Hi @kururu — haven't seen you here before! Welcome to NarniaWeb.  

The short answer to your question is actually no. C.S. Lewis made clear, in a number of comments he made on his Narnia stories (mainly in letters to fans), that he wasn't taking specific people from the Bible and representing them directly as characters in Narnia.

The one exception of course is Aslan, who is Lewis's imagined concept of how Jesus Christ might appear if there was another world that needed saving, and the same Saviour who came to our world came to this other world in a different form. But apart from Aslan, he adamantly did not intend for there to be a one-to-one correspondence between characters or events in the Bible (or elsewhere in Christian history), and characters or events in Narnia. 

Some aspects of the stories may remind readers of things in the Bible, because the books are suffused with Christian ideas and imagery. But they aren't meant to be those things. That's not what the author was trying to do and not how he intended these books to be read.

There was a good article in the news section of NarniaWeb a few years ago that covers these issues in more detail — it comes down to whether or not Narnia is meant to be "allegory", which is the type of story in which every character and event is directly symbolic of something in a hidden "meta-story" — including a number of Lewis's own statements on why Narnia isn't meant to be understood in that way. You can read it here if you're interested:

Why C.S. Lewis Said Narnia is "Not Allegory at All"

@kururu Hi, kururu, nice to meet you.  However, I can't agree that Jadis, Queen of Charn, & the White Witch in Narnia, has any relationship with Jezebel, wife of King Ahab's Israel in the Old Testament.  

Jadis is a fictional character, who makes wrong decisions and ruins her world as a result. She believes that as she has a high and lonely destiny, she is above keeping the rules. I hope you enjoy reading The Magician's Nephew, and for more information, read the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to see how she was defeated.  

Jezebel, by contrast, was a real, historical person, even though the otherwise usually reliable Wikipedia, seems to see her as mythical. Therefore, I've preferred to use the Encyclopaedia Britannica on which to base my answer. She was the daughter of the priest-king Ethbaal, ruler of the coastal Phoenician cities (now in Lebanon) of Tyre and Sidon, introducing to her husband's people, her father's Canaanite gods, like Baal, Moloch & Asherah, worshipped by the Phoenicians as well as the Philistines, nearer Egypt. I've linked to both Wikipedia and the Encyclopaedia Britannica article which explains that she married King Ahab of the North kingdom of Israel, who ruled c. 874–c. 853 BCE. Worse still, she was likely implicated, along with her husband, for the murder of Naboth, whose vineyard, King Ahab fancied. 

Now, the Phoenicians were great traders, who sold expensive purple dye (Herodotus tells us that the Greek word for purple is related to the name of the Phoenicians). They also, together with the Israelites, invented the first alphabets, and King David, ruler of a united Israel, had sought Hiram of Tyre's help when he wanted to build a palace to live in, about 1000 BCE. The Phoenicians had established colonies in Carthage, in now Tunisia, in the Iberian Peninsula (now Spain), Sicily, & Sardinia, even sailing as far as Cornwall, where they could find tin to make bronze, before iron came to be more useful. So, it isn't surprising that Jezebel wanted to expand her father's influence and domination, by promoting the worship of the Tyrian god Baal-Melkart, a nature god. 

Jezebel tried to destroy those who opposed her; most of the prophets of Yahweh were killed at her command. These cruel and despotic actions provoked the righteous wrath of Elijah; according to 1 Kings 17, he accurately prophesied the onset of a severe drought as divine retribution. Sometime later Elijah had the Baal priests slain, after they lost a contest with him to see which god would heed prayers to ignite a bull offering, Baal or Yahweh. When Jezebel heard of the slaughter, she angrily swore to have Elijah killed, forcing him to flee for his life (1 Kings 183). Yes, you can find out about Jezebel in 1 Kings, Chapters 16-19, when the ancient Israelites, once they united under King David, did keep chronicles and other records.

There is also the Mesha Stele, put up by Mesha, the Moabite King at the time, who was thanking Chemosh for helping him to see out King Ahab, killed in a battle in Ramoth Gilead, whom he didn't like very much & whom he said oppressed Moab. That stele, also known as the Moabite Stone, can be seen in the Louvre museum, in Paris. 

I guess that both the fictional character and the historic person do have some similarities, mainly in arrogance. 

I don’t know if C. S. Lewis had Jezebel in mind when he created the White Witch as a villain for The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  The White Witch and Jadis are the same person and she is just as evil as Jezebel, but Jezebel didn’t have magical powers so she had more limitations.  Since The Magician’s Nephew is like a prequel I guess Lewis thought he had to give the witch a different name, and Jadis is what he came up with for the sixth book in the published order. There is no denying that Jadis and Jezebel have similarities in personality, but they are different people.  And the real life queen could have inspired the fictional character.  But I don’t think Lewis ever mentioned Jezebel so we will never know for certain. I think the White Witch is probably based on other similar villains in fairy tales, and a lot of them were evil witches.

Thanks! 👍 I definitely gained some invaluable insights into the issue.

When I read the books of Narnia I really thought that there is a corresponding bible character to each of the character in the Narnian story as I believed C.S. Lewis was trying to utilise this book to introduce Christian concepts to both adults and children. Maybe when I read them next time I should understand them from a whole new perspective.

In these stories there are lots of things that are similar to experiences in our lives (especially for Christians).  We often notice characters who remind us of people in the Bible. It's a great introduction to the Bible and Christian faith, for some people.  

Aslan is the only one who is definitely a 'picture'  of Jesus. 

@narnian78 The White Witch and Jadis are the same person and she is just as evil as Jezebel, but Jezebel didn’t have magical powers so she had more limitations.

It depends on what you mean by "magical powers". Jadis deliberately went out of her way to find out about the "Deplorable Word" and thought it was her right to do so as a Royal person. She was contemptuous of the likes of Uncle Andrew, also meddling in the magic which got Digory & Polly into Charn. Her so-called magic maybe worked in Charn, but not in London. In Narnia, she developed the ability to turn its inhabitants to stone, & to conjure up that Turkish Delight plus a warm beverage for Edmund. 

Jezebel was the daughter of the Phoenician (Canaanite) priest-king Ethbaal, and priests of Baal also might well have dabbled in what we call magic. The religion of Baal was polytheistic, with a Baal god for every purpose. Dagon of the Philistines was a Canaanite nature god of the fields and crops, whilst Moloch, a particularly horrible-sounding god, was said to demand child sacrifice, something specifically abominated by the followers of Yahweh, who were also forbidden to make graven images or idols, indulge in rites, likely associated with Asherah, a fertility goddess, this time, or consult fortune-tellers, psychics or other practitioners of so-called magic, often another way of earning income for polytheistic societies, & also to act as some kind of spy network. 

I have a couple of books, Genes, germs and civilization (P.Davies, 2010) and Pathogenesis: how germs made history (J.Kennedy, 2023). In one of these books the author, a microbiologist, points out that the dietary laws and health practices prescribed in Leviticus for Judaism were likely protectors against the spread of disease from their fellow Canaanites. But make no mistake, Jadis' regime of all winter & no Christmas was an oppressive way of controlling her subjects, rather than preventing the spread of contagion. 

Festivals and gathering for worship have long been ways to glue communities together, and that is why Jezebel, Ethbaal's daughter, & King Ahab's wife, would have wanted to impose her way of thinking on the Northern Kingdom of Israel, as well as in Tyre & in Sidon. 1Kings 18: 16-45 tells us about the contest on Mt Carmel, between the Prophet Elijah and Jezebel's priests of Baal. They were all supposed to get their gods to set alight their sacrifices. Now this was a barbecue of immense proportions, where the Baal priests chanted and danced, sung, juggled "whatzits" and "hoojahs", performed frantically, enough gymnastics for a Circe du Soleil show, pleading with their gods to get their sacrifices to combust, but without any success. (Who knows what the Baal priests might have done? But I did have a bit of fun imagining what antics they might have got up to. ) 

Now, the Prophet Elijah built his altar, put his sacrifice on it, along with the usual kindling, and doused it with water. The Bible said his prayers and a stray lightning bolt spectacularly did set his soaked kindling alight. Was this magic? A miracle? Or was it really science? Water is a conductor of electricity, whilst the stones Elijah used might also have been magnetic in nature. But in that day and age, for Elijah to get all the elements together, especially the bolt of lightning to arrive on time would be a miracle, indeed. These days, electricity and its use, isn't magic anymore. 

@waggawerewolf27 

I think that Jezebel’s magical powers were fake and that God most likely would not have allowed her to do the real thing. She may have dabbled in it believing that she was actually doing it like a witch.  But why would God allow her to cast spells that actually worked?  I don’t think there is enough evidence to prove that for certain, although there is evidence for her wickedness.  There is evidence of child sacrifice, and that actually happened, and she very likely may have participated in it.  She had more limitations on her power to do evil than the White Witch, but she was just as bad, although she was only human. Humans have the capacity to do evil, but they do have limitations. The manner of her death was gruesome (falling from a window and being consumed by dogs), but she wasn’t able to prevent her demise.

@narnian78 There is evidence of child sacrifice, and that actually happened, and she very likely may have participated in it.

Maybe and maybe not, though I remember coming across an incident where a Judahite king sacrificed his son as part of an agreement with a neighbouring Baal-worshipping king. The chief god of Tyre & therefore of Jezebel, herself, was Melqart, who resembled the later Greek Hercules, and whose worship spread across the Mediterranean Sea to Carthage and Cádiz in Spain. 

As bad as Jezebel might have been I consider her daughter with Ahab, Athaliah, married off, in a political marriage, to Judahite king, Jehoram, to seal a treaty between the two kingdoms, to have been far more deadly as Queen of Judah, after her own son, King Amaziah, died. That is when she killed even her own grandchildren to keep power in Judah. Nonetheless, Athaliah was succeeded by one of them, Joash, spirited away by his aunt, Jehosheba, to live secretly in Solomon's temple, until he became king at the age of seven.

Jadis, of course, killed her own sister, plus everyone else in Charn, leaving herself in suspended animation until someone came along (ahem, Digory), to wake her up. As powerful as she might have been in Charn, in Queen Victoria's London, she looked every bit like the charlatan she said Uncle Andrew was, but somewhat more dangerous. 

The association of religion, & maybe with magic as well, with emperors, kings and queens, was due to a widespread ancient belief that the gods who favoured a victorious king had triumphed over the gods of the vanquished. When the Hebrews were sent into exile in Babylon, they were expected to worship Nebuchadnezzar's gods, including Nebuchadnezzar, himself, as related in the Book of Daniel. Under the Greeks and Romans, the Judeans, in particular, thus suffered under firstly, the Hellenic Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes, whom I mentioned in our History buffs United thread, & who desecrated the Second Temple, which was also desecrated under the Roman General Pompey, in 63 BC, by which time Judea had been ruled by the Hasmoneans until the coming of Herod the Great, in 37 BC.