What Jesus Learned from Women (James McGrath) - A Review
WHAT JESUS LEARNED FROM WOMEN. By James F. McGrath.
Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2021. X + 311 pages.
For those of us who affirm the
Chalcedonian decree, which proclaims that Jesus is fully divine and fully
human, we must answer the question as to what it means for Jesus to be fully
human. Theologians down through the ages have wrestled with that question. It’s
one thing to affirm a creedal statement. It’s another to define one’s terms.
So, when it comes to Jesus’ humanity, did he have to learn as we learn? Or did
he know everything there is to know because he’s divine? You might think here
in terms of Mr. Data who enjoyed an encyclopedic set of information. Thus, for
Jesus, he had such knowledge from the moment of conception. Of course, there is
an intriguing reference in the Gospel of Luke that suggests that as a child
Jesus grew in wisdom and stature. I've long taken that as a signal that Jesus didn’t
know everything there is to know from conception. Instead, he had to learn
things just as we do. So, when he went to school (bear with me for a moment),
did he have to learn his times tables as I did in fourth grade? Or did he get a
perfect score on every test?
While you ponder that question, I’d
like to point your attention to James McGrath's intriguing and insightful book titled
What Jesus Learned from Women. McGrath is the Clarence L. Goodwin Chair
in New Testament Language and Literature at Butler University. He’s written
several other books that range from New Testament studies to Dr. Who. He
is also a noted blogger.
Returning to the title of the book,
notice that McGrath uses the phrase "learned from" and not
"taught." That's an important distinction because it allows McGrath
to expand the conversation to include encounters with women who might not have
explicitly taught him something, but whose example might have given Jesus new
insights about God and humanity and creation. Thus, if one is going to embrace
the thesis of this book from a Chalcedonian perspective, one also has to accept
the idea that divinity does not preclude learning. That might make me a
Nestorian, but I find the concept compelling.
When it comes to the role of women
in the biblical story, there is an increasing number of excellent books being
published. One of the challenges for those who are exploring the role of women
is the fact that many of the women mentioned in the Bible are not named. This
is especially true of the New Testament. Those who are named may not have their
character fully developed. That may be due in large part to the fact that the
biblical text was written by men living in a patriarchal age that tended to
discount the role of women in society. Nevertheless, there are hints that Jesus
did learn from women, and so should we.
Now, it takes a bit of intuiting
and sleuthing to provide a fuller picture of the lives and roles of women in
the Gospel story. That is what McGrath does here. He begins with the premise
that Jesus did learn things, and that he learned from the women in his life.
So, what might he have learned? In answering this question, McGrath employs a
methodology that draws on both historical and literary resources. Doing this
gives him the ability to fill in gaps that historical study by itself cannot
penetrate. In fact, he seeks to engage in the "exegesis of silence." This
methodology requires the use of one’s imagination as well as an understanding
of history. McGrath writes that this method "seeks to take the evidence
fully seriously and be compatible with it, and yet by definition is required to
go beyond it, to explore silences and omissions and details around passing
mentions" (p. 12). One of the ways he does this is through the use of
story and historical fiction in particular.
So, McGrath takes us on a journey
that begins with his mother, Mary, and concludes with a conversation about one
of Jesus’ companions, a woman named Joanna, who was numbered among the women at
the cross. It does make sense to begin a story of women from whom Jesus learned
with his mother. She would have been the person most likely to form his
worldview since mothers were often the primary educators of their children. But
McGrath doesn’t stop with Mary. He takes us from Jesus’ mother to the house of
his Grandmother, who McGrath envisions living in the neighboring city of Sepphoris.
He finds evidence that might be a bit circumstantial, but which suggests that
his grandparents, Mary's parents, might have lived in Sepphoris. If his father
worked in Sepphoris, as many scholars have suggested, then might he have
accompanied Joseph to the city and spent time with his grandparents? If so, what
would he have learned from his grandmother about cities and urban life and
living among gentiles? Now the Gospels say nothing about such encounters, but
they can be imagined. Not only that but stories that emerged over time that might
not have made it into the Gospels but which are suggestive of such a person who
might have lived in just this place.
The chapters on Mary and Anna are
only the beginning because McGrath takes us to other occasions where Jesus
seems to have learned from women, starting with the Samaritan woman Jesus met
at a well, a woman with whom Jesus had a serious theological conversation. Then
there is the encounter with the Syro-Phoenician woman, who challenges Jesus’ ethnocentrism.
There is a chapter about two women who suffer, one older and one younger, both
of whom Jesus heals. We encounter Mary and Martha and what these two women
taught him. There is a poor widow who shared her two cents with the temple and
what that might have meant. He addresses the story of the woman who is presumed
guilty of adultery in John 8, a passage that has been disputed, but which I've
always felt, and McGrath confirms, may not belong to John but seems to fit the
story of Jesus. So, what did he learn from this experience?
You can't write a book about the
women around Jesus and not discuss Mary Magdalene. McGrath does an excellent
job of separating out the various interpretations, many of which conflate a
variety of women into one composite picture. With this in mind, he addresses
the idea that Mary was a prostitute. He engages with one of the more popular
contemporary suggestions that Mary Magdalene was Jesus as Jesus' lover or wife
or bearer of his children. It’s a staple of popular culture, whether in Jesus
Christ Superstar or the DaVinci Code. McGrath notes why these are
popular but he raises other possibilities that might be more realistic. One of
the questions he raises concerns why we always assume that Mary is a younger
woman? What if she is an older woman who simply brings wisdom and possibly
financial support to the community? We can’t nail any of this down, but we
might want to broader our horizons. Whether young or old, most importantly McGrath
intuits that Mary convinced Jesus that women can be leaders.
The final chapter was perhaps the
most intriguing of McGrath’s discussions of the women around Jesus. That is because
he takes a character who is not fully developed in the Gospels and connects a
number of dots that are illuminating. He suggests that Joanna may have been from
a prominent family since her husband, Chuza, was an official in Herod Antipas's
government. Because Chuza likely was Nabatean he might have been connected in
some way to Herod's larger household. He also suggests that Joanna might have
been related in some way to Paul. Not only that but could McGrath suggests that
Joanna and Junia—the woman whom Paul mentions as being numbered among the
Apostles along with Andronicus and had been a follower of Jesus before Paul was—might
be the same person. McGrath points out
that he was hesitant to make that connection because too often biblical
characters get conflated, but the evidence points in that direction. If McGrath
is correct, and I want to believe he is, then we would have a more complete
picture of this figure who was present at key moments of Jesus' life. McGrath
suggests that she might have taught him a variety of things about life,
including the possibility of developing an inclusive vision that countered Jesus’
earlier ethnocentrism. Of course, all of this requires a bit of imagination,
but it is compelling.
McGrath does a great job of
sleuthing out the historical possibilities. He is, after all, a New Testament
scholar committed to bringing historical tools to the task of biblical
scholarship. At the same time, he has a strong interest in literary things,
including science fiction and fantasy. In other words, he is not Joe Friday. He
can and does possess the ability to utilize his imagination to raise
possibilities that intrigue. Again, he doesn't propose anything that runs counter
to historical plausibility. However, he does open up new avenues of
exploration. If we are going to broaden our vision of the biblical world to
include women more fully in the story, we will need to do this. That’s because
the facts are few.
As I noted earlier in the review, one
of the contributions that McGrath makes here is his use of historical fiction
to set the narrative. McGrath begins each chapter by weaving a story utilizing
what he can discover through historical studies and then creates a possible
narrative that fills in the gaps of Jesus' encounters with women. So, for
instance, regarding the story of the "Suffering Daughters," McGrath
tells a story that connects the woman who has experienced bleeding with the
mother of Jairus’ daughter, suggesting that the two women—the mother of the
girl who dies and the woman who has been bleeding for years—had been friends
until the one woman’s affliction severed the relationship. McGrath points out
that the woman with this bleeding affliction had been in this position for
twelve years, which is the age of Jairus' daughter. We generally read this
story as if there is no connection between the woman and the girl, but what if
there is a connection. How might we read this differently, and how might Jesus
learn from this experience? McGrath suggests that this might not just be the
story of a healing and the raising of a girl from the dead. It might also be a
story of reconciliation and reunion. Obviously, this goes beyond the facts at
hand, but it's a plausible story that brings insight, and from which Jesus might
have learned something simply by being a participant in these encounters.
If we wish to fully understand who
Jesus was and is, we need resources like this to flesh out the nature of Jesus’
person. McGrath's What Jesus Learned from Women also helps us recognize the role of women in the biblical story,
suggesting that Jesus took seriously the teachings and the examples of the women
in his life. Now, McGrath’s proposals will challenge and stretch our
Christological thinking, but that's a good thing because it will help us
recognize the nature of Jesus’ humanity. He was, in fact, a learner. If Jesus
was a learner, drawing new knowledge from his encounters with these women, then
these women take on a larger role in the story. The stories themselves might
often be truncated and stiff, but if we're willing to pay attention to the
clues and use our imagination, we might learn something valuable about these
women. What McGrath does here is give us as full a picture as I've seen
presented. So, get a copy of What Jesus Learned from Women and read it cover to cover. You won’t regret it.
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