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Although retrieving women's experience textually and ethnographically is pivotal for feminist theology, problematic assumptions are at work in the way feminist theologians undertake this task. Using feminist theological readings of Alice Walker's The Color Purple and the biblical story of Sarah and Hagar, this chapter illustrates how some attempts to retrieve women's experience textually actually result in eliding racial difference, silencing sexuality, and obscuring the nuances of women's agency and resistance practices. This chapter also discusses how some feminist scholars (e.g., mujerista theologian Ada María Isasi-Díaz) are using ethnographic methods in order to find source material for theological reflection and to give voice to women in marginalized communities. The chapter addresses conflicts that have emerged regarding whether one can retrieve the standpoint of an oppressed community of women, unmediated by the feminist theologian's own agendas.

Hagar has been remembered by feminist biblical critics as the distinguished recipient of divine rescues and visions, but also as Sarah's hapless surrogate and Abraham's abandoned concubine. Although the allegorical disparagement of Hagar in Galatians 4 might be expected to prejudice the way early Christian readers portrayed her, patristic and early medieval readings transformed the allegorical Hagar by describing her more explicitly and more sympathetically in terms of the same “historical” details of Genesis 16 and 21 that are often noticed by feminist readers. Later medieval and rabbinic accounts focused increasingly on the ethical problems of the text, so that Reformation commentators – transcending their regular use of gender stereotypes – displayed an intense and sometimes even passionate interest in Hagar's sufferings.

In Genesis 16, the beautiful barren Sarai finally releases what is inside her – a confused bitterness that strikes at God, Abram, and her slavegirl, Hagar. Her proposal that Abram impregnate Hagar causes tension between the two women and she drives the foreign slavegirl away. However, the Lord intervenes and brings back the foreign slavegirl, and she bears Abram a son, Ishmael. In Genesis 17, Ishmael is old enough to be circumcised; a circumcision linked to a covenant that includes foreigners (foreign slaves) and that promises new life for Sarai. Together, Genesis 16 and 17 give the concept of covenant a new depth and new inclusiveness. They also give Abram and Sarai new names – Abraham and Sarah.

A segment of recent scholarship maintains that the Exodus narratives are either mythological or are complete fiction. These views are challenged by a detailed investigation of the geographical names used in the book of Exodus (e.g., Rameses, Pithom, Succoth, Etham). After establishing that these toponyms are all attested in Egyptian written sources of the second half of the 2nd century B.C., the locations of the sites are pursued in the archaeological record, namely, San el-Hagar, Qantir, Tell Retabeh, and Tell el-Maskhuta.

The Epilogue offers the author’s reflections on being a Black woman biblical scholar and writing on issues relating to race, gender, and biblical interpretation. It includes the author’s discussion of hopes for the future of biblical studies, including biblical reception history projects on race. It discusses the desires of reading communities to see themselves reflected in biblical texts and to interpret Hagar in ways that resonate with their experiences and concerns. It addresses the potential benefits and drawbacks of the ethnic and racial identification of and cultural appropriation of biblical characters. It concludes that the story of Hagar offers us a unique opportunity to investigate the ways in which we use biblical texts to illustrate how we see ourselves and others.

This chapter explores the question of the genealogy and religious affiliation of Arabs in Josephus's retelling of the story of Abraham, Hagar, and Ishmael in the Antiquities. The legendary common genealogy of the Arabs was supplied from written Jewish tradition by Josephus, who saw in them the descendants of Ishmael, son of Abraham and Hagar, thereby making them legitimate heirs to Jewish monotheism. This conception of a common descent and common source of religious observances between Jews and Arabs was original to Josephus alone.

This chapter examines Pauline Hopkins’s verbatim reproduction of the Long Bridge narrative from William Wells Brown’s Clotel (which, as Chapter 2 reveals, was already a verbatim reproduction of a prior source) in her first serialized novel, Hagar’s Daughter (1901). Although this appropriation itself serves as a bridge uniting antebellum and fin-de-siècle African American literature, Hopkins utilizes this duplication as a formal strategy of stasis and regression that I describe as textual atavism. African American writers of the nadir like Hopkins and Charles Chesnutt engage with socioscientific discourses of black atavism to indict white savagery as the barrier to black political evolution. They expose the family’s institutional role not simply as a metaphor for the nation but also as the mechanism for the reproduction of its unequal social relations, formulating a genealogical theory of American racism.

The scene in this chapter is again set by a Proto-Miracle, this time entitled Water from the Rock. In both the Qur’an and the Old Testament Moses strikes a rock and produces water for his thirsty followers. The next section embraces Lourdes, Shrines and Healing and deals with the apparitions of the Virgin Mary seen by Bernadette Soubirous, the establishment of a large shrine on the site of these apparitions and the many miraculous healings claimed at Lourdes thereafter by those who visit the shrine and bathe in the waters there. This section also surveys three very different novels which deal with Lourdes by the atheist Emile Zola, the Jewish writer Franz Werfel and the contemporary novelist, Michael Arditti. A comparison is then made with the Islamic well and spring of Zamzam in Mecca and the healings associated with that place. This section outlines the story of Hajar (Hagar), Isma‘il and the miraculous appearance of the spring. The chapter once again concludes with an identification of major themes and motifs.

This chapter seeks to engage with Old Testament ethics, a perennial interest of John Barton’s, by looking at the problem of overcrowding and doubling in the book of Genesis. It looks to origins, geneses, as a point of purity, simplicity, oneness—but Israel’s origin story is perversely non-autochthonous. It seems stubbornly committed to keeping others in the archive even as, in concrete terms, they are displaced. Why does every eponymous ancestor of Israel have to have a shadow side, another brother or ghost family with whom something must be done in order to make space? After all, writing offers far more effective means of obliterating and writing out than the curious paradox, practiced even in the case of the arch-enemy Abimelek, of writing/recording in order to remember to forget. (Exod. 17:14-16; cf. Deut. 25:19) The cases of Hagar/Ishmael and Esau clearly develop beyond the structuralist/mythical binary of favoured/unfavoured to create sites of rival empathy and self-accusation. The effect result is a strange story of Israel that is not-one, unfocused, wriggling uncomfortably, always a little bit outside itself. In terms of methodology, this chapter uses literary criticism and also looks at literary criticism as historical criticism’s younger brother (antagonist and double). It draws on Erich Auerbach’s observation that Genesis is split in more fundamental ways than the documentary hypothesis conveys. It also draws (lightly) on insights from Derrida on the archive and Assmann on cultural memory, bringing these insights to bear on the question of ethics.

This chapter reflects upon the importance of hearing the story of women as part of the common life of a community of faith. It focuses particularly on Hagar, a woman able to discern and name the God of Israel, a stellar witness to a faith that is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen, the one who bore the first son of Abraham, who is not usually named among the most worthy witnesses of faith. Hagar, an Egyptian woman, an African woman, a slave, must be a part of the litany—a part of the story if faith is to be understood, if history is to be complete, if truth is to be told.

Chapter 1 examines Hagar as the mother of Ishmael in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. It analyzes the depiction of Hagar in the Hebrew Bible, in the New Testament, and in later Jewish, Christian, and Islamic texts. These texts provide the foundations for other interpretations of Hagar in different time periods. Although these texts provide limited details regarding Hagar’s origins or her appearance, this chapter analyzes how these interpretations of Hagar highlight particular elements of difference, including gender, ethnicity, and status. It demonstrates that early interpretations tend not to racialize Hagar or to link her to Blackness. Hagar’s distinctiveness is connected to her construction as mother of Ishmael and as mother of a people.

Chapter 3 explains how a Black Aunt Hagar figure develops as an African American cultural icon unrelated to biblical Hagar. This chapter discusses how different understandings of Hagar appear within naming traditions as well as within visual arts, music, and literature. It details how various Black Hagar figures within African American literature and culture do not necessarily refer to biblical Hagar despite the use of the biblical name Hagar. It contends that as scholars, writers, and other artists link a Black Aunt Hagar figure with biblical Hagar, the resulting association between these figures contributes to the notion of biblical Hagar as a Black woman.

Chapter 4 details connections between multiple Black Hagar traditions within scholarship in religious studies and biblical studies. In conversation with Delores Williams’s Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk, it addresses the linking of Hagar with African American women’s experiences and the notion of a tradition of African American appropriation of Hagar. This chapter highlights how some scholars within classics and biblical studies emphasize the African presence in biblical lands and peoples. Also, it analyzes contextual readings of Hagar that create analogies between her experiences and those of contemporary women. It considers the influence of womanist work within theology and other fields in contributing to the popularity of a Black Hagar figure.

This chapter discusses the aims of Reimagining Hagar: Blackness and Bible. The key research questions for this book are: (1) How did Hagar become Black? and (2) What purpose did or does that serve? It situates this project at the intersection of African American biblical scholarship and reception history within biblical scholarship. This chapter introduces terminology related to race and ethnicity and provides background information on issues of color within the ancient world and within biblical texts. It explores the persistence of racial categorization within US society and the US literary imagination despite the lack of biological or genetic basis for contemporary notions of race. It discusses the importance of African American vernacular traditions and the ongoing and dynamic social and cultural interactions between African Americans and biblical texts. It provides an overview of each chapter within the book.

This chapter focuses on Hagar and her mourning in the wilderness of Beersheba (Gen. 21). Although Gen. 21:14–21 does not contain a case of child death proper, a few lexemes utilized in it represent Ishmael’s endangerment as an instance of dishonourable ejection from the family and a subsequent demise in the wilderness. This chapter explores how the redactor of Genesis portrays Hagar in the fashion of ancient Near Eastern weeping (mother) goddesses and creates a ritual drama with a clear ‘death–resurrection’ pattern. Given the foundational nature of patriarchal cycles and Hagar’s ancestral status within them (Gen. 16:10, 21:13, 18, 25:13–18), the editor uses Hagar’s actions to solicit God’s attention and to secure his patronage not only for Ishmael, but for the entire line of his descendants.

Two narratives in the book of Genesis (chapters 16, 38) are presented as explanations of ancient Israelite identity. Both accounts share a dilemma regarding the lack of an heir to continue the family line, first of Abraham and Sarah, and then of their descendant Judah. An exploration of their plots and points of view shows that the two chapters explain to later readers how the nation of Israel emerged from family and tribal roots as God guided the historical process. The concerns of both narratives are set in the larger context of the book of Genesis and the rest of the books in the Primary History.