Girls of the Good Book

[steepholm]

Yesterday found me in the unwonted position of Assistant Stall Keeper, helping lady_schrapnell run the children's books stall at a church fete somewhere near Dalkey... In between committing denominational faux pas (just why is the plural of cent, 'cent'?) I kept being drawn back to a book entitled Boys and Girls of the Bible (1962). There are quite a few boys in the Bible. Some are people who grew up to be famous adults: Isaac, Moses, Samuel, Jesus. Others are walk-on parts - my own favourites being the group of 42 small boys who teased Elijah for his baldness and were ripped to shreds by a pair of she-bears (no 'naughty step' in those days.) Oddly enough, Boys and Girls of the Bible doesn't mention them.

But where are the girls? And by girls I mean 'not old enough to be married'- so, sorry, Boys and Girls of the Bible, Queen Esther will not do. This book was only able to come up with two: the slave who suggested Naaman the leper seek a cure from Elisha in 2 Kings 5 (helpful, but hardly centre-stage); and Jairus's daughter (resuscitated by Jesus in Mark's Gospel). To that we could at the daughter of the gentile woman in Matthew 15, at a pinch.


And that's it! Possibly the crowd of children who were shooed away by the disciples and invited back by Jesus included some girls, but that's speculative. Surely there must be more?

Comments

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

A fair question. I don't know when girls/women got married 'in those days', but I imagine it was fairly young. How old was the Virgin Mary when she gave birth, for example? I've always vaguely thought of her as being about 14 - but I may be mixing her up with Juliet. ("Because they were both played by Olivia Hussey," observes lady_schrapnell with some asperity.)

[(Anonymous)]

Well, there was Jepthah's daughter, (Book of Judges) who got sacrificed like Iphigenia. She was a virgin and unmarried, so probably a child by our standards. Not a good idea, really being a girl in the Bible.