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Woman in Sacred History / A Series of Sketches Drawn from Scriptural, Historical, and Legendary Sources cover

Woman in Sacred History / A Series of Sketches Drawn from Scriptural, Historical, and Legendary Sources

Chapter 26: Transcriber's note:
By Harriet Beecher Stowe
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About This Book

A series of concise sketches recounts the lives and portrayals of notable women from patriarchal, national, and Christian eras, drawing on scriptural accounts, rabbinic and legendary expansions, and later artistic interpretations. Each chapter focuses on a single figure, outlining her narrative role, moral qualities, and cultural significance while contrasting the Bible’s restrained simplicity with subsequent mythic embellishment. Themes of faith, domestic influence, gendered power, and devotional imagination recur, and color reproductions of paintings accompany the essays to show how pictorial tradition has shaped popular perceptions of these women.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Michaelis, Laws of Moses, III. 5, § 95.

[2] The marginal translation reads "fair to God."

[3] Micah, who prophesied in the reign of Hezekiah, represents the Divine Being as thus addressing his people: "I brought thee up out of the land of Egypt; I sent before thee Moses and Aaron and Miriam" (Micah vi. 4). This is an indorsement more direct than any other prophetess ever received.

[4] Jüdische Merkwürdigkeiten. Frankfort and Leipsic, 1714.

[5] Winer's Bible Dictionary, art. Judith.

[6] The sources from which these are drawn are the apocryphal books of the New Testament.

[7] The article is by Rev. F. Meyrick, M. A., one of her Majesty's inspectors of schools, late fellow and tutor of Trinity College, Oxford.

[8] It is remarkable that in this interview the angel, in the same connection, informs Mary that her son shall have no human father, and that David shall be his ancestor. The inference is clear that Mary is herself of the house of David. Coincident with this we find a genealogy of Jesus in this Gospel of Luke differing entirely from the genealogy in Matthew. Very able critics have therefore contended that, as Luke evidently received his account from Mary, the genealogy he gives is that of her ancestry, and that the "Heli" who is mentioned in Luke as the ancestor of Jesus was his grandfather, the father of Mary. Very skillful and able Biblical critics have supported this view, among whom are Paulus, Spanheim, and Lightfoot. The latter goes the length of saying that there are no difficulties in these genealogies but what have been made by commentators. In Lightfoot, notes in Luke, third chapter, the argument is given at length, and he adds testimonies to show that Mary was called the daughter of Heli by the early Jewish Rabbins, who traduced her for her pretensions in reference to her son. He quotes three passages from different Rabbins in the Jerusalem Talmud, or "Chigagah," folio 77. 4, where this Mary, mother of Jesus, is denounced as the "daughter of Heli and mother of a pretender."

[9] This is said by able critics to be the sense of the original.

[10] The address "woman" sounds abrupt and harsh, but in the original language it was a term of respect. Our Lord, in his dying moments, used the same form to his mother,—"Woman, behold thy son."

Transcriber's note:

Minor typographical and punctuation errors have been corrected without note. Irregularities and inconsistencies in the text have been retained as printed.

Mismatched quotes are not fixed if it's not sufficiently clear where the missing quote should be placed.