![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/227\/2014\/05\/redtent.jpg\" "\\"redtent\\"")
<\/a>The new thing in Bible movies and similar productions? Telling familiar stories from a female point of view.<\/p>\nFirst CBS announced that it was going to produce an adaptation of The Dovekeepers<\/a><\/i>, a book that looks at the Roman siege of Masada from the perspective of four Jewish women trapped inside that fortress.<\/p>\n Now comes word that the Lifetime network is going to produce The Red Tent<\/i>, a two-part mini-series based on a novel by Anita Diamant<\/a> that looks at the stories of Jacob and his son Joseph from the perspective of Jacob\u2019s daughter and Joseph\u2019s half-sister Dinah.<\/p>\n What\u2019s more, it appears the mini-series will pay special attention to the relationship between Dinah and the four women who raised her: her mother Leah, her aunt Rachel, and her father\u2019s concubines Bilhah and Zilpah.<\/p>\n The Hollywood Reporter<\/a><\/i> says the following actors have joined the cast so far:<\/p>\n Little is said about Dinah in the Bible, beyond the fact that she shared a mother with six of Jacob\u2019s sons<\/a>, and that two of her brothers slaughtered the men of an entire town after the prince of that town had sex with Dinah<\/a>. The sex in question is generally assumed to have been a rape, though it seems Diamant\u2019s book portrays the sex \u2014 and Dinah\u2019s relationship with the prince in general \u2014 as more consensual than that<\/a>.<\/p>\n Interestingly, the director of this mini-series is one of the very few filmmakers who has already depicted Dinah on film, i.e. Roger Young, who included a flashback to the rape of Dinah \u2014 and the revenge her brothers got for it \u2014 in his Emmy-winning mini-series Joseph<\/a><\/i> (1995). Young went on to direct several other installments of \u2018The Bible Collection\u2019, including Moses<\/a><\/i> (1995), Solomon<\/a><\/i> (1997), Jesus<\/a><\/i> (1999) and Paul the Apostle<\/a><\/i> (2000), and he also recently directed a remake of Barabbas<\/a><\/i> (2012).<\/p>\n Off the top of my head, I can think of only one other film that has paid significant attention to the Dinah story, and that\u2019s Cheick Oumar Sissoko\u2019s Genesis<\/a><\/i> (1999), which sets the story in a sort of African tribal context. You can watch it via YouTube:<\/p>\n\n