The Story of Abraham and Models of Human Identity
This paper explores the profiles of the women characters Sarah and Hagar as models of human identity. The two characters can only be explored through reading the over-arching narrative of the story of Abraham. Their profiles and narrated personalities have to be extracted from that narrative, but th...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Cambridge University Press
2008
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| In: |
New blackfriars
Year: 2008, Volume: 89, Issue: 1021, Pages: 280-299 |
| Further subjects: | B
Abraham
B Sarah B Narrative B Hagar B Identity |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (JSTOR) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Parallel Edition: | Electronic
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| Summary: | This paper explores the profiles of the women characters Sarah and Hagar as models of human identity. The two characters can only be explored through reading the over-arching narrative of the story of Abraham. Their profiles and narrated personalities have to be extracted from that narrative, but there is a two-sided nature of this necessity. If Sarah and Hagar cannot be separated from the biblical narrator's engagement with father Abraham, neither can Abraham function as father of the nations except through his interaction with these two women. The reader is thus led towards an understanding of how the stories of Genesis 12–24 deal with the issue of parenthood. The body of the paper consists in a close reading of the biblical material following a method of reading which is rooted in the use of imagination as an exegetical tool – a style adopted by Paul in his allegorical approach to Sarah and Hagar in Galatians 4. This approach opens into narrative criticism with a focus on characterisation and on the interactions of Sarah, Hagar and Abraham, caught up in a Domestic Comedy. The women's characters are explored through the themes of parenthood as other, the other woman and woman as other. A final section explores some of the points of narrative ethics to be extracted from the close textual readings of the paper, with reference to the writings of Paul Ricoeur and Emmanuel Levinas. It is suggested that female as well as male characters may offer fruitful models for human identity. |
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| ISSN: | 1741-2005 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: New blackfriars
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-2005.2008.00221.x |