Out of the desert sands she comes.
The Queen of Sheba, exotic enchantress, the mysterious and powerful woman who came to Solomon, peppered him with riddles, showered him with praise and then returned to her kingdom leaving a million myths and fantasies in her wake. The Queen of Sheba gets only minor billing in the Old Testament, 13 lines in the book of Cain, but in a dramatic scriptural promotion, ends up in the New Testament presiding over judgment day with Christ. Today she lives deep in our collective unconscious.
Grandmothers use her to put daughters in their place, marketers use her to sell cat food, and Nicholas Clapp used her to spend four years running around the desert, living like Indiana Jones and writing a book about his search for the fabled Queen. Taking on the Queen of Sheba, the male fantasy and the feminist icon.
Guests:
Nicholas Clapp, author of “Sheba: Through the Desert in Search of the Legendary Queen”
Carole Fontaine, Professor of Hebrew Scriptures at the Andover Newton Theological School, and editor of “A Feminist Companion to Reading the Bible: Approaches, Methods, Strategies.”
Dr. Efraim Isaac, director of the Institue of Semitic Studies, Princeton, New Jersey.