Although I am coming in rather late on this topic, I thought I would post a quick note on the recent discussion about the so-called “Jezebel Seal.”
In a forthcoming article in BAR, Marjo Korpel argues that a seal in the Israel Museum (IDAM 65-321) belongs to the infamous Jezebel, wife of King Ahab of Israel. Nahman Avigad had first published this seal in 1964, but noted that there is no solid basis for ascribing it to Jezebel. The story of Korpel’s identification was first reported in Ha’aretz. Several blogs have discussed this seal over the past week, and Chris Heard at Higgaion has a good summary of the debate and links to other biblioblogs that have touched on the subject.
Jim West has a guest blog about the seal by Chris Rollston of Johnson Bible College Emmanuel School of Religion. Chris and I were students together at Johns Hopkins, so I can attest that he is well-versed in epigraphy. His thoughts on an inscription such as this are always worth noting.
One of the more damaging critiques that Chris notes is that the writing on the seal is later than the 9th century (the date of the biblical Jezebel). If this is the case, then there is no possibility that the seal belonged to her. Avigad dated the seal to the 9th-8th century, but our knowledge of scripts has increased greatly since that time. Zbl is a common root in Northwest Semitic, so it would not be surprising to find other people with that element in their name.
All in all, there seems little reason to ascribe this seal to the Jezebel of biblical fame.
Follow up: Amihai Mazar has posted a short paragraph about the seal on the American Schools of Oriental Research website.
On October 24th, 2007 at 10:37 am
a minor correction to Kevin Wilson’s post….namely, I am currently a professor at a graduate seminary, Emmanuel School of Religion. Johnson is not far from Emmanuel, and I have some friends on the faculty there, but I’ve never taught there.
All the best,
Chris
On October 24th, 2007 at 1:40 pm
My apologies to Chris. Emmanuel, where Chris teaches, is in Johnson City, which coincidently is my home town. The Karak Resources Project, with which I work, is located at Johnson Bible College. Add all those Johnsons together in my brain and you get the mis-statement in my post.