notes, or notice
of births or deaths.
Phone: (909) 621-8635
Fax: (909) 621-8535
Email: alumni@pomona.edu
|
|
| · · · · · · · · · |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Review/ By Peter Enzminger ’08
Reimagining
Jezebel
The Jezebel Letters
By Eleanor Ferris Beach ’68
Fortress Press, 2005 • 192 pages • $19.00
Reimagining Jezebel
If history is indeed written by the winners, then no single historical
text can have a unilateral claim to truth. Such could be the jumping-off
point for The Jezebel Letters. Author Eleanor Ferris Beach ’68,
assistant adjunct professor of theology at St. Ambrose University,
reexamines biblical history from the perspective of Jezebel, a
much-maligned figure in the Old Testament. Beach removes Jezebel from
our customary associations and presents her story as a
politically-driven, historical narrative. The Jezebel in these
narratives is no harlot but an astute leader telling her side of the
familiar biblical story as a figure of significant influence in a
transitional era.
 Beach presents her well-researched take on biblical history through a
mix of fictionalized memoirs and letters, asking the reader to imagine
Jezebel writing these memoirs in exile as she watches the dynasties she
helped to propagate spin out of control. The book begins with Jezebel’s
betrothal to the prince of Samaria and traces her royal career through
nearly six turbulent decades as she consolidates and protects her
family’s claims to power throughout the region.
Despite Jezebel’s best efforts, assassinations and coup d’états unseat
her lineage. The Bible details this process as a fated surge of
monotheistic ascendancy in which the violent rebellion is justified by
the righteousness of its cause. To Jezebel, these insurgents are a
political threat, and Beach’s research unearths motives apart from
religious teleology to explain their dissent. In her vision, objections
to economic practices of a new king and the general instability of
generational transitions coalesced around the roots of the
Judeo-Christian tradition to give the movement critical mass.
Beach’s retelling of Jezebel’s history is rather like hearing about the
American Revolution through the eyes of the British: it inverts the
familiar by excavating a fresh perspective. Re-imagining the accepted
version of history can be mildly unsettling, but to Beach’s credit, her
vision of Jezebel as a self-possessed, rational leader convinces. In
juxtaposing Jezebel’s side of the story with its biblical counterpart,
Beach revives the figure of Jezebel as a strong female figure
overwritten and misrepresented by history.
|
|
|
|
