Known for: Being the Egyptian servant of Sarah, and the mother of Abraham’s first child, Ishmael. Abraham sent her off into the desert with Ishmael after his son Isaac was born.
ISHMAEL
Book of the Bible: Appears in Genesis 16:15 and is last seen in Genesis 25:17.
Known for: Being brought into the desert by his mother, then living far away. After the death of his father Abraham, he and his brother Isaac buried their father together. His 12 sons became tribal leaders.
ISAAC
Book of the Bible: First mentioned in Genesis 17:21. He is born in Genesis 21:2 and dies in Genesis 35:29.
Known for: Almost being sacrificed by his father Abraham, but being rescued by an angel of the Lord. He married Rebekah and had twin sons: Esau and Jacob.
ELIEZER
Book of the Bible: First mentioned in Genesis 15:2. We assume he is the senior servant of Abraham mentioned in Genesis 24:2. He appears throughout Genesis 24.
Known for: Being sent to the land of Abraham’s birth to find a wife for Isaac. He brought back Rebekah, Isaac’s cousin.
REBEKAH
Book of the Bible: First mentioned in Genesis 22:23. She appears in Genesis 24:15. The last we see of her is in Genesis 27.
Known for: Eliezer taking her back to Canaan to marry Isaac, with whom she had twin sons, Esau and Jacob. Also, for helping Jacob trick Isaac.
ESAU
Book of the Bible: Born in Genesis 25:25. Appears in Genesis 33 and Genesis 36.
Known for: Being the older twin to Jacob. He had the rights of the first son, and he was his father Isaac’s favorite. But Jacob tricked Isaac into giving Esau’s birthright blessing to Jacob.
JACOB-ISRAEL
Book of the Bible: Born in Genesis 25:26 and dies in Genesis 49:33. His name is changed to Israel in Genesis 35:10.
Known for: Being Esau’s twin brother and his mother Rebekah’s favorite. Also, for tricking Esau out of his birthright and fathering a daughter and the leaders of the tribes of Israel.
RACHEL
Book of the Bible: Appears in Genesis 29:6. She dies after giving birth to a second son in Genesis 35:19.
Known for: Being the mother of Joseph and the second wife of Jacob.
LEAH
Book of the Bible: First appears in Genesis 29:16. We learn in Genesis 49:31 that Jacob buried her in Canaan.
Known for: Being Rachel’s older sister and Jacob’s first wife. She gave Jacob his first son, Reuben. In all, she had six sons and Jacob’s only daughter, Dinah.
JOSEPH
Book of the Bible: Born in Genesis 30:23 and dies in Genesis 50:26.
Known for: Being Rachel’s first son and Jacob-Israel’s favorite son; Jacob made him a beautiful robe. Joseph interpreted the dreams of Pharaoh and saved Egypt from starvation during a famine.
MOSES
Book of the Bible: Born in Exodus 2:2 and dies in Deuteronomy 34:5.
Known for: Being found as an infant in a basket on the Nile by the pharaoh’s daughter. Moses also carved the stone tablets with the Commandments. He brought the Children of Israel to the land where Jericho was.
JOSHUA
Book of the Bible: First appears in Exodus 17:9 and dies in Joshua 24:29.
Known for: Being Moses’ assistant, sent to scout out Canaan. After Moses’ death, he led the people to conquer Jericho, and then to conquer surrounding lands, which he distributed among the Children of Israel.
SAMSON
Book of the Bible: Born in Judges 13:24 and dies in Judges 16:30.
Known for: Being exceptionally strong. He strangled a lion and was the leader of the Children of Israel for 20 years. But his wife Delilah betrayed him, telling the Philistines how to make him weak.
DAVID
Book of the Bible: First mentioned in 1 Samuel 16:1. He dies in 1 Kings 2:10.
Known for: Being a small shepherd and musician who killed the large man Goliath with a stone. He became the second king of the Children of Israel, waging war against the house of the first king.
GOLIATH
Book of the Bible: First appears in 1 Samuel 17:4 and is killed in 1 Samuel 17:49-50.
Known for: Challenging the Children of Israel to present someone to fight with him to determine which people would rule over the other. The boy David killed him with a stone.
SAUL
Book of the Bible: First mentioned in 1 Samuel 9:2 and dies in 1 Samuel 31:4.
Known for: Being anointed by the prophet Samuel as the first king of the Children of Israel. He made David a battlefield leader and then turned on him and waged war.
SOLOMON
Book of the Bible: Born in 2 Samuel 12:24 and dies in 1 Kings 11:43.
Known for: Being the wise second son of King David and Bathsheba, and the third king of the Children of Israel.
ELIJAH
Book of the Bible: First appears in 1 Kings 17:1, and leaves the earth in 2 Kings 2:11.
Known for: Being loyal to the Lord, when the other prophets had left the faith. People of all faiths turned against him. The Lord brought him up to the heavens in a whirlwind.
ELISHA
Book of the Bible: First appears in 1 Kings 19:16, and dies of illness in 2 Kings 13:14.
Known for: Being the disciple of the prophet Elijah, performing miracles, and being a healer.
JONAH
Book of the Bible: The main person in the Book of Jonah.
Known for: Running away when the Lord told him to go to Nineveh and preach against the wickedness there. He fled on a ship and was thrown overboard and swallowed by a huge fish.
JOB
Book of the Bible: The main person in the Book of Job.
Known for: Suffering terribly because of a wager the Lord had with the adversary. Job loses his property and then his children, and yet he stays faithful. But when he has personal pain, he questions why.
NAOMI
Book of the Bible: One of the two main people in the Book of Ruth.
Known for: Being the mother-in-law of Ruth. Naomi and her husband had moved to Moab. But her husband and sons died. She returned to Bethlehem, and one of her daughters-in-law, Ruth, accompanied her.
RUTH
Book of the Bible: The main person in the Book of Ruth.
Known for: Loving her mother-in-law Naomi so much that she abandoned her home and religion and went with Naomi to live among the Children of Israel. She remarried and had a son Obed, who had a son Jesse, who had a son David—the second king.
BOAZ
Book of the Bible: Appears in Ruth 2–4.
Known for: Being the second husband of Ruth. Boaz was a relative of Naomi’s late husband and a landowner. He was kind to the widows and fell in love with Ruth and married her.
MORDECAI
Book of the Bible: Appears in Esther 2 and throughout the rest of Esther.
Known for: Being the cousin of Esther, who raised her and helped her save the Jews from the decree that would kill them.
HAMAN
Book of the Bible: Appears in Esther 3:1 and is killed in Esther 7:10.
Known for: Hating the Jews because they would not bow down to anyone but their God. He got the king to sign a decree that all the Jews should be killed.
KING NEBUCHADNEZZAR
Book of the Bible: Appears in Daniel 1–4.
Known for: Being the king of Babylon, who had men from the Jewish nobility brought to his palace to learn Babylonian and then serve in his court. Among them was Daniel, who interpreted the king’s dream correctly.
DANIEL
Book of the Bible: The main person of the Book of Daniel.
Known for: Interpreting the dream of King Nebuchadnezzar, interpreting the writing on the wall for Nebuchadnezzar’s son Belshazzar (who was king then), and being thrown into the lions’ den by the next king, Darius.
ESTHER
Book of the Bible: The main person in the Book of Esther.
Known for: Becoming queen to King Ahasuerus of Persia and saving her people, the Children of Israel
, from a murderous decree. She gets the king to allow the Jews to fight off their enemies.
KING AHASUERUS
Book of the Bible: Appears throughout the Book of Esther.
Known for: Being the king of all Persia and Media. He had many wives and great wealth, and he listened to Esther when she revealed she was Jewish and gave her the permission she requested.
Stories
Alter, Robert. 2004. The Five Books of Moses. New York: Norton.
Alter, Robert. 2010. The Wisdom Books: Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes. New York: Norton.
Alter, Robert. 2013. Ancient Israel: The Former Prophets: Joshua, Samuel, and Kings. New York: Norton.
Alter, Robert. 2015. Strong as Death Is Love: The Song of Songs: Ruth, Esther, Jonah, and Daniel. New York: Norton.
Fox, Everett. 1995. The Five Books of Moses. New York: Schocken Books.
Fox, Everett. 1999. Give Us a King! Samuel, Saul, and David. New York: Schocken Books.
Fox, Everett. 2014. The Early Prophets: Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings. New York: Schocken Books.
Sidebars
“17th General Conference on Weights and Measures (1983), Resolution 1.” Available at: bipm.org/en/CGPM/db/17/1/ (This Page)
Ahrens, C. Donald. 2012. Meteorology Today: An Introduction to Weather, Climate, and the Environment. 10th edition. Belmont, CA: Cengage Learning. (This Page)
Alter, Robert. 2013. Ancient Israel: The Former Prophets: Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings: A Translation With Commentary. New York: Norton. (This Page)
Alter, Robert. 2010. The Wisdom Books: Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes. New York: Norton. (This Page)
Arbib, Michael A. “From Monkey-like Action Recognition to Human Language: An Evolutionary Framework for Neurolinguistics.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 28.02 (2005): 105-124. (This Page)
Bar-Ilan, Meir. King Solomon’s Trade With India. Aram 27: 1&2 (2015), 125-137. (This Page)
“Base Unit Definitions: Meter” National Institute of Standards and Technology. Available at: physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/meter.html (This Page)
Beal, Timothy K. 2002. The Book of Hiding: Gender, Ethnicity, Annihilation, and Esther. Abingdon on Thames, U.K.: Routledge. (This Page)
Berns, Andrew. “Reckless Rites: Purim and the Legacy of Jewish Violence.” Medieval Encounters 14.2 (2008): 410-412. (This Page)
Bickerton, Derek. “Language Evolution: A Brief Guide for Linguists.” Lingua 117.3 (2007): 510-526. (This Page)
Bullinger, Ethelbert William. 2006. Number in Scripture. New York: Cosimo. (This Page)
Butzer, Karl W. 1976. Early Hydraulic Civilization in Egypt: A Study in Cultural Ecology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (This Page)
Coates, Michael, and Marcello Ruta. “Nice Snake, Shame About the Legs.” Trends in Ecology & Evolution 15.12 (2000): 503-507. (This Page)
Davis, William. “The Anatomy of a Whale: Transatlantic Audiences and ‘the Good Bishop’ Jebb in Moby-Dick.” Leviathan 18.2 (2016): 53-61. (This Page)
Dilke, Oswald Ashton Wentworth. 1987.Mathematics and Measurement. Vol. 2. London: British Museum Publications. (This Page)
Dimbleby, Geoffrey W. 2017. The Domestication and Exploitation of Plants and Animals. New York: Routledge. (This Page)
Dozeman, Thomas B. “The Yam-Sûp in the Exodus and the Crossing of the Jordan River.” The Catholic Biblical Quarterly 58.3 (1996): 407-416. (This Page)
Ebeling, Jennie R. 2010. Women’s Lives in Biblical Times. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing. (see particularly chapter one) (This Page)
Erlacher, Daniel, and Michael Schredl. “Time Required for Motor Activity in Lucid Dreams.” Perceptual and Motor Skills 99.3 suppl. (2004): 1239-1242. (This Page)
Finkelstein, Israel. “Arabian Trade and Socio-Political Conditions in the Negev in the Twelfth-Eleventh Centuries B.C.E.” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 47.4 (1988): 241-252. (This Page)
Forsyth, Neil. 1989. The Old Enemy: Satan and the Combat Myth. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.(This Page)
Fradkin, Chris, Gelson Vanderlei Weschenfelder, and Maria Angela Mattar Yunes. “Shared Adversities of Children and Comic Superheroes as Resources for Promoting Resilience.” Child Abuse & Neglect 51 (2016): 407-415. (This Page)
Garfinkel, Yosef, and Saar Ganor. “Khirbet Qeiyafa: Shaarayimn.” Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 8 (2008): 1-10. (This Page)
Henslow, George. 1895. The Plants of the Bible. Vol. 7. London: Religious Tract Society. (This Page)
Herlihy, David, and Samuel Kline Cohn. 1997. The Black Death and the Transformation of the West. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (This Page)
Hough, Carole, ed. 2016. The Oxford Handbook of Names and Naming. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (This Page)
Livi-Bacci, Massimo. 2012. A Concise History of World Population. Chichester, West Sussex, U.K.: John Wiley & Sons. (This Page)
Loprieno, Antonio. 1995. Ancient Egyptian: A Linguistic Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (This Page)
News24. 10 June 2014. “Jonah and the Whale Intestines.” Available at: news24.com/MyNews24/Jonah-and-the-Whale-Intestines-20140610 (This Page)
Regenstein, J. M., M. M. Chaudry, and C. E. Regenstein. “The Kosher and Halal Food Laws.” Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety 2.3 (2003): 111-127. (This Page)
Rendsburg, Gary A. (n.d.) “Agricultural Origins of the Jewish Holidays.” Accessed May 13, 2017: http://hazon.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Agricultural-Origins-of-the-Jewish-Holidays.pdf (This Page)
Rendsburg, Gary A. 1998. “The Early History of Israel.” In Crossing Boundaries and Linking Horizons: Studies in Honor of Michael C. Astour on His 80th Birthday, eds. Gordon D. Young and Mark W. Chavalas, 433-453. Potomac, MD: Capital Decisions. (This Page)
Sabaté, Joan. “Religion, Diet and Research.” The British Journal of Nutrition 92.2 (2004): 199-201. (This Page)
Said, Rushdi. 2013. The River Nile: Geology, Hydrology and Utilization. Elsevier. (This Page)
Sapir-Hen, Lidar, and Erez Ben-Yosef. “The Introduction of Domestic Camels to the Southern Levant: Evidence From the Aravah Valley.” Tel Aviv 40.2 (2013): 277-285. (This Page)
Schram, Peninnah. 1991. Tales of Elijah the Prophet. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson. (This Page)
Tacci, Jennifer. 2016. “Apocalypses and Superhero Mythology.” In The Global Impact of Religious Violence, eds. André Gagné, Spyridon Loumakis, and Calogero Miceli, 13-38. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock. (This Page)
Wifall, Walter. “The Sea of Reeds as Sheol.” Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 92.3 (1980): 325-332. (This Page)
Wilkinson, Lisa Atwood. 2013. Socratic Charis: Philosophy Without the Agon. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. (This Page)
Wood, Michael. 2013. In Search of the First Civilizations. New York: Random House. (This Page)
Woodard, Roger D., ed. 2004. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World’s Ancient Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (This Page)
Yadav, Shyam S., David McNeil, and Philip C. Stevenson, eds. 2007. Lentil: An Ancient Crop for Modern Times. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer Publications. (This Page)
Zerubavel, Eviatar. 1989. The Seven Day Circle: The History and Meaning of the Week. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (This Page)
Note on the Illustrations
Tishkoff, Sarah A., and Kenneth K. Kidd. “Implications of Biogeography of Human Populations for ‘Race’ and Medicine.” Nature Genetics 36.11s (2004): S2.
Yudell, Michael, Dorothy Roberts, Rob DeSalle, and Sarah Tishkoff. “Taking Race out of Human Genetics.” Science 351, no. 6273 (2016): 564-565.
Introduction
Hughes, Jeremy. Secrets of the Times: Myth and History in Biblical Chronology. 1990. Vol. 66. London: A&C Black.
Van Seters, John. “Is There Any Historiography in the Hebrew Bible? A Hebrew-Greek Comparison.” Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages 28.2 (2002): 1-25.
Donna Jo Napoli
is a professor of
linguistics and social justice at Swarthmore College, the mother of five, and the grandmother of eight. She has written more than 80 books for children and young adults, including National Geographic’s Treasury of Greek Mythology, Treasury of Egyptian Mythology, Treasury of Norse Mythology, and Tales From the Arabian Nights. While Napoli’s undergraduate major was mathematics and her graduate work was in linguistics, she has a profound love of storytelling. Her website is donnajonapoli.com.
Christina Balit
is a graduate of the Chelsea School of Art and the Royal College of Art, London. An award-winning dramatist and artist, Christina has illustrated more than 20 published children’s books, including Blodin the Beast, The Planet Gods, The Lion Illustrated Bible for Children, and National Geographic’s Zoo in the Sky, Treasury of Greek Mythology, Treasury of Egyptian Mythology, Treasury of Norse Mythology, and Tales From the Arabian Nights. Balit is also a published author and playwright.
Helen Plotkin
is the director of the Swarthmore College Center for the Study of Classical Jewish Texts. She teaches courses in biblical Hebrew and in classical Hebrew texts at Swarthmore. She educates adults, teens, and families at Mekom Torah, a Philadelphia-area Jewish community learning project.
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Treasury of Bible Stories Page 13
