Robert Kuloba Wabyanga

The Berated Politicians: Reading Miriam, Michal, Jezebel and Athaliah in the Hebrew Bible in Relation to Political and Gender Quandary in Africa Robert Kuloba Wabyanga

Miriam, Michal, Jezebel and Athaliah are a summery figure of political marginalisation of the female gender in the Hebrew Bible. The literary renditions in which these women are subjected unequivocally eschew their political significance in their respective ancient societies. Their images and names are recorded in ways that confound the modern reader of the Bible with ambiguities. No one would tell from the Hebrew Bible that these women were people of significant political and leadership profiles; but merely as wicked women in the history of humanity. They are portrayed as political anomalies in the political space of men. Their decapitated and fragmented images and histories have been ingested into an ideological system that regulates gender world order and influences social, intellectual and linguistic discourses and pictorial misogynistic polemics in the modern world.