What do Ruth and Rahab have in common?

Answer 1

Although this is not found anywhere in the Old Testament, Matthew 1:5 says that Rahab (Rachab) was the mother of Booz, who married Ruth, making them both ancestors of King David and, eventually, Jesus. Against this, Raymond E. Brown says, in An Introduction to the New Testament, there is little likelihood that Matthew's genealogy is strictly historical.

Another way of looking at what Rahab and Ruth have in common is to look at whether they really existed.

• Rahab is mentioned in the Book of Joshua as the harlot who hid the spies who somehow entered the walled city of Jericho while it was under siege. However, nearly all scholars now accept that the Israelite assault on Jericho never really occurred, and with this event being unhistorical, then so is Rahab.
  
• Stephen M. Miller and Robert V. Huber (The Bible: A History) say that the story of Ruth may have been written in David's time to provide some family history about the king, but that many scholars say the story was more likely recorded centuries later in the time of Ezra.
  Carol Meyers ('Kinship and Kingship: The Early Monarchy', published in The Oxford History of the Biblical World) agrees that much suggests that the book comes from a later period, saying that it may tell us nothing about the era of the judges beyond what an Israelite storyteller of a later period knew of it.

Rahab and Ruth have in common the very fact that they did not exist.

Answer 2

Within the Biblical Narrative, both Rahab and Ruth were non-Israelite women who looked favorably upon the Israelites and ultimately made the choice to live among the Israelites rather than stay with their own people.

Answer 3

They both converted to Judaism and married Jewish men. See also:

http://www.biblearchaeology.org/post/2008/05/01/Did-the-Israelites-Conquer-Jericho-A-New-Look-at-the-Archaeological-Evidence.aspx#Article

http://judaism.answers.com/hebrew/does-archaeology-support-the-hebrew-bible

Answer 4

Jesus descended from both.