Unlilkely, But rather interesting. I would actually like to see how a more war like Israel conducts itself in the Middle East after lets say a rebellion against the Romans and I do wonder how with an Empire to look back on. The Zionist moment develops in this TL(If It even does) and If they are a bit more Ambitious than OTL.
WI Old Testament includes a book by a female prophet
- Thread starter acgoldis
- Start date
Here's a funny little trivia, the Hebrew word for "prostitute" is "zona" and one of the words for food is the similar sounding "mazon". And when teaching us the Bible in elementary school the teachers would claim that zona (prostitute) doesn't actually mean sex worker but instead means she sold mazon (food), to make it child friendly.
Judith's got a book in the Apocrypha, simply let St. Jerome not argue against its inclusion and you might get there.
Deborah or Huldah seems the likeliest one to have a book. In fact, Judith does sound a lot like the story of Deborah-Jael-Sisera with the serial numbers filed off.
Then again, one could always slip some "prophetical utterances" into the mouths of the title characters of the existing books of Esther or Ruth (not as unusual a phenomenon as you'd think)
Not sure how Jewish schools work it, but I remember in our Sunday school class the teacher simply compared Rahab to Rapunzel, she just let down a rope instead of her hair. The comparison doesn't really "work", but when kids are that age, Sunday school is more about keeping the kids busy while the parents are in church (the shit comes in when they get to preparation for confirmation classes as teenagers and the catechism-teacher has to unpick all that mess)
Esther doesn't focus on her preaching to people. I'm thinking of a book where the woman preaches.
If someone like Deborah and/or Salome Alexandra wrote a book not trying to be part of the Scripture but talking about similar matters(faith, historical happenings, all that stuff) and it was influential enough that later prophets compiled it with the other holy books that could happen
Their historical role for the jewish people would be too important to be brushed off after being added, it'd be like trying to remove Isaiah(for Deborah) or David(for Alexandra) even though they're women
I agree tho that if butterflies doesnt change the developement of religion in any meaningful way they'd be treated as exceptions rather than the norm, which is kinda how they are already treated tbh
Their historical role for the jewish people would be too important to be brushed off after being added, it'd be like trying to remove Isaiah(for Deborah) or David(for Alexandra) even though they're women
I agree tho that if butterflies doesnt change the developement of religion in any meaningful way they'd be treated as exceptions rather than the norm, which is kinda how they are already treated tbh
Not a prophetess per se, but I wonder if the Witch of Endor (1 Sam. 26) could be "made" into a quasi-prophet. If only as a way of getting around the interminable ISSUES with the fact that this woman seems to not only be able to conjure up the dead but also, that by leaving the story in, somehow her "necromancy" is condoned. As a prophetess she might be more palatable
What's being asked isn't impossible, but it has to be remembered that any major prophetess or female figure/leader (and they do exist in the Old and New Testaments) would probably end up being downplayed by male authors later on. The Ancient World was a pretty blatant patriarchy and strong female leaders represented a very big threat to the status quo.
For example, even though we know the Apostle Paul wrote letters which often addressed women who were apparently leading* congregations of early Christians, we have 1st Timothy 2:12 which forbids women in positions of authority over men...except Paul probably didn't write that. Timothy is one of those books that we're fairly certain Paul never wrote, or was written in his name only. It's just one of the things we can point to in order to say that no matter how impressive a given female prophetess may be, they probably will have later male authors doing their damn best to downplay their actions.
*I say apparently because the leadership and place of women in early Christian groups is notoriously hard to pin down. It's very possible that women like Phoebe and Chloe were leading groups of Christians, but we don't really have enough evidence to be certain.
For example, even though we know the Apostle Paul wrote letters which often addressed women who were apparently leading* congregations of early Christians, we have 1st Timothy 2:12 which forbids women in positions of authority over men...except Paul probably didn't write that. Timothy is one of those books that we're fairly certain Paul never wrote, or was written in his name only. It's just one of the things we can point to in order to say that no matter how impressive a given female prophetess may be, they probably will have later male authors doing their damn best to downplay their actions.
*I say apparently because the leadership and place of women in early Christian groups is notoriously hard to pin down. It's very possible that women like Phoebe and Chloe were leading groups of Christians, but we don't really have enough evidence to be certain.
The Book of Judith is already in the Catholic and Orthodox Bibles (as are most of what the Protestants call "apocrypha") and has been pretty much from the start. It is only the Protestants who excised that book. It was also included in the Septuagint, but latter Rabbinical Jews excised it together with all Old Testament books written in Greek.