Women play an immensely important role in the Bible: from Eve to the Virgin Mary, Sarah to Mary Magdalene, Naomi to the anonymous woman suffering severe menstrual bleeding who was healed by Jesus. They are a sisterhood of faith.

As such, they challenge many of our assumptions about the role of women in the development of the biblical story; about the impact of faith on lives lived in the ‘heat and dust’ of the real world. Here we will meet the prostitute who ended up in the genealogy of Jesus, a national resistance fighter, a determined victim of male sexual behaviour who challenged patriarchal power, a far from meek and mild mother of Jesus, a woman whose life has been so misrepresented that she is now the subject of the most bizarre conspiracy theories, and more.

Renowned historians and Biblical scholars, Martyn and Esther Whittock, take the reader on a fascinating journey, one unafraid to ask difficult questions, such as, ‘Was Eve set up to fall?