The Bible's Lost Stories

In the ancient cultures where the Bible was formed, men did indeed rule over women. They owned and sold them, often as slaves. One slave in particular, Hagar, has captured the imagination of contemporary Hispanic and African-American women. Just as women's perspective is not necessarily the same as men's, minority women do not necessarily share the same perspective as white women. According to the Bible, God promises Abraham land and a multitude of offspring. But because he and his childless wife, Sarah, are old, Sarah suggests that he father a child with Hagar, her Egyptian handmaiden. After a son is born, Hagar feels superior to the jealous Sarah, who in turn abuses her handmaiden--forcing Abraham to send Hagar away. Eventually God addresses Hagar directly (the first woman after Eve so honored), names her child Ishmael and encourages her to return. Later, Sarah also conceives and, at the age of 90, delivers Isaac, through whom Jews claim their spiritual lineage to Abraham. Hagar's has always been the lost voice in this narrative, but no longer. "Her character resonates by ethnicity and class--as an African and a slave," says Renita Weems, an associate professor of the Hebrew Bible at Vanderbilt Divinity School. "And we understand slaves." Similarly, Megan McKenna, author of several books on Biblical women, found that the figure of Hagar powerfully appealed to the Hispanic maids in her Bible-reading group at a California motel. She remembers one illegal immigrant from El Salvador saying in halting English: "Oh, now Sarah knows what it's like to be treated like dirt all the time."

Equally appealing to modern women looking for inspiration are overlooked stories that celebrate the bravery of women. In the Book of Joshua, it is Rahab, a prostitute, who helps Joshua conquer Jericho by hiding his spies in her house. For her courage, she and her children are the only ones spared in the Israelites' sacking of the city. One of the most prominent warriors in the Book of Judges is Deborah, a military commander and judge who leads an army into battle because her general will not go without her. Deborah predicts that only a woman will capture the enemy leader, Sisera. That woman, it turns out, is Jael, into whose tent Sisera flees for refuge. Jael feeds him, puts him to bed and then, as he sleeps, picks up a mallet and drives a tent peg through his head.

Perhaps the most striking protofeminist text in Scripture is the Book of Judith, wholly devoted to a heroine who saves Israel. "She's like Wonder Woman, only Jewish," says Vanderbilt's Levine. Judith's moment comes as Israel is being threatened by a neighboring power. The male Jewish leadership prepares to surrender, but Judith, a beautiful and pious widow, has another plan. Dressed in her alluring best, she enters the enemy's camp. The general, Holofernes, becomes infatuated and plans to seduce her. But when she is alone in his chambers, Judith decapitates Holofernes and takes his head home in her food bag. The enemy flees. All of Israel, including Jerusalem and its temple, are saved, and Judith, whom scholars see as a personification of Israel, returns to her previous life.

The spotlight of new scholarship has even revealed the human side of the most revered female in Christianity--Mary, the mother of Christ. Next to her son, Mary is probably the best-known character in the Bible, but for many, she is an alabaster figure. Some theologians have been looking for a more multidimensional Madonna. "Let's stop treating her as this virgin mother we have no relationship with, that we can't touch and understand because she's so different from us," says Weems, author of "Showing Mary: How Women Can Share Prayers, Wisdom and the Blessings of God." Weems starts her reinterpretation not with Mary the exalted and untouchable Queen of Heaven, but with Mary the simple teenage girl. On that fateful day when the Archangel Gabriel appeared to her and told her she would carry the Son of God, Mary was terrified--just as Moses, Isaiah and Jeremiah all protested that they were too young or not worthy of the task when presented with their own challenges from God. But Mary put her trust in God and was rewarded for it. God gives her the much-needed companionship of her older cousin Elizabeth, a long-barren woman who was also suddenly and miraculously pregnant and ultimately gives birth to John, a prophet who would be called "the Baptist."

Embedded in the story of Mary and Elizabeth is a theme, finally being openly explored, that speaks directly to the experience of contemporary women. Unlike other Biblical figures, Mary is not bowing to the demands of a patriarchal society by providing her future husband with a male heir. On the contrary, she has scandalized her betrothed, Joseph, by freely accepting God's will that she bear a child by the power of the Holy Spirit. In the Mary and Elizabeth visitation scene in Luke's Gospel, Mary has come to visit her cousin for three months. As Luke paints it, this is more than just a domestic interlude. Through Elizabeth, the history of the Old Testament will end with the last of the Hebrew prophets, John. Through Mary, a new history of salvation will begin with the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. In a powerful closing hymn, Mary glories in a God who often uses the powerless--especially women--to accomplish His purposes. Acknowledging her "lowliness" as God's "servant," she goes on to predict--rightly--that henceforth "all generations will call me blessed."

Mary and Elizabeth's dependence on God and each other--a Biblical example of sisterhood in action--contrasts with the struggle of their spiritual ancestress, Tamar, who has to rely only on herself to outwit the patriarchal social structure. As her story is told in Genesis 38, her first husband dies, leaving her childless. According to the law of the time, she is then married to her husband's younger brother in order to produce a son who would continue her husband's lineage. It is not to be. God strikes her second husband dead for practicing coitus interruptus in order to avoid fathering a child who will take away his inheritance. By law, Tamar should then have been married to the third son, but her father-in-law, Judah, suspects that Tamar herself is behind his sons' deaths. He declines to give her to his third son, who is underage, and, at the same time, won't declare her a widow--which would leave her free to marry again. Instead, he sends her back to her father's house, where she must remain chaste while she waits for Judah to give her to the third son. Eventually, Tamar tricks Judah into impregnating her himself. It ends well when he accepts her and Tamar gives birth to twins--two sons to replace the two he has lost.