# Youngest Biblical marriage of named characters **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 7, 2015, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youngest-biblical-marriage-of-named-characters/736898 "2015-11-07T14:51:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2015, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youngest-biblical-marriage-of-named-characters/736898/21 "2015-11-09T21:01:12Z")
Esther is famous for producing male figures? I know on Purim you should get so drunk you can’t tell Mordechai from Haman, but it isn’t Purim till March, and Esther’s many acts besides having Mordechai handy certainly are why she’s the title. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2015, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youngest-biblical-marriage-of-named-characters/736898/22 "2015-11-09T21:07:52Z")
Christians probably are more familiar with the New Testament stories, for two reasons: First, there just aren’t as many of them. The four Gospels all tell basically the same story, Acts extends that story a bit, and Revelation is more like an LSD trip than a story per se. All the rest of the New Testament is letters, which mostly consist of Paul scolding various church communities for not acting right. By comparison, the Old Testament is about three times the total length of the New, has very little internal overlap, and consists largely of stories. Second, in many Christian churches (certainly Catholic, but many other sects use the same), in a typical church service you’ll get one reading from the Old Testament, one song from the Psalms, one reading from the New Testament other than the Gospels, and one reading from the Gospels. So despite there being more of the Old Testament, we actually hear more of the New. The two New Testament readings are structured to go through the entire material in order, but the Old Testament readings are chosen for a correspondence of some sort with the Gospel. So there are whole books that happen to never come up, and large chunks of others (for instance, I don’t think I’ve ever heard a reading from Esther or the Song of Solomon in church, because neither of those contains anything particularly relevant to any of the Gospels). In the sects that don’t use those standard readings, it’s even worse, because in that case, the readings that tend to be chosen are ones that people are already familiar with, resulting in those readings becoming even more familiar, and the obscure ones remaining obscure. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2015, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youngest-biblical-marriage-of-named-characters/736898/23 "2015-11-09T21:31:36Z")
> [@Leo\_Bloom](#): > > Esther is famous for producing male figures? No, she’s one of those who \*\*isn’t \*\*famous for that reason. I agree with you, **Chronos**. If you want to become familiar with the Bible, you have to do Bible Study, especially systematic Bible study. I have been in several Bible studies that went thru the whole thing, end to end, including the begats. Plus one almost has to skip over the theological meaning, just to get thru it. I have read the OT six times, and the NT eleven, and even so I forget people like Huldah. It’s not a simple work. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Maggie\_the\_Ocelot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@Maggie\_the\_Ocelot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maggie_the_Ocelot)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2015, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youngest-biblical-marriage-of-named-characters/736898/24 "2015-11-09T21:47:24Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > [li]The Witch of Endor[/li] > [@Chimera](#): > > \*\*Endora \*\*from _Bewitched_? 😃 Nooooooo the Witch of Endor. It was Leia’s nickname among the Ewoks, due to her Force powers. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2015, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youngest-biblical-marriage-of-named-characters/736898/25 "2015-11-09T23:20:01Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > No, [Esther’s] one of those who \*\*isn’t \*\*famous for that reason… :smack: Sorry. Was Miriam mentioned? She always was celebrated, but in modern (post 1970s) time her stock has risen considerably. She was Moses’s sister, but that’s not her fame: Not only was she the first to cross the parted waves when everyone else was scared shitless, she did it singing and playing a drum. You go, girl! There’s something special liturgically–from millennia back, for all I know, about that extended section, The Song of the Sea (it is in a clearly different poetic style than the surrounding text of Exodus); at least I think there is, but can’t remember where or what. ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2015, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youngest-biblical-marriage-of-named-characters/736898/26 "2015-11-09T23:23:01Z")
> [@SpoilerVirgin](#): > > This is fascinating. I have studied the Old Testament extensively, and knew the Bible stories of these women from when I was a small child. I don’t know much about the New Testament because it is not a part of my religion. But the Old Testament is definitely a part of Christianity. Do Christian children not learn the Old Testament Bible stories? Or are they focused almost exclusively on the New Testament? Eh. I’m 38 and raised Christian, and 90% of the Bible stories I was taught as a little kid are OT stories. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2015, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youngest-biblical-marriage-of-named-characters/736898/27 "2015-11-09T23:28:36Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > I forgot Yael - she’s the one with the tent peg? Deborah I should have remembered, but I confess with shame that I didn’t remember Huldah at all. My bad. > > Regards, > Shodan I thought I’d have to go look this up in my bookshelf–the bit about the hangover–but Wiki has it in the entry on her. Which is a little thick, as Bertie might say–you don’t find funnies about Jesus Christ in his entry, do you? Huh, do you? Fucking anti-Semites. (Mods: last time I was modded for this. It is a joke because it is so useful in cases like this.) In P.G. Wodehouse’s novel _The Code of the Woosters,_ the narrator Bertie Wooster mentions Jael in a description of hangover symptoms that he is experiencing: “Indeed, just before Jeeves came in, I had been dreaming that some bounder was driving spikes through my head—not just ordinary spikes, as used by Jael the wife of Heber, but red-hot ones.” … Wodehouse also mentions “Jael the wife of Heber” in _Galahad at Blandings_. When [the hungover] Tipton Plimsoll shakes his head, the narrator remarks, “There are times when shaking the head creates the illusion one has met Jael the wife of Heber, incurred her displeasure and started her going into her celebrated routine.” Wodehouse also mentions “Jael, the wife of Heber” in _Cocktail Time_, when Frederick Twistleton describes the face of a member of the Drones Club with “…a look of ecstasy and exaltation such as Jael, the wife of Heber, must have worn when about to hammer the Brazil nut into the head of Sisera…”. > **[Jael](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yael)** > > Jael (/ˈdʒeɪəl/) or Yael (/ˈjeɪəl/' Hebrew: יָעֵל Yāʿēl) is a heroine of the Bible who aids the Israelites in their war with King Jabin of the city of Hazor in Canaan by killing Sisera, the commander of Jabin's army. This episode is depicted in chapters 4 and 5 of the Book of Judges. According to that account, after Sisera's defeat by the Israelite king Barak in the Battle of Mount Tabor, he seeks refuge in the tent of Jael, who kills him by driving a tent peg through his skull (Judges 4:17–21) n... ---
**Author:** ![Morgenstern](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Morgenstern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morgenstern)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2015, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youngest-biblical-marriage-of-named-characters/736898/28 "2015-11-10T00:03:02Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Christians probably are more familiar with the New Testament stories, for two reasons: First, there just aren’t as many of them. The four Gospels all tell basically the same story, Acts extends that story a bit, and Revelation is more like an LSD trip than a story per se. All the rest of the New Testament is letters, which mostly consist of Paul scolding various church communities for not acting right. By comparison, the Old Testament is about three times the total length of the New, has very little internal overlap, and consists largely of stories. > > Second, in many Christian churches (certainly Catholic, but many other sects use the same), in a typical church service you’ll get one reading from the Old Testament, one song from the Psalms, one reading from the New Testament other than the Gospels, and one reading from the Gospels. So despite there being more of the Old Testament, we actually hear more of the New. The two New Testament readings are structured to go through the entire material in order, but the Old Testament readings are chosen for a correspondence of some sort with the Gospel. So there are whole books that happen to never come up, and large chunks of others (for instance, I don’t think I’ve ever heard a reading from Esther or the Song of Solomon in church, because neither of those contains anything particularly relevant to any of the Gospels). > > … Actually, Christians view the Old Testament (_law_) as the prophesying of the coming of the messiah. The New Testament replaced the Old Testament as the new _law_. So pretty much Christians use the Old Testament to prove the divinity of the messiah. Josh McDonald in _Evidence that Demands a Verdict_ pretty much cites the prophesies and their fulfillment comparing the Old with the New Testament. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2015, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youngest-biblical-marriage-of-named-characters/736898/29 "2015-11-10T00:48:44Z")
Yeah, that’s basically what I said: The Old Testament readings are chosen because they correspond in some way to the Gospel. Sometimes it’s direct Messianic prophecy, like most of Isaiah, and sometimes it’s a story with similar themes, like this past weekend with the the widow of Zarephath sharing her last scraps of food with Elijah, compared to Jesus watching the widow giving her last two coins to the poor-box. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youngest-biblical-marriage-of-named-characters/736898.md?page=1)