Long before I started on the mental road toward XJWism, soft-voiced misgivings whispered to me as I read Bible stories. Why did Jehovah like Abel's offering better than Cain's? Wasn't it cruel of Abraham to banish Hagar and Ishmael? Wasn't it wrong for Rebekah to deceive Isaac into blessing Jacob? How did Leah feel to know that she was not Jacob's chosen bride?
In The Red Tent, Anita Diamant weaves a novel around the unsettling story of Dinah. What if Dinah loved Shechem? How did Dinah feel as she was taken out of Shechem's house and saw what her brothers had done? What was Dinah's life like after this horrific slaughter?
Here is the prologue:
We have been lost to each other for so long.
My name means nothing to you. My memory is dust.
This is not your fault, or mine. The chain connecting mother to daughter was broken and the word passed to the keeping of men, who had no way of knowing. That is why I became a footnote, my story a brief detour between the well-known history of my father, Jacob, and the celebrated chronicle of Joseph, my brother. On those rare occasions when I was remembered, it was as a victim. Near the beginning of your holy book, there is a passage that seems to say I was raped and continues with the bloody tale of how my honor was avenged.
It's a wonder that any mother ever called a daughter Dinah again. But some did. Maybe you guessed that there was more to me than the voiceless cipher in the text. Maybe you heard it in the music of my name: the first vowel high and clear, as when a mother calls to her child at dusk; the second sound soft, for whispering secrets on pillows. Dee-nah.
Anita Diamant imagines betweens the lines and fictionally explains other events in Genesis . . . why Jacob changed his name, why Rachel hid the teraphim, and why Rachel was buried hastily beside the road.
While I wouldn't classify this book as great literature, it is an interesting read and has left me imagining what other stories might be written between the lines of the Bible.
Ginny