
Demonizing the Queen of Sheba
Boundaries of Gender and Culture in Postbiblical Judaism and Medieval Islam
Jacob Lassner(Author)
University of Chicago Press
Will be published approx. on 14. December 1993
Book
Hardback
308 pages
978-0-226-46913-3 (ISBN)
Description
Over the centuries, Jewish and Muslim writers transformed the biblical Queen of Sheba from a clever, politically astute sovereign to a demonic force threatening the boundaries of gender. In this book, Jacob Lassner shows how successive retellings of the biblical story reveal anxieties about gender and illuminate the processes of cultural transmission. The Bible presents the Queen of Sheba's encounter with King Solomon as a diplomatic mission: the queen comes "to test him with hard questions," all of which he answers to her satisfaction; she then praises him and, after an exchange of gifts, returns to her own land. By the Middle Ages, Lassner demonstrates, the focus of the queen's visit had shifted from international to sexual politics. The queen was now portrayed as defying nature's equilibrium and God's design. In these retellings, the authors humbled the queen and thereby restored the world to its proper condition. Lassner also examines the Islamization of Jewish themes, using the dramatic accounts of the Queen of Sheba as a test case of how Jewish lore penetrated the literary imagination of Muslims.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Chicago
United States
Publishing group
The University of Chicago Press
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 24 mm
Width: 16 mm
Thickness: 3 mm
Weight
624 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-226-46913-3 (9780226469133)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification