signed to analyze characterization, and, in fact, have tended to obstruct our perception of this and other literary features of New Testament narrative (p. 12).
Darr also posits that another problem which confronts the literary critic is one of "environmental displacement." In this regard, the reader has been distanced both chronologically and culturally from the time of the original incidents--and even more so with respect to the Hebrew Scriptures which were compiled following hundreds of years of oral tradition. Accordingly, Darr asks, "What literary conventions constrained and enabled its first reading or hearing? What social norms and values does it presuppose, and how might a knowledge of these illuminate its rhetoric?" (p. 13).
In actuality, Darr's method of literary criticism combines the desire to reconstruct the life of a biblical figure according to the historical setting in which that figure dwelt, rather than following one form to the virtual exclusion of the other. According to Darr,
a methodology for interpreting [biblical] characters must be both theoretically sound (consistent, coherent, grounded in the best literary theory) and text-specific (geared to the narrative's cultural idiosyncrasies). . . . I develop and demonstrate a reader-response (or pragmatic) model attuned to the Greco-Roman literary culture of the first century (p. 14).
To this extent, it is necessary to precondition a study of Jezebel with the historical background of the text of I-II Kings as it applies to the time of Jezebel. It is generally accepted by biblical scholars that I-II Kings was originally a single volume, and was a continuation of the history provided by book, or books, which constituted Samuel. The chronology began at the time of the judges and concluded with the Exile (May & Metzger, 1965, p. 413; see also, The Interpreter's Bible (1954), Vol. III, pp. 10-12).
However, the authorship of I-II Kings is lik...