Stories of Remarkable women from Christian, Jewish and Muslim Traditions

Stories of the Desert: Stories of Remarkable women from Christian, Jewish and Muslim Traditions by Claire Rudolf Murphy, Meghan Nuttall Sayres, Mary Cronk Farrell, Sarah Conover and Betsy Wharton. Vermont: Skylight Paths Publishing, 2003.

reviewed by Donna Stewart

Any collection of stories that appeals to an eight year old and an eighty year old is a remarkable book.

“Oh, Grandma, I LOVE those stories,” said granddaughter Kate. I suppose they must be a refreshing change from most of the Old Testament stories in church school – usually focused on men like Abraham, Moses, David and Gideon.

This book, however, includes stories about heroic women. The Jewish section honours Sarah, Miriam, Shiprah, Shoshana, Esther and Huldah. Then there are New Testament stories of women among the disciples as well as others whose lives were touched by Jesus: the mother of James and John, the Canaanite woman who advocated for her troubled daughter, and the servant in the high priest's house, the one who challenged Peter after Jesus' capture. The writers have combined study and imagination to take us into the tensions and decision-making of their characters.

Especially attention-grabbing are the narratives of outstanding women in the Muslim tradition. Even their names are new to most of us: Khadija, Fatima, Zarah, and Aisha. The story of the veil is particularly pertinent just now. Eve and Hagar, of course, overlap all three religions, though here their stories are told from a Muslim perspective.

Kate's Grandma liked the stories too. They aren't “written down” for young people but are told with enough contextual detail that I could relate to women in faraway places and times. I appreciated the choice of the courageous midwife in Egypt, for example. She was vital to Jewish history because she, along with Miriam and Pharoah's daughter, made possible the Exodus. Though she is named in Scripture, I don’t remember her being honoured from the pulpit or in a class.

I was also interested in the little italic links which locate each story in the history of the faith. While many will be familiar with the connection between the midwives and the Exodus, not so many of us know about Huldah. In fifteen lines her importance is established. She is “the most important woman in the history of the religion” because her verification of the Deuteronomy scroll “allowed the ancient Jewish people to make the remarkable step of creating a portable religion, one not entirely dependent on a special place or temple”. Scholarship made accessible to an eight year old as well as an eighty year old!

Some of the scholarship is in itself adventurous. There is, apparently, scholarly argument about whether Shiprah was a Hebrew or a Jewish midwife. So Betsy Wharton writes about an Egyptian Shiprah who was able to stay true to her vocation even while serving an underclass in her society. The author brings a minor character to the fore in “River Journey”.

The Readers' Discusion Guide at the end asks several questions which connect each story to our modern lives.

Now I plan to give the book to a teenaged granddaughter. Since several of the authors have “young reader” credits in their bios, I think she'll like it.