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10 Conclusion Although anticipating the birth of sons and securing a son’s legacy provides much drama, sisters and sisterhoods also have an integral role to play in the family narratives in the Bible. My study shows that sisters and sisterhoods are a defined typology in the Bible, and it reveals common features and concerns that shape their narratives. Just as there is a typical brother story, there is a typical sister story in the Bible. At their core, both types of stories work to protect the Bible’s designated family and to ensure Israel’s future. Defined by rivalry, brothers fight to secure heirs and to protect property. Younger brothers Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph defy the norms of primogeniture to become their fathers’ primary heirs. Their struggles with their older brothers help prove that they are the rightful successors. Human grit and divine will, not convention, determines legacy. Without the right of inheritance, sisters do not engage directly in efforts to secure it. Instead, they protect their families through their loyalty and obedience. Their stories manifest the implicit gender ideology of the Bible that supports patriarchal authority and protects patrilineal inheritance. Many sister stories are concerned with brokering marriages, like Rebecca’s to Isaac, which enrich and strengthen a sister’s natal household. Most of the marriages brokered in the sister stories of the Bible do not conform to this model. More often, rival patriarchs and inappropriate unions threaten and, ultimately, weaken a sister’s natal household. Marriage is a prominent feature in biblical narratives about sisterhood as well. Reflecting a broader focus, sisterhood stories are concerned with securing marriages that strengthen Israelite society. The threat of exogamous marriage, as opposed to the threat of specific rival patriarchs, pervades these stories. Whereas the Bible’s brother stories are about continuity, its sister and sisterhood stories are about stability. Although the ideal sister or sisterhood provides stability in the home or Israelite community, sisters and sisterhoods 175 are often destabilizing figures within the Bible’s patrilineal, patrilocal, and patriarchal context. Paradigmatic ideal sisters, like Rebecca and young Miriam, who support their natal households, are outnumbered by dangerous sisters like Rachel, Michal, Lot’s daughters, and Tamar, who weaken their natal households. My study reveals that sisters and sisterhoods pose a particular threat to patriarchal norms and authority as depicted in the Bible. For reasons that I suggest below, dangerous sisters are particularly prominent in the Bible. Their stories reveal unique anxieties associated with sisters, which are also evident, though modified, in the sisterhood stories. Fears of sororal agency, desire, and solidarity underlie the Bible’s sister and sisterhood stories. Sisters and sisterhoods become dangerous when they assert independent agency, when they elicit or exercise desire, or when they conspire together. Fears of female agency and desire are unsurprising in a text like the Bible, which reflects a patriarchal society in which women are subject to men, and their sexuality is controlled and protected by the men in their lives. Similar fears are evident in all the Bible’s stories about women—whether a mother, a wife, a daughter, or a sister—though, I argue, these fears are manifest differently depending on the specific role the woman plays in the narrative. Therefore, by studying the Bible’s sisters and sisterhood stories, we can deepen our understanding of the Bible’s gender ideology and expand our understanding of the roles women play in its narratives. What differentiates a sister story from other stories about women is the way the fears of female agency and desire play out within the less hierarchical sibling context or—as is the case of sisterhoods—within a peer context. By definition, a sister story is a sibling story that focuses either on the brother-sister relationship or the sister-sister relationship. Each relationship raises unique anxieties. As the stories of Dinah, Sarah, and Tamar show, the brother-sister relationship reflects anxieties associated with the sexualized sister. Ideally, a brother should protect his sister’s sexuality and prevent her violation. A brother, like Laban, may negotiate marriage on behalf of a sister, but once a sister becomes sexualized in the Bible’s patrilocal context, she no longer needs to engage narratively with him. As Rebecca did, she leaves her father’s house for her husband’s and becomes a wife and a mother who engages with a husband and sons. Dinah’s story illustrates well the problems posed by the unmarried, sexualized sister. Having failed to protect their...

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