Demonizing the Queen of Sheba: Boundaries of Gender and Culture in Postbiblical and Medieval Islam (review)

132 SHOFAR Winter 1995 Vol. 13, No.2 Demonizing the Queen of Sheba: Boundaries of Gender and Culture in Postbiblical and Medieval Islam, by Jacob Lassner. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. 281 pp. $49.95 (c); $19.95 (P). Jacob Lassner's latest book, Demonizing the Queen of Sheba, is a model of how to study closely related postbiblical texts and their Muslim variants. Focusing on the famous biblical encounter between Solomon and the Queen of Sheba (I Kings, ch. 10 and II Chron., ch. 9), Lassner first traces the development and elaboration of the tale in midrashic sources. This tale is also found in the Qur'an (sura 27:20-44) in a rather elliptic form and is "fleshed out" in qur'anic commentaries and especially in compilations of qi~a~ ('tales' [about biblical prophets)) collections. Without exhausting either the rabbinic or post-qur'anic sources, Lassner builds a subtle and convincing interpretation of the tale's "meanderings" within the Jewish and Islamic cultures right into the present as the story continues to find expression in numerous folktales preserved by Jewish immigrants living in Israel. Although he does deal with issues of gender and culture, as the subtitle of the book indicates, the strength of Lassner's study lies, in my view, in his judicious demonstration and very careful (and therefore plausible) speculation of how certain specifically Jewish themes became "Islamized," that is, how they entered Islamic legendary lore and came to serve specific Muslim needs: "to legitimize the Prophet Muhammad and more generally to promote the Islamic faith" (p. 124; see also ch. 5). He is equally persuasive when he argues that the transfer of themes was by no means a one-way process from Judaism to Islam, but that many details of the Muslim versions of this tale also found their way back into laterJewish legendary lore (especially in ch. 6). In the absence of clear historical evidence regarding the exact manner in which cultures borrow and influence one another, Lassner's study is a landmark that makes insightful suggestions about the process. The thoughtful hand of the historian is visible throughout the book. Although he is obviously interested in making his study speak to contemporary readers, Lassner's statements on issues of gender never force his texts beyond what their literal meaning can sustain. And although he is dealing with literary themes, Lassner refers occasionally but without untoward insistence to the milieus from which the texts can be assumed to have emerged and thereby enriches our understanding of them. In addition to being learned, the style of Demonizing the Queen of Sheba is graceful and witty. Some inevitable repetitiousness is the result of discussing texts that are also translated in the appendix. The translations Book Reviews 133 are excellent, but this reviewer regrets that Lassner does not cite and appears not to have used Wheeler M. Thackston's excellent translation of The Tales of the Prophets of al-Kisa'i (Boston, 1978). Similarly, although Lassner was forced to circumscribe his study by the sheer number of sources available for this tale, he would have culled some enjoyable details from the tenth-century Persian accounts recorded by Ibn Khalaf al-NisabiirI. These caveats aside, Lassner's study will surely become a must for alI scholars who study isra:Jiliyat, that body ofJewish lore that found its way into Muslim religious and literary consciousness. Vera B. Moreen Department of Religion Swarthmore College Cynthia Ozick's Fiction: Tradition and Invention, by Elaine M. Kauvar. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993. 264 pp. $29.95. Although· he had plenty of opinions on all kinds of issues, D. H. Lawrence advised us to "trust the tale not the teller." When a writer of fiction publishes essays, delivers lectures, and gives interviews as often as Ozick does, readers will inevitably try to make the tales fit the teller's stated views. In Understanding Cynthia Ozick (1991), a short but insightful book reviewed recently in Shofar (Vol. 12, No. 1 [Fall 1993], pp. 107-108), Lawrence Friedman suggests that "many of Ozick's essays ... reflect in theoretical, often polemical form the same moral and aesthetic concerns that surface in her fiction," especially "those...