Mary: A Flesh-and-Blood Biography of the Virgin Mother by Lesley Hazleton

Mary: A Flesh-and-Blood Biography of the Virgin Mother Reviews

• 
  Judith Shadford

  Rather infuriating, actually. Hazleton has lived in Israel/Palestine and has a good grasp of local color. But her agenda is rarely out of sight. I rather enjoyed Jezebel, sort of. There was real information and some plausible novelizing.
  But her (Hazelton's) need to recreate a society of "strong" females leads her to dismiss, nearly out of hand, credence of Scriptural authenticity. This young Jewish girl, Mary, in her version, has a grandmother but no mother. Sits around the campfire listening to travellers' stories--a girl unattended, after dark? And pouring out evening offerings to Isis, in a Jewish community with its own synagogue? With the wealth of really fine biblical scholarship readily available these days, substituting one's own predelictions instead of due diligence, seems an act of supreme self-indulgence.
• 
  Fadillah

  Her name is Maryam. A name so common in her time and place that if you call out "Maryam," one out of every three women is likely to answer. The Latin version of her name, Maria, will come into common usage only four centuries after her death, once the universal Catholic church has been established with its base in Rome. Later still, in what will become the English-speaking world for this is some two thousand years ago, and English does not yet exist as a language- she will be known as Mary. Even in her own time, her name gets lost in translation. In Hebrew, the formal, ritual language of her people, she is Miriam, after the sister of Moses, the great priestess who led the Israelites in song after they crossed the Red Sea in their exodus from Egypt. In Greek, the administrative language of the Roman Empire throughout the eastern Mediterranean, she is Mariamne-the name of King Herod's most beloved wife, the Hasmonean he married to bolster his claim to Jewishness, then fell obsessively in love with, and so, in the end, murdered. In Coptic, the Egyptian language in which many of the second- and third-century gnostic gospels will be written, her name is Mariham. And in Arabic, in which she will be honored in the eighth century in the only sura in the whole of the Koran to be named after and devoted to a woman, her name is Maryam. The same name as the one she goes by, but in a different language.
  - Introduction : Mary - A flesh and blood biography of the virgin mother by Lesley Hazleton
  .
  .
  Listen, i love Lesley Hazleton. I have read 2 of her books which is ‘Sunni-Shia Split’ and ‘Muhammad : The First Muslim’ and i have been recommending it to almost everyone that interested in these subjects. This is why when i saw ‘Mary’ and ‘Lesley Hazleton’ in the same book cover - i have to get it. The book is divided into 4 sections, Introduction, Part One : Her World, Part 2 : Her Womb and Part 3 : Her Women. As much as i would like to summarise each chapter, i don’t think i am well versed in it. This is because Lesley Hazleton analyses consisted of verses in Torah and Bible (both testaments) , extensive research from many jewish and christian scholars that have written about Mary and even included quite controversial opinion from ‘feminism’ angle on body autonomy, consent and rape on regards of Mary’s pregnancy. I will not touch or recap that - for i don’t want to offend anyone but if you are curious , you may read the book yourself. As for any important information about Maryam from Holy Quran, Lesley Hazleton didn’t include any of it since the aim of this book is to highlight and argued why both Judaism and Christianity did not validate Mary / Maryam and she remains obscure as holy figure and unknown in the religious teaching. Meanwhile, Islam validated Mary/Maryam by emphasising lessons that can be learned from Surah Maryam which was named after her in the Holy Quran. I have to say, not all will like Lesley Hazleton’s writing. This is because she tend to humanising the subject and people cannot fathom it. This is the flak she received from her other books but that’s one the reasons i love her writing. She also has a tendency adding her POVs which didn’t sit well with some readers. For this book, she traveled to Palestine and Palestine (since Israel did not exist) to just get in touch with the land whereby Mary / Maryam Growing up and what’s left of it. Some of her travel experiences and observations are also being inserted in the writing. As much as i love and enjoy the book, chapter ‘Her world’ really caused me to reconsider giving the book 5 stars since it is so long winded especially about the world history during Mary / Maryam was born and growing up. Hence, 4 stars is a fair score for this book. As for book context, what i intend to do is to outline the part from each chapter that i would love share in my review. Overall, this is a great material to start if you wanted to learn about Mary or Maryam as many of us only knew her as ‘Jesus’s mother’. At least, Lesley Hazleton’s book has provided us some kind of framework in understanding and studying about Mary / Maryam.
  .
  Here are the quotes from each chapter that i wanted to share in my review :
  - Introduction
  1. Mary or Maryam?
  The Aramaic name is important--the Middle Eastern name for Maryam's is a Middle Eastern story. Where Mary floats to us on a cloud of incense, a delicate European draped in silk, Maryam carries the scent of heat and dust clinging to her skin and her thin linen shift. One is the legend; the other, the real woman. And if we are to reach beyond the legend, we must surely start with the most basic gesture of respect. Let us do Mary the honor, then, of calling her by her real name,Maryam--the name she recognized and responded to, the name she thought of as hers.
  2. Maryam’s feature
  But Maryam was very close. I could see her face everywhere I looked. It was in the olive-skinned and dark-eyed faces of Sephardic Jewish women of Yemenite or Iraqi or Syrian or Egyptian descent. It was in the faces of Palestinian Arab women in the small peasant villages of the West Bank- -the ancient areas of Judea and Samaria. It was in the worn faces of Beduin women herding flocks out in the hills of Galilee and Judea and the Negev. These were Middle Eastern faces, belonging to people speaking two languages very similar to the one Maryam spoke: Hebrew and Arabic, sister languages of Aramaic.
  .
  - Part One : Her World
  1. Maryam’s religion
  Maryam was Jewish, of course, but not by any modern definition. She was not, as the curator of an Israeli museum exhibit on ancient goddesses dismissively called her, "a nice Jewish girl." She did not say blessings over candles and challah bread on Friday evenings. She did not sit modestly in the women's gallery in the synagogue while her menfolk bobbed up and down below, wrapped in prayer shawls. All these traditions had still to come into being. Only priests wore prayer shawls. And there were not yet any synagogues in the way we now think of them. The Greek word synagogue was used for a village or town meeting place, not a place of worship. In first-century Palestine, Herod's great temple was the only official place for that. The Judaism we know today, rabbinic Judaism, did not yet exist. In fact, religion itself did not exist as we now understand it. Ask Maryam what religion she was, and she'd have stared at you in incomprehen-sion. There was no such category. What we now think of in the west as the separate spheres of religion, politics, ethnicity, and culture were so deeply intertwined that there was no distinction between them.
  .
  - Part Two : Her Womb
  1. Maryam learned a great deal from her grandmother and becomes a healer
  Meanwhile Maryam mixes the herbs that will make labor go faster. Her grandmother favors giant fennel, and Maryam measures the crushed leaves carefully, for the correct dosage is vital. Then she mixes them in oil and a little wine, lifts the pregnant woman's head, and encourages her to drink. Salome watches; she likes the way her granddaughter handles the matter. Many women in labor pains will writhe and twist away, spit out the potions and frustrate a midwife's work. But Maryam's voice and touch seem to soothe them. They swallow the liquid she offers, breathe deep when she tells them, push when she says to. More often than not, all goes well. The baby appears as it should, head first. Salome reaches up with both hands and with a deft twist brings the child out into the light of day, a bundle of wrinkled newborn flesh cradled in her dark, age-wrinkled hands. Then she calls on the afterbirth to follow without delay.
  2. Maryam is a herbalist in the making
  Maryam would have been expert at spotting fennel; she'd have climbed halfway down a ravine to find it, the spores tickling her nostrils with their bitter, pungent scent. She'd have recognized the small fleshy three-lobed leaves of rue with its mustard-like flowers, or the tiny yellow flowers and feathery silver-gray leaves of artemisia, even then called "the virgin's plant." With her shepherd girl's knowledge of the terrain, she'd have known which plants colonized which slopes and hilltops. The squill that covered the hillside across from Cana could be used to treat vomiting and food poisoning. Wild mint grew lavishly in low places, as it still does in what remains of Magdala, and helped prevent infection of cuts and gashes. Fever-reducing anemones grew thick on the hills in springtime, as did galangal, a sharper, sweeter form of ginger, which stopped vomiting and nausea. She'd harvest roots and stalks, tie them into bundles, and carry them home in a sling across her back. There, she'd spread the herbs out on the reed roof canopy to dry in the sun. Within a few days, the leaves would shrink and curl, crumbling beneath her fingers and ready to be pounded into powder.
  .
  - Part 3 : Her Women
  1. Maryam when she saw Jesus’s crucifixion
  She barely remembers screaming when they nailed his hands and feet, though her body still aches from the force with which she shuddered at each blow of the hammer. How long ago was that? Hours, yes--it was just after dawn when it began. But it feels like an eternity, or rather, like one single moment that will not let go, that refuses to move on, as though time itself has stopped dead in its tracks. She has a vague recollection of hurling herself at the soldiers as they hauled the crossbeam into place. Of ripping at her thin shift, trying to tear it away from her body. Of hearing the pleas pour out of her: "Take me. Take me instead!" The other women reached to hold her back as the soldiers jeered and then taunted her with stinging obscenities. "He's my only son," she cried. "My one and only son. Just let him live, that's all I ask, and you can do anything you like with me. Anything at all!" And the soldiers laughed and turned their backs on her.
• 
  Tristy

  This should really be described as a fictional biography, if only for the very reason that the history of the Virgin Mary (and just about all women from that time in history) has been just about completely wiped out.
  
  I thought often of
  The Red Tent, while reading this. I think Diamant had a much better approach than Lesley Hazleton does in Mary. Diamant fully embraces the history and research, but adds her own fictional writing gifts to create a powerful and potentially historically accurate tale of women's life in biblical time. Hazleton could have done that easily with this book and had a bestseller on her hands, but instead, she chooses to call it a biography that "blends imagination and fact."
  
  If the subject matter wasn't such a hot topic and so controversial, she might even have been able to pull it off, but when she makes huge leaps about what Mary is thinking and feeling it feels hollow and inaccurate. It just doesn't work to be reading the fascinating and totally factual political history of Palestine and then to read that Mary was trained as a midwife by her legendary grandmother, Salome, which is based on nothing but Hazleton's imagination. It's jarring and takes away from the wonderful experience of reading this book.
  
  It's a shame that Hazleton made this writing choice, because she does use exhaustive and fascinating research that is incredibly valuable to anyone interested in the "real" life of Mary, the "Mother of God." The book works much better when she steps back from her fantasy imagination of Mary's life and talks to the actual facts - like her wonderful discussion of when Jesus was actually born and how old he actually was when he was crucified.
  
  I also appreciate her chapter on Mary's "virginity" and what that could have really meant, which includes a fascinating breaking down of the original Aramaic which tells us that a "Virgin" of that time was any woman who was not married. So a pregnant virgin is any woman who was raped or had sex out of wed-lock (and quite an interesting thought that Mary may have been raped and birthed the Son of God - which Hazleton very delicately steps around).
  
  It's a great undertaking by Hazleton and for that I have nothing but respect. If you can get past the "fantasy biography" (or "Christian Haggadah," as she calls it) feeling of this book, it is a wonderful and fascinating read.
• 
  Roger DeBlanck

  Hazleton’s study of the Blessed Mother Mary is subtitled “a flesh-and-blood biography of the Virgin Mother.” A more accurate and perhaps more suitable subtitle for her work might have been this: “an historical exploration of the Virgin Mother.” For that is exactly what Hazleton has done by showcasing Mary in her historical context to explain her as an ordinary Jewish peasant girl from Galilee. That is, of course, most likely who Mary was before the Gospels tell us how God approached her and she accepted His plan to bless her with the virgin birth of a son who would redeem humankind.
  
  Hazleton’s study to uncover more about Mary reads more like a toilsome textbook of the Biblical era rather than as a compelling biography. Her work is commendable for offering a chronology of events during the period and a density of fascinating details about everyday life during that time. However, her textbook-like approach too often marginalized Mary to the point where she is often merely a byproduct of all the events and details of the era that Hazleton studiously examines.
  
  Hazleton’s approach is understandable if we remember that we have only scant documentation and source material to go on in order to put together a portrait of who, indeed, was the world’s most famous mother. Besides Mary’s few and very brief appearances in the Gospels, we have little else of biographical legitimacy to guide our efforts to discover and know Mary, and so Hazleton has given us an interesting picture of the time and place in history where Mary lived and birthed and raised Jesus.
  
  The issue with Hazleton’s study is that with so few facts about Mary, her book offers more of an exposition of the Biblical era in which Mary frequented rather than offering an actual biography, where Mary cannot be much more than a hypothesis. Hazleton’s effort to seek out and convey who Mary was might have worked better had she novelized her research into a more engaging narrative rather than trying to find Mary through a biographical approach.
• 
  Sarah

  I took this book with a BOULDER of salt and think (if I may say so) that others would do well to do the same. As the other reviews attest, this is very far from being a biography in any sense. The fictionalized descriptions of her grandmother, and what she or Maryam were thinking at a certain time, were especially far-fetched and didn't add much to the story.
   
  I can appreciate what Hazleton tries to do here: give the reader a space to imagine the "Flesh and blood" Mary, most fundamentally her peasant identity. It is so easy to have ethereal, otherwordly associations with those who are most holy to us, but it is important to remember their roots, their connection to the land. It was very interesting to read about the changing definition of "virginity" over time and in reference to pagan beliefs.
   
  Finally, I owe it to this book for piquing my interest in the historical origins of Christianity. I realized know so little about a faith that is followed by so many, a faith which has parallels to Islam in many ways in as well. So I am moving on to read Reza Aslan's "Zealot"!
• 
  Monty

  This book would would not appeal to those who interpret The Bible literally. For those who view The Bible as a reflection of numerous stories passed on since the death of Jesus, I believe that reading it would enrich their beliefs about that time period. The book is divided into three parts. The first part sets the stage by describing the culture where Mary grew up and uses that to speculate on what Mary's everyday life was like. The second part goes into detail about her pregnancy at the age of 13 and discusses the concept of virginity in much detail. The third part focuses on what it must have been like during and after the time of the crucifixion. This section includes how she spent her life after Jesus' death. Each part has much more detail than I am mentioning in this summary.
  
  For me, this book was written with much reverence for that time period and for the current state of Christianity as well as Judaism and Islam. There are over ten pages of bibliography.
• 
  Andrew [A]

  Jewish kabbalist new age take on Mary... if the statement "i mean, who actually believes in the virgin birth and the resurrection literally, give me a break" offends you, this book will offend you. And as always, combining a narrative with history-for-dummies will frustrate history buffs. As well as the rather strange choice of paralleling Mary to the Palestinian resistance. However, there are many ideas and images in the book that illuminated my search for the true face of the Virgin Mother.
  
  Mary is very relevant, but not for the reasons that this author may think.
• 
  Sue

  If you’re looking for a nice story to affirm everything you learned in catechism or Bible school, this isn’t it. This is not the docile, white-skinned Mary dressed in blue. Hazleton offers a deeply researched look into the times in which Mary, the mother of Jesus, lived, and draws conclusions about what her life might have been like. She calls her Maryam and speculates that she was raised as a healer/midwife, taught by her grandmother, Salome, and that she passed these skills on to her son. She dismisses the idea of pregnancy by the Holy Spirit, insisting a man was involved, either Joseph, recruited for an arranged marriage, or another man. She may have been raped. It doesn’t stop there. Hazleton says it’s unlikely Joseph and Jesus were carpenters, that Jesus was probably not born where the Bible says he was, and that he could not have been physically raised from the dead after his crucifixion. Furthermore, Maryam did not hide away for the rest of her life after Jesus died but led a group of faithful women in a compound just outside the walls of Jerusalem.
  By now, some Christians will run, screaming heresy. Some will doubt everything they have always believed. But this is a masterful work. Hazleton gives extensive information about the land, the politics, and the customs. She does not give us much more actual information about Mary than we can find in the Bible, and I found that disappointing. But this is an important book that will make open-minded readers reexamine their beliefs.
  
• 
  Ashley

  I would probably give this 3.5 stars. The anthropological aspect of it was so interesting. I loved reading about the atmosphere of Mary's time and place, and thought it really gave a lot of insight as to what it would have been like to live back then. However, I felt that after that the book took this wild feminist turn wherein the author was making these wild conjectures with no facts (which she admits) and then relying on them as truth to build more of the "biography" of Mary, and that part I really didn't like.
• 
  Gormless Book Buff

  I am a huge fan of Lesley Hazleton, so i would probably be pretty biased in my opinion, but should you ask me, i would definitely say that this book is a five star reading and is highly recommended, and you should read it! 😊😍
• 
  Shuk Pakhi

  প্রথমবার বইয়ের নাম দেখেই চমকে গিয়েছিলাম। মাতা মেরির বায়োগ্রাফি! কীভাবে সম্ভব!!
  ইহুদি, খ্রিস্টান, মুসলিম তিন ধর্মেই উনার নাম জড়িত থাকলেও খুব বেশি কিছু তথ্য আসলে জানা যায় না। যে খ্রিস্টান ধর্মে উনাকে নিয়ে এত মাতামাতি সেই নিউ টেস্টামন্টে উনার কথা বলা হয়ছে মাত্র ২/৩ বার।
  যিশুর জন্মের সময়ে আর মারা যাওয়ার সময়ে। এছাড়া বাকি সময় তিনি বেপাত্তা।
  
  দু হাজার বছর আগে হারিয়ে যাওয়া একজনের বায়োগ্রাফি লেখা চাট্টিখানি কথা নয়। তবে ধর্ম, পুরাণ এই সকল বিষয়ে লেখালেখিতে ক্যাথেরিন আর্মস্ট্রং আর লেসলি হ্যাজেলটনের লেখা ভালো পাই। খোলা মন নিয়ে উনারা বাস্তব ঘেসা যুক্তি দেন। এরপর পাঠক হিসেবে আপনি চাইলে সেই যুক্তি নিতে পারেন আবার নাও নিতে পারেন। উনাদের লেখায় ঠান্ডা মাথার মানুষের জন্য ভাবনা-চিন্তার প্রচুর উপাদান থাকে। সেই ভরসায় এই বই শুরু করেছিলাম।
  
  খ্রিষ্টান ধর্ম নিয়ে শুরুতেই খটকা জাগে মাতা মেরি আসলেও কুমারী মা ছিলেন ? যিশু ঈশ্বরের পুত্র ছিলেন?
  বইয়ের মাঝামাঝিতে এই দুই প্রশ্নের সুন্দর উত্তর পেয়ে��ি।
  লেসলি হ্যাজেলটন এই বই লেখার জন্য চার বছর সময় নিয়ে গবেষণা করেছেন। বইতে মেরির সময়কাল, তার পরিবেশ পরিস্থিতি, সেই সময়ের ধর্মীয় ও রাজনৈতিক প্রভাব, ভাষাগত ব্যাপার-স্যাপার নিয়ে প্রচুর উদাহরণ দিয়ে দিয়ে প্রতিটি জিনিস বুঝিয়েছেন। তাতেই এই বইয়ের সাইজ হয়েছে ২৮৮ পৃষ্ঠা। আদতে শুধু মাতা মেরিকে নিয়ে লিখতে গেলে হয়তো সাইজ হয়ে যেতো আধাআধি। শুরুতে এত ব্যাখ্যা পড়ে পড়ে মনে হয়েছে আরে মুদ্দা কথায় আসুন প্লিজ। এরপর তিনি এলেন এবং ব্যাখ্যা দিলেন।
  একটানে বইখানা পড়া সম্ভব হচ্ছে না। কিছুটা পড়ি, ভাবি- উঠি-পানি খাই -হাঁটি আবার পড়ি। পাঠক মাত্রই ভাবনার ব্যাপক খোঁরাক পাবেন বইতে।
• 
  Fizza

  I have read two of her books before: The First Muslim and After the Prophet; and I always appreciated her research and her way of analysing events and circumstances in a certain time period or an era. The scene-setting in her books is so vivid and interesting that it actually transports you to the time where those historical moments might have taken place. While this may be a credit when it comes to one's writing - weaving a world especially a prehistoric one with words - sometimes it does take away from the credibility of the book especially when the book you have in your hand is a biography. This, I think, is one of the major issues with this book. I love reading biographies and picked this one up, but right from the get-go it comes off as an in-your-face fictional account of her life. Biography is a written history of one's life. If it is fiction it should be labelled as one, which is still better than a concocted version of someone's life. Tales of Maryam (AS) with her grandmother, her day-to-day activity as a peasant girl or just how she feels while laying under the night sky seem too hard to stomach at times. To my dismay, the book has surprisingly more portion dedicated to socio-political / religious commentaries of Hellenistic era than to the protagonist's life. And by the end of the book I can safely say I know more about Greek mythology and Roman Empire than I do about Maryam (AS). Which was certainly not the reason I picked up this book.
• 
  Tom

  Of course this is not a bio on the mother of Jesus because there is scant historical information on the legendary woman. Hazleton uses conjecture to formulate a story about Mary. the author's Mary is a healer and midwife, and sometimes abortionist. As for miracles, the virgin pregnancy is dismissed, because the word virgin translates in Hebrew and ancient Greek as unwed woman. Mary is mostly absent in the Bible.
  
  Hazleton makes the argument that the female Christian sects of the 1st and 2nd centuries of the early church provided a bridge to Christianity for women who followed female led pagan beliefs, such as those of Diana and Isis. However, this surging popularity of Mary was seen as a threat by the male dominated church elders. Thus, any writings about Mary were destroyed and considered heretical, along with the gnostic gospels.
  
  Mary died 24 years before the second destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans. Tbe destruction would sever Christian belief from Judaism. No longer would religion be centered in a physical space; it would be reinterpreted as a belief of the heart and soul.
  
• 
  Hina Tabassum Khatri

  What was Hazelton even thinking and how did this book even get the go ahead for publishing?
  
  Read like fiction or rather fan fiction. Ever conceivable probability is acceptable to Hazelton other than what religion has taught us of the life of Maryam. Be it in Christianity it Islam.
  
  Don't think will be reading anything by Hazelton again.
• 
  Chhanda

  This is not the flesh and blood bio actually. This is an analysis of historical politics of Mary's time and from that analysis trying to revealing Mary's character. Here Mary is in other word "what Mary should be". Anyway worth reading for in-depth analysis of her time, politics, myth and religion.
• 
  Sydney Stockwell

  I had to read this book for my religion class, but I was pleasantly surprise. I am in no way religious, but this read as more of a pick apart parts of the Bible that don’t make sense, but also show how badass the Virgin Mary was. Not too bad.
• 
  Farhan

  Boring. I expected a much better researched and fleshed out book from Lesley Hazleton. Instead, I found a book full of what-ifs and speculations. Nothing substantial.
• 
  Siska Filawati

  Jauh banget kualitasnya dibanding The first Muslim
• 
  Donni

  Disappointing. I like her other book about Islam.
• 
  Robert

  This book is a miracle. Does the impossible - presents a fresh view of Mary, the mother of Jesus - a view that sweeps away all the pious legends that have gradually accumulated around her during the last two millennia - removes the veils that the devout have thrown over her, the veils that have obscured her humanity - have turned her into an "near divinity", an object of veneration, of worship. This book is a biography of a very different Mary, of a real flesh-and-blood woman. Hazleton, rather doing a "search for the historical" Mary, provides what might be considered a Christian Haggadah, an allegorical, homiletic parable. By creatively re-imaging Mary's personality and life, Hazleton attempts to re-mythologize Mary - to renew her image - to deepen its relevance for contemporary culture - to give us a Mary who is credible, relevant, understandable to modern men and women. And to a marvelous extent, Hazleton succeeds. Her Mary is not only loving and maternal, but also strong, and wise, and competent - a Mary that everyone, even secular feminists, can respect and admire - a woman with whom they can identify even if they cannot worship. Needless to say, this alternative portrayal will deeply offend many, especially traditional Catholics and conservative evangelicals. Her virginity and her monotheism are not absolutely confirmed. Her son is not explicitly discussed. Although she does not offer an explicit Christology, her portrayal of the crucifixion is vivid, dramatic, emotionally heart-rending, unforgettable. However, Hazleton is not doing history, nor theology. Rather this is a brilliant intellectual exercise - an attempt to demythologize Mary, to present a different image of her, one that is more suited to contemporary culture, one that speaks to modern humans. This "re-thinking" is nothing new. Mary has undergone numerous transformation over the centuries, changing from the Galilean Jewish maiden into the Queen of Heaven imperially robed and crowned with a circle of stars, then into the luminous vision revealed to Bernadette at Lourdes. These "make-overs" are far from being disrespectful - are rather a sign of a vibrant faith, a sign of Mary's significance for the faithful, of the need for the faithful to adapt her image to their devotional needs. Hazleton's Mary is just as valid as all the previous constructs - perhaps even more so. Her Mary is vivid, is convincing. Hazleton knows her Bible, knows contemporary Biblical analysis, has a deep knowledge of the history and culture of 1st century Judea, has lived in Israel for many years and knows by long experience the unchanging life style and folkways of the small Galilean agricultural village. She gives us a Mary who is a real woman living a real life in a real place. Book is just marvelous. Course, I may be overly enthusiastic about this book because it has enabled me, for the first time in my life, to feel a real connection to Mary - to regard her as more than a painted statue or as the fantastically perfect ideal of womanhood - sinless, virginal, holy, and somewhat silly. Hazleton has rescued me from this.
• 
  Robyn Tocker

  Lesley Hazleton’s "Mary: A Flesh-and-Blood Biography of the Virgin Mother" is the perfect blend of biography, history, and faith.
  
  Full review:
  https://robyntocker.weebly.com/mary.html
• 
  Lynne Marchetti

  A truthful telling of who Mary, the mother of Jesus, really may have been.
  What her time were like and where the notion of "virgin" may come from.
  
  Lesley Hazleton has a grasp of the Aramic language as well as Herbrew and Arab languages so pulls a lot of her wisdom from
  translations that may need tweaking.
  
  The first 2/3 of the book were slow but the end 1/3 was worth the wait.
  
  If your curious enough to delve into who Mary "is" then you'll like the information in this book. I took it out of the library in Topsfield. It just happened to be on one of the table top displays so caught my eye.
  
• 
  Manuel Sanchez

  Challenging biography that radically re-envisions the life of Mary, restoring her as both a real woman and a powerful spiritual leader. Author, an avowed agnostic, takes some disturbing license in this retelling which assumes and excludes all events that are miraculous and seeks out a different perspective or cause for those events. No virgin birth, no visit by angels, no exile in Egypt and no physical resurrection of her son. I enjoyed how it challenged by faith and perspective, as well as apocryphal references to support her position. Liked the challenge but discounted her conclusions.
  
• 
  Karen Mcintyre

  This is a great book -- it humanizes an all too often dehumanized character of biblical proportion!
  
  Written by a Jew -- it gives a really fresh understanding of the what Mary's life might have been like. All good midrash helps us rethink conventions we have accepted and this book was no exception.
  
  Her descriptions bring temple to life with the smell of blood offerings and the chaotic noises that accompanied the chorus of everyday life.
  
  An excellent read!
• 
  Melea

  I guess I am too traditional to accept Lesley Hazleton's many assumptions. She drew from the Gnostic and much of the apochryphal literature to write her book. I don't know what she could have done considering the dearth of information available, but since I reject most of those writings, I couldn't ever really get behind this portrayal of Mary. I did have a lot of thinking to do as I read, and that is never a bad thing.