In my second year of Torah study while discussing Deuteronomy, I suggested, “David, I think a woman must have written this!” The distinguished, brilliant religious scholar leading our group responded, “Not likely, Elizabeth. However, there was one woman who might have.” Although David never named her, I began my quest to find the female "Deuteronomistic Historian." The Harlot and the Mouse are the “daughters” born from my quest. Although both novels in this series display elements of fantasy, romance, mythology, family saga, and adventure, both The Faithful Harlot and Huldah, the Mouse rest on historic foundations. Like the historical Jesus, son of Mary and Joseph, and several other prophets, Huldah the prophet descended from King David—whose great-great-grandmother was Rachab, the beautiful Canaanite businesswoman who helped end the Israelites’ Exodus. People who know that there's an abundance of historical fact in the Bible might agree that this 7th century BCE girl prophet--whose name means “mouse”--wrote many of the most beautiful and important passages in seven Biblical books and, almost 2600 years ago, left us hints to her identity.
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Huldah, The Mouse - The Sequel to The Faithful Harlot
Book 2 of the series The Harlot and the Mouse will be coming soon.
Huldah the Mouse will be the exciting sequel to The Faithful Harlot, the fictional narrator is a beautiful fourteen-year-old widow, Emerald bat Yosef ben Nun. "Em" is mother of the Biblical prophet Huldah, a direct descendant of the hero Rachab of Jericho, the 'harlot" ancestor of Joseph, Mary, and Jesus. (Matthew 1:5, as part of the genealogy of Jesus, and in Hebrews 11:31 and James 2:25).The action occurs six hundred years after Moses' Exodus. The angel Zagzagel returns in the male body of the Biblical Ebed-Melech, a Cushite chief servant to the kings of Judah. His earthly mission is to protect Huldah so she can write various parts of the Bible.
During the seventh and sixth centuries BCE, in the Iron Age, Hebrew/Aramaic literacy flourished, and scribes began to record and publish the Torah, or Pentateuch, and other books of the Bible. Huldah, or "Mouse," was a renowned scholar who ran a college for women in Jerusalem. It's possible she also worked in Babylon during the Captivity.
In the Bible, little Huldah is a relative of Jeremiah, the prophet whose father discovered a written Torah scroll in 620 BCE. Huldah authenticated it. Huldah the Mouse shows how she might also have composed this core of Deuteronomy and six additional Biblical books now attributed to a presumed Deuteronomist Historian. Since the Hebrew word huldah means "mouse," the author has imagined this little genius as a dwarf.
The works of esteemed Biblical scholar Richard Elliott Friedman influenced this midrash aggadah (Biblical fiction), particularly his Who Wrote the Bible and The Exodus. Friedman proposed that The Deuteronomist Historian might have been a woman and must have had access to the ancient sources of Shechem, Jerusalem, and Nineveh.
Taken hostage to Nineveh as a child, the fictionalized Huldah befriends and teaches Princess Addagoppe, her historical Neo-Syrian counterpart. This phenomenal priestess-author was daughter of the notoriously cruel Emperor Ashurbanipal. She led the cult of the moon god Sin and was the mother of King Nabonidus. Addagoppe lived from 648 to 544 BCE.
About 80,000 words plus glossary and an annotated list of historical and Biblical characters plus maps of Israel and ancient Cush (Africa), Mesopotamia, Neo-Assyria.
For fans of Biblical feminist fantasy/adventure and ancient Middle Eastern history, Huldah the Mouse is an odyssey that reveals the answer to Who wrote the Bible? The main author could have been a historical female sage hidden in plain sight.
Elizabeth intends to write a third book, continuing the family saga of Rachab and Huldah, which will be set in the 500's BCE during the Babylonian Captivity.