The latest talk on The Lit’s 5785 programme comes from Jillian Stinchcomb on the Queen of Sheba.
Who was she, really? This question animates a variety of modern treatments of the Queen of Sheba. The Queen of Sheba is famous for visiting Solomon at the height of his rule in an event first described in 1 Kings 10:1-13 and 2 Chronicles 9:1-12. The biblical story is brief and bereft of many details such as her name, her background, or her home country. Perhaps because of this brevity, a rich and sometimes contradictory trove of traditions emerged in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim communities starting especially in the Middle Ages. The Queen of Sheba was sometimes claimed as a foremother to nations, other times presented as a demoness; some saw her as an early convert, while others saw her as a (manageable) threat to traditional values. Modern depictions and discussions of the figure abound. Within this variety, there is a consistent interest in the ‘real’ Queen of Sheba. This talk explores the rhetorical function of invocations of ‘the real’ in discussions of the Queen of Sheba and what
this can tell us about our habits of thought concerning the biblical past.
Jillian Stinchcomb is an assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies and the Department of History at Towson University (Maryland, USA). She teaches classes on the Hebrew Bible, ancient history, and religious studies.
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