READING GROUP GUIDE: Jezebel: The Untold Story of the Bible's Harlot Queen by Lesley Hazleton (Reading Group Guides) EXCERPT: from Jezebel by Lesley Hazleton: Chapter One: Tyre Middle East (& Near East) : Literature & History This ought not be the only book you read on Muhammad and early Islam, but it does offer an interesting perspective. In particular, her discussion of what it might have been like for an orphaned boy to receive revelations from God and then rise to great political power is compelling, even if we can't know it to be true. And her background in psychiatry and as a reporter on the Middle East allows her to make some informed speculations about her subject. These reservations aside, she has produced a very readable official version for Western readers. So what is presented as dispassionate fact-gathering really begins with an act of faith, no matter that the author calls herself an agnostic. And we need not disbelieve in the existence of Muhammad to be dubious about these stories.
She draws heavily upon early, though, conspicuously not contemporary, Muslim biographies for the events she relates. Ms Hazelton's biography has somewhat the opposite problem, presenting an extremely thorough life and times, including novelistic touches like ascribing facial expressions and personal feelings to the Prophet. I read Robert Spencer's, Did Muhammad Exist?: An Inquiry into Islam's Obscure Origins, few years ago and enjoyed it, but felt he maybe overstated his case, when it would have been sufficient to show how little we can know for sure about Muhammad's life and Islam's origins.
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