http://mondoweiss.net/2006/05/my_editor_and_m.html The War of Ideas in the Middle East Mon, 22 Mar 2010 07:37:02 -0500 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8 hourly 1 http://mondoweiss.net/2006/05/my_editor_and_m.html/comment-page-1#comment-76181 Steve Mon, 29 Nov 1999 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2006/05/18/my_editor_and_m.html#comment-76181 <p>I only know it be reputation, but my impression is that spiritual types like it because the story is a "what-if" fictional premise built on some relatively recent scholarship in the history of religion.</p> I only know it be reputation, but my impression is that spiritual types like it because the story is a "what-if" fictional premise built on some relatively recent scholarship in the history of religion.

]]> http://mondoweiss.net/2006/05/my_editor_and_m.html/comment-page-1#comment-76182 judy Mon, 29 Nov 1999 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2006/05/18/my_editor_and_m.html#comment-76182 <p>Can't disagree with your wife ("formulaic, cliched, clunky," etc). Or with a.o. scott who, in his movie review today, summarized the book as dan brown's primer on how not to write an english sentence. Nor did I like the book myself--it was so bad it was hard to keep reading. But I did keep reading, or skimming, and there's no big mystery about why: lots of christian women respond to the book because it throws mary magdalene in the face of the church and says that women are really really important in the story of jesus and that marriage (read: sex with women) is a good thing not a bad thing (a viewpoint still not 100% signed off on by the cardinals, two milennia after the death of jesus.) The christian Magdalene story blends in with the pre-christian Femina elements, in an amalgam we've seen succeed before, in a mammothly popular book called Avalon, about priestesses in semi-pagan arthurian england. In other words, woman power. That said, the book was also admired by my brother-in-law, a middleaged jewish guy not usually given to historical, feminist, or christian musings, who finished the book, then called me up and asked me to tell him more about this whole jesus-was-married thing. This gnostic gospel view of things is much more human and believable than the version of church history passed down by the early christian fathers, and people connect with it whenever it's presented to them in relatable form (e.g., not as weird scrolls found in jars near the Red Sea but in pop fiction). In other words, I get why those Holy Blood Holy Grail guys decided to sue...it was their stuff (not that it was really theirs) that gave this book its selling power.</p> Can't disagree with your wife ("formulaic, cliched, clunky," etc). Or with a.o. scott who, in his movie review today, summarized the book as dan brown's primer on how not to write an english sentence. Nor did I like the book myself–it was so bad it was hard to keep reading. But I did keep reading, or skimming, and there's no big mystery about why: lots of christian women respond to the book because it throws mary magdalene in the face of the church and says that women are really really important in the story of jesus and that marriage (read: sex with women) is a good thing not a bad thing (a viewpoint still not 100% signed off on by the cardinals, two milennia after the death of jesus.) The christian Magdalene story blends in with the pre-christian Femina elements, in an amalgam we've seen succeed before, in a mammothly popular book called Avalon, about priestesses in semi-pagan arthurian england. In other words, woman power. That said, the book was also admired by my brother-in-law, a middleaged jewish guy not usually given to historical, feminist, or christian musings, who finished the book, then called me up and asked me to tell him more about this whole jesus-was-married thing. This gnostic gospel view of things is much more human and believable than the version of church history passed down by the early christian fathers, and people connect with it whenever it's presented to them in relatable form (e.g., not as weird scrolls found in jars near the Red Sea but in pop fiction). In other words, I get why those Holy Blood Holy Grail guys decided to sue…it was their stuff (not that it was really theirs) that gave this book its selling power.

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