The Life Of Sarah And Hagar, Or Jezebel And Rahab Today

How does one read the story of Sarah and Hagar, or Jezebel and Rahab today, if one is a woman reader situated in a postcolonial society? This question animates Judith E. McKinlay’s Reframing Her: Biblical Women in Postcolonial Focus. In this text, McKinlay takes different biblical women’s narrative and gives them agency. McKinaly opens this text from both with a feminist hermeneutic and a postcolonial criticism that helps to shape the context and location for the women she will explore and also her own personal context. One of the things I most appreciated about the opening us this book is the location in which she situates herself. She is a New Zealander, a Pakeha, which is described by the people of Maori, for people who are not Maori. Her narrative becomes critical in how she shapes these biblical women who are considered outsiders from those within. Location and identity politics becomes a critical theme within this text. I can remember Historian Vincent Harding who would open his class asking everyone to identify who they were and where they were from. At the time, I never understood why that was necessarily, but as a historian, I understand to know who we are and where we are from shapes our context. This text was helpful in helping me to understand how to relate to different people with different biblical understandings. In this text, McKinlay critically reflects within her culture (New Zealand) and how they come to understand Christianity and their interpretation