Sarah

Sarah (born Sarai) is a biblical matriarch, prophetess and major figure in Abrahamic religions. While different Abrahamic faiths portray her differently, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all depict her character similarly, as that of a pious woman, renowned for her hospitality and beauty, the wife and half-sister of Abraham, and the mother of Isaac. Sarah has her feast day on 1 September in the Catholic Church, 19 August in the Coptic Orthodox Church, 20 January in the LCMS, and 12 and 20 December in the Eastern Orthodox Church. According to Book of Genesis 20:12, in conversation with the Philistine king Abimelech of Gerar, Abraham reveals Sarah to be both his wife and his half-sister, stating that the two share a father but not a mother. Such unions were later explicitly banned in the Book of Leviticus (). This would make Sarah the daughter of Terah and the half-sister of not only Abraham but Haran and Nahor. She would also have been the aunt of Lot, Milcah, Iscah, and Bethuel, by both blood and marriage. By her union with Abraham, she had one child, Isaac. After her death, Abraham married Keturah, whose identity biblical scholars debate (that is, whether or not she was actually Hagar), and by her had at least six more children. In the biblical narrative, Sarah is the wife of Abraham. In two places in the narrative he says Sarah is his sister (Genesis 12:10 through 13:1, in the encounter with Pharaoh, and Genesis 20, in the encounter with Abimelech). Knowing Sarah to be a great beauty and fearing that the Pharaoh would kill Abraham to be with Sarah, Abraham asks Sarah to tell the Pharaoh that she is his sister (Genesis 17). She was originally called Sarai. In the narrative of the covenant of the pieces in Genesis 17, during which Yahweh promises Abram that he and Sarai will have a son, Abram is renamed as Abraham and Sarai is renamed as Sarah. There are folk etymologies that explain their old and new names. Terah, with Abram (as he was then called), Sarai and Lot, departed for Canaan, but stopped in a place named Haran, where Terah remained until he died at the age of 205.