Biblical herstory

On a lighter note, yesterday's papers carried 2005's top baby names, with Jacob and Michael topping the boys and Emily and Emma the girls. An odd comment about why the boy names tended to be more biblical than those for girls from Cleveland Evans of the American Names Society caught my attention: "There's a lot more men mentioned in the Bible than women."

Grrr... Forgetting the Bible girls again are we? So I came up with about 52 girl names from the Bible, women and their stories we so conveniently forget. I'll just put a few of their names here. You go look up their stories.

First from the Hebrew Bible: Eve, Sarah, Hagar, Rebekah, Leah, Rachael, Asenath, Zilpah, Bilhah, Shiphra, Puah, Miriam, Zipporah, Keturah, Deborah, Jael, Delilah, Hannah, Ruth, Naomi, Abigail, Jezebel, Judith, Esther, Huldah, Bathsheba, Karen-Happuch, Jemimah, Kezzia, Dinah, Tamar, Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, Tirzah, Susanna, Michal, Achsah, Gomer.

Now from the New Testament: Mary (all of them), Elizabeth, Salome, Herodias, Joanna, Mary Magdalene, Martha, Rhoda, Syntyche, Euodia, Lydia, Junia, Prisca, Chloe, Lois, Eunice, Anna, Sapphira, Nympha, Phoebe, Tryphena, Tryphosa, Tabitha.

Then, of course, are all the women mentioned in scripture whose names are forgotten: Moses' mother, King David's mother, the Syro-Phonecian woman of the gospel, the woman with the hemorrhage, Lot's wife, Simon's mother-in-law, the widow of Nain, the Israelite servant girt of Naaman, the Shunemite woman, the widow of Zarephath, the woman who anoints Jesus, the Samaritan woman, the woman taken in adultery, Potiphar's wife, the maid who questions Peter before Jesus' death, the daugher of Jairus who was raised from the dead, most of the women who followed Jesus, the widow who gave all she had to the temple treasury in the gospel, Noah's wife, Job's wife, Tobit's wife, the girl who pulls Moses from the river, the daughter of Pharaoh who saves Moses, the mother of the seven sons martyred in Maccabees, Jephthah's daughter (whom he sacrificed), the Levite's concubine, the queen of Sheba, the mother of the sons of Zebedee, the wise women of Abel, the prophet daughters of the apostle Philip, the women of Jerusalem who cry for Jesus on his way to Calvary, Samson's mother.

Need I go on? Salvation history is a story about men only because we allow to be.