 | |
| Author | Lynne Reid Banks |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Fiction |
| Published | 1975 |
| Publisher | The Bodley Head |
| Media type | Print (hardback, paperback) |
| Pages | 169 pages |
| ISBN | 0370109538 First edition, UK |
| OCLC | 1551694 |
Sarah and After: the matriarchs is a 1975 collection of short stories aimed at older juvenile readers, written by Lynne Reid Banks. Each of the stories in the collection focus on a different woman in the Bible, beginning with Sarah, wife to Abraham and mother to Isaac.
The collection is made up of several stories, each of which center upon a different woman in the Bible. These women include Sarah, Rebecca, Leah and Rachel, and Dinah. The stories are written from each woman's perspective with the exception of Rachel, who is covered through Leah's story. Others covered via other stories include Hagar.
In an interview with The Daily Telegraph Banks noted that she gave the women more modern sensibilities as she wanted to make it easier for her intended readers, teenage girls, to identify with and understand what it was like to be a woman in biblical times. She also wanted to show "how God-driven men, preoccupied with their vocation, can exploit their women". [1]
Themes and topics in the stories of Sarah and After center upon women's lives and identities, as well as themes of anti-patriarchy. [2] The men and women in the stories are emphasized as "people of passion and fallibility", which Zena Sutherland wrote was shown through the motivations and justifications the characters give to themselves. [3]
Sarah and After: the matriarchs was first published in the United Kingdom in 1975 through The Bodley Head in hardback. [4] That same year the collection was also published in hardback in the United States via Doubleday, under the title Sarah and After: five women who founded a nation. [5] A paperback version was released in the United Kingdom during 1981, through Lion Publishing. [6]
Critical reception for the collection was favorable, [7] with journalists for The Birmingham Post and Herald Express praising Banks for her portrayal of the Biblical women. [8] [9] Sutherland, in a review for the Chicago Tribune , wrote that "the fiction adheres rather closely; what Banks adds can deepen the reader's understanding of the women as people." [10]
Leon Garfield for The Guardian was more critical, praising Banks for her "motives in bringing back the Bible into the world's imagination" while also criticizing the collection as not treating the characters and subject with enough respect and reverence. [11]
Abraham is the common Hebrew patriarch of the Abrahamic religions, including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In Judaism, he is the founding father of the special relationship between the Jews and God; in Christianity, he is the spiritual progenitor of all believers, whether Jewish or non-Jewish; and in Islam, he is a link in the chain of Islamic prophets that begins with Adam and culminates in Muhammad.
Abigail was an Israelite woman in the Hebrew Bible married to Nabal; she married the future King David after Nabal's death. Abigail was David's third wife, after Ahinoam and Saul's daughter, Michal, whom Saul later married to Palti, son of Laish, when David went into hiding.
Sarah is a biblical matriarch, prophetess and major figure in Abrahamic religions. While different Abrahamic faiths portray her differently, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all depict her character similarly, as that of a pious woman, renowned for her hospitality and beauty, the wife and half-sister of Abraham, and the mother of Isaac. Sarah has her feast day on 1 September in the Catholic Church, 19 August in the Coptic Orthodox Church, 20 January in the LCMS, and 12 and 20 December in the Eastern Orthodox Church.
According to the Book of Genesis, Hagar was an Egyptian slave, a handmaiden of Sarah, whom Sarah gave to her own husband Abram as a wife to bear him a child. Abraham's firstborn son, through Hagar, Ishmael, became the progenitor of the Ishmaelites, generally taken to be the Arabs. Various commentators have connected her to the Hagrites, perhaps claiming her as their eponymous ancestor. Hagar is alluded to, although not named, in the Quran, and Islam considers her Abraham's second wife.
Leah appears in the Hebrew Bible as one of the two wives of the Biblical patriarch Jacob. Leah was Jacob's first wife, and the older sister of his second wife Rachel. She is the mother of Jacob's first son Reuben. She has three more sons, namely Simeon, Levi and Judah, but does not bear another son until Rachel offers her a night with Jacob in exchange for some mandrake root. Leah gives birth to two more sons after this, Issachar and Zebulun, and to Jacob's only daughter, Dinah.
In the Book of Genesis, Dinah was the seventh child and only daughter of Leah and Jacob. The episode of her violation by Shechem, son of a Canaanite or Hivite prince, and the subsequent vengeance of her brothers Simeon and Levi, commonly referred to as the rape of Dinah, is told in Genesis 34.
The patriarchs of the Bible, when narrowly defined, are Abraham, his son Isaac, and Isaac's son Jacob, also named Israel, the ancestor of the Israelites. These three figures are referred to collectively as "the patriarchs", and the period in which they lived is known as the patriarchal age.
Tkhines or teḥinot may refer to Yiddish prayers and devotions, usually personal and from a female viewpoint, or collections of such prayers. They were written for Ashkenazi Jewish women who, unlike the men of the time, typically could not read Hebrew, the language of the established synagogue prayer book. They were most popular from the 1600s to the early 1800s, with the first major collection of tkhines, the Seyder Tkhines, being printed in 1648. Unlike Hebrew prayers, tkhines dealt with issues specific to women. Despite being for women, it is thought that many tkhines were written by men and the authorship of most tkhines is often difficult to establish, due to multiple publications of the same tkhine and the use of pseudonyms.
May Hill Arbuthnot was an American educator, editor, writer, and critic who devoted her career to the awareness and importance of children's literature. Her efforts expanded and enriched the selection of books for children, libraries, and children's librarians alike. She was selected for American Libraries article “100 Most Important Leaders we had for the 20th Century”.
The Red Tent is a historical novel by Anita Diamant, published in 1997 by Wyatt Books for St. Martin's Press. It is a first-person narrative that tells the story of Dinah, daughter of Jacob and Leah, sister of Joseph. She is a minor character in the Bible, but the author has broadened her story. The book's title refers to the tent in which women of Jacob's tribe must, according to the ancient law, take refuge while menstruating or giving birth, and in which they find mutual support and encouragement from their mothers, sisters and aunts.
In biblical studies, the term wife–sister narratives in Genesis refers to three strikingly similar stories in chapters 12, 20, and 26 of the Book of Genesis. At the core of each is the story of a biblical patriarch who has come to be in the land of a powerful foreign overlord who misidentifies the Patriarch's wife as the Patriarch's sister, and consequently attempts to wed her himself. The overlord later finds out his error. Two of the three stories are similar in many other details, including the ruler's name, Abimelech.
Lynne Reid Banks is a British author of books for children and adults.
Women in the Bible are wives, mothers and daughters, servants, slaves and prostitutes. As both victors and victims, some women in the Bible change the course of important events while others are powerless to affect even their own destinies. The majority of women in the Bible are anonymous and unnamed. Individual portraits of various women in the Bible show women in a variety of roles. The New Testament refers to a number of women in Jesus' inner circle, and he is generally seen by scholars as dealing with women with respect and even equality.
Blair Lent, who sometimes wrote as Ernest Small, was an American illustrator and writer of children's books, perhaps best known for those with Chinese themes such as Tikki Tikki Tembo (1968). He won the 1973 Caldecott Medal for U.S. picture book illustration, recognizing The Funny Little Woman by Arlene Mosel. Lent used a wide range of techniques in his illustrations, including acrylic painting, cardboard cutouts, colored pencil and ink and wash.
Nicole Hollander is an American cartoonist and writer. Her daily comic strip Sylvia was syndicated to newspapers nationally by Tribune Media Services.
Dogger is a children's picture book written and illustrated by Shirley Hughes, published by The Bodley Head in 1977.
Rachel was a Biblical figure, the favorite of Jacob's two wives, and the mother of Joseph and Benjamin, two of the twelve progenitors of the tribes of Israel. Rachel's father was Laban. Her older sister was Leah, Jacob's first wife. Her aunt Rebecca was Jacob's mother.
Sarah Rebecca Rachel Leah Horowitz (1715–1795), known as Leah Horowitz, was a rabbinic and kabbalistic scholar, who wrote in Yiddish. She was the author of Tkhinne imohes. She lived in Bolechów, Poland.
The Hebrew Bible contains a number of references to rape and other forms of sexual violence, both in the Law of Moses, its historical narratives and its prophetic poetry.
Zena Sutherland was an American reviewer of children's literature. She is best known for her contributions to the Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books and as the author of the library science textbook Children and Books.