Rachel Weeping: Jews, Christians, and Muslims at the Fortress Tomb

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Rachel Weeping: Jews, Christians, and Muslims at the Fortress Tomb​ - Fred Strickert
Rachel's story is one of the great dramas of the Old Testament. It begins with a passionate love story the shepherdess meets Jacob at the well and he is moved to weep and kiss her. So great is Jacob's love for Rachel that he works seven years for her hand in marriage and then, tricked into marrying her sister Leah, he works another seven years for Rachel. After years of heartbreaking barrenness, Rachel gives birth to Joseph. While giving birth to her second son, Benjamin, Rachel dies on the way to the family's new home. She is buried there beside the road, not in the family tomb. The very nature of Rachel's burial site means she will be a dramatic figure weeping for the Israelites as they are led into captivity by the Babylonians, and again for the children massacred by Herod after Jesus' birth. It is this on the way character of Rachel that marks her story and the monument outside Bethlehem where Christian, Jewish, and Muslim worshipers remember her. The monument is tangled in questions of historical authenticity and sectarian struggle. For centuries it has been passed by, recorded in diaries, worn by earthquakes and neglect, and embellished by members from all three traditions. Finally, in the early twenty first century, it has been surrounded by a wall, cut off from the very road that brought pilgrims by for so many years. Yet pilgrims continue to gather, and women come to pray for the blessing of childbirth. In Rachel Weeping, Fred Strickert takes the reader on a journey into the nature and significance of Rachel's story and the story of her tomb. With meticulous scholarship and a clear sense of how the monument fits into the current history of the Middle East, Strickert tells the story of Rachel, the woman on the way.

Fred Strickert is Professor of Religion at Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa.
He is the author of Bethsaida: Home of the Apostles.

Reviews
"Fred Strickert has written a masterful, one could say definitive, portrait of the life and lament of Rachel. With skill, sensitivity and thorough scholarship, he follows the story of Rachel, a woman on the way, as she is depicted in the Bible and remembered in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Buried along the way, her tomb always provided a place of solace and strength for all who weep, especially women. In recent times this sacred space has been walled in and made a private domain for Jews alone. But are her tears only for some and not others? Can they be privatized? Through this excellent and meticulous study, the author shows that historically the tears of Rachel were for all her children, for all of us. We are all hurting and desperately in need of healing he writes. It is for all, not just the few, that Rachel weeps. Will the tomb again become the universal shrine it has always been? Concluding with Rachel's hope that the impossible will become possible, the author believes so. It is a belief, he points out, backed by international law."
-Harold Vogelaar, Ph.D., Director, Center of Christian-Muslim Engagement for Peace and Justice, Chicago, Illinois

"With Rachel Weeping Fred Strickert joins a growing pool of scholars and journalists who illuminate the shared religious heritage of Jews, Christians and Muslims. What distinguishes this story of Rachel's tomb in biblical and modern history is Strickert's attention to extensive and diverse sources such as rabbinic, patristic, and Islamic commentaries and eye witness accounts by two millennia's pilgrims. Strickert's integration of biblical narrative, history, and archaeology lifts up Rachel's tomb as a paradigm for the political developments in our time that hinder the sharing of God's Holy Land by the people of these three related traditions."
-Carol Schersten LaHurd, Ph.D., Lutheran School of Theology, Chicago, Illinois, Evangelical Lutheran Church, America Global Mission

"In a careful and judicious way, Fred Strickert shows how a particular figure in the Bible can become a generative interpretive force. Along with suggestive exegesis and some historical-archaeological work, Rachel becomes variously an example of divisive ideological monopoly or a reference point for hopeful, generative women. Like so much in our religious vocabulary, Rachel is open to rich imaginative reuse. The book is an exercise in reception history that will challenge any notion that biblical usage has a single, identifiable meaning. In this case, the weeping of mother Rachel moves beyond the book to become a venue for both violence and hope. Strickert manages complex material in suggestive way, much to our benefit."
-Walter Brueggemann, Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia

Specifications
Paperback
176 pages
Size: 6" x 9"
Code: 5987
ISBN: 9780814659878 

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Model: 5987

ISBN: 9780814659878

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