Lost Women of the Bible: Finding Strength and Significance Through Their Stories
Carolyn Custis James
Zondervan
It didn't take long to compile the propositions James would use in her unfolding story of lost women. First comes the acknowledgement that the window used to view women in the Bible has always been more a slit than a panoramic vista of possibility and potential. That must change! Yes! She then offers (through Eve) the potential to view women in a new light. Eve's story got frozen in time at one moment — with one bite her story was told for all time. James invites us to see Eve (and all other women of the Bible, lost or found) through three necessary perspectives.
Eve's first nature is as one created in the image of God. Every woman is also an "ezer" — traditionally translated as helpmate (to the man) but expanded by James to include the more comprehensive concept of warrior, women who stand in defence of the kingdom of God and the ongoing plans and purposes of God. Finally, woman is part of the blessed alliance consisting of women and men who join together to accomplish God's will in the world. Somewhere in here the message still comes through that Eve was the instigator of the fall and that she finds her purpose in partnership with men (and is the reverse true?). It is these three images of woman that take us on our quest for the lost women of the Bible.
Stop for a moment. How do you feel about these propositions? Are they the foundation for finding the stories of the lost women of the Bible, or for telling the story of women from a biblical perspective? Let's move on and see.
How do you tell the story of a woman of whom nothing is written? That's the problem of telling the story of Noah's nameless wife. (No, she wasn't Joan of Ark!). Yet if you connect with the three propositions, you can re-create a fairly consistent story of the woman she would have been if anyone had taken the time to tell her story. What does the Bible actually tell us about her? She was a wife and mother who lived through difficult and disastrous days. And whatever else you can say, she was there by her husband's side through fire and flood! There is no criticism here of a patriarchal society that diminished women and downplayed their participation to the point of excluding this woman's very name. Stand By Me might be the song Noah would sing to her but she has no song of her own to sing and no voice with which to tell her story. And when we're done with this chapter, she is still voiceless and powerless … and nameless.
The propositions about women are in a specific context — actually the entire salvation story must be seen in context and James makes certain we know the gravity of the situation.
Eve received the promise that the seed of the woman would crush the serpent's head. By faith, elderly Sarah gained strength to conceive Isaac, the son of promise. Tamar, the righteous Canaanite, valiantly risked everything to preserve the promised line that was dying off under Judah's watch. Hannah, through her son Samuel, nurtured the royal line of David with her profound theology. And the teenager from Nazareth offered herself as the bond slave of the Lord to become the mother of Jesus. And this is only the short list of the women who fought to preserve and protect the promised seed.
But no, there is no call to liberate woman from a paternalistic society. This is a more gentle call to recognize the contribution women have made to the salvation story in spite of the tendency in a male-dominated society to minimize the contribution of woman. And this, for James, is the true divine gift in these stories. "We follow Jesus, and no one who follows Jesus is lost."
