Women & the Historical Jesus: Feminist Myths of Christian Origins

Rating:
Summary: Not much Jesus and not much fun
Review: In the first sentence of her acknowledgments Kathleen Corley writes that this book, "'is at the end of a long process of personal and professional struggle." Unfortunately, it is also a struggle to read this book. Of all the books I have read associated with the Jesus Seminar (I have not read them all) this is the nastiest in tone, the least informative about the historical Jesus and most lacking in humor.

Ms. Corley's massively footnoted book seems redundant in style. Nearly everything that she writes in one place she partially or completely contradicts in another place. It may be that Ms. Corley wanted to be comprehensive or even-handed, but she leaves the reader uncertain of many of her points. Her extensive criticism of Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza's classic In Memory of Her seems to center primarily on the idea that Ms. Fiorenza was too willing to consider the suggestion of others that Jesus' egalitarianism
and inclusion of women (although not unique) could be interpreted as something like feminism. Ms. Corley admits that Jesus was egalitarian and inclusive, but she argues that since he was not concerned about women as women and not as interested in challenging gender roles as in challenging social and economic inequity. Therefore Jesus should not be considered a feminist.

There are many speculations in the book for which she offers little or no evidence. There may be reason to believe that Greco-Roman culture saturated even rural Jewish Palestine.
There may be reason to believe that Jesus criticized reburial practices and not the patriarchal family structure. I did not find the reasons in this book.

I was struck by the negative tone of the book. For example, in every case where there was a dispute about the meaning of individual words the author favored the translation most demeaning to women. In reviewing the parables, Ms. Corley noted critically that women were depicted in traditional roles. Don't parables by design start in familiar, almost stereotypical fashion so that the twist at the end is even more shocking? If a parable started, "Mary, commander of the army'" would the listeners attend to the parable past that? Ms. Corley states that being forced to stay in marriages is, "worse for women than for men." In every case?

On the positive side I found the discussion of slavery interesting and informative. Ms. Corley make a strong and persuasive argument that author's trying to draw a distinction between Judaism and Christianity can easily end up distorting and short changing Judaism. Her suggestion that Mary might have been form a somewhat higher social class than Joseph was new to me and interesting.

Unfortunately, I can not recommend this book.