| Title | : | Mary Wept Over the Feet of Jesus: Prostitution and Religious Obedience in the Bible |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1770462341 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781770462342 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 280 |
| Publication | : | First published April 12, 2016 |
The iconoclastic and bestselling cartoonist of Paying for It: A comic-strip memoir about being a john and Louis Riel returns and with a polemical interpretation of the Bible that will be one of the most controversial and talked-about graphic novels of 2016. Mary Wept Over the Feet of Jesus is the retelling in comics form of nine biblical stories that present Chester Brown's fascinating and startling thesis about biblical representations of prostitution. Brown weaves a connecting line between Bathsheba, Ruth, Rahab, Tamar, Mary of Bethany, and the Virgin Mother. He reassesses the Christian moral code by examining the cultural implications of the Bible's representations of sex work.
Mary Wept Over the Feet of Jesus is a fitting follow-up to Brown's sui generis graphic memoir Paying for It, which was reviewed twice in The New York Times and hailed by sex workers for Brown's advocacy for the decriminalization and normalization of prostitution. Brown approaches the Bible as he did the life of Louis Riel, making these stories compellingly readable and utterly pertinent to a modern audience. In classic Chester Brown fashion, he provides extensive handwritten endnotes that delve into the biblical lore that informs Mary Wept Over the Feet of Jesus.
Mary Wept Over the Feet of Jesus: Prostitution and Religious Obedience in the Bible Reviews
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Would have been the strangest book I read this year, I guess, if it wasn’t that I already read Death Scenes which features a photograph of a man suffering from elephantiasis of the testicle, so that became the gold standard of strangeness for 2016.
First, this book is not a graphic novel, it’s a bonkers religious argument with illustrations. You get 170 pages of illustrated Biblical or quasi-Biblical stories and 100 pages of explicatory notes. Also notes on notes.
How bonkers is bonkers?
Well, Chester thinks that Mary Magdalene wasn’t a prostitute but Mary mother of Jesus was . He thinks that parts of the Bible which are more “spiritually advanced” argue that the Mosaic Law laid down in the first five books should be disobeyed because it was “man-made”, and that God will love anyone who disobeys them.
God doesn’t expect or want obedience - p178
This kind of fairly abstruse religious stuff may be making you roll your eyes and if so this will really really not be your Book of the Year. Because it’s all religious and all abstruse and all bonkers all the time. There is no page that is not all of these three things.
More Chester Brown theories:
- Jesus thought of prostitution as “sex-work” because he was advanced, and therefore hiring prostitutes was in accordance with the highest level of charity as defined in the Talmud (giving your money to someone so they can earn their living)
- Censored versions of the parables of the talents and the prodigal son ended up in the Bible – the original versions show prostitution in a positive light
These contorted, laborious and ridiculous interpretations are the kind of stuff I cross the road to avoid, and I was kind of mugged by Chester’s book. I liked his last one which was autobiographical and cringe-making in a good way (Paying For It).
And now a closing hymn.
Tell me the stories of Jesus I love to hear,
Please don’t bring on any seizures, Chester, my dear
Don’t let me hear how the hookers flocked round his knee
Tales of the regular Jesus, tell them to me -
Four stars here doesn't really mean in this instance that I loved this book. I admire it and at turns find it fascinating and weird, like much of Brown's work that with the exception of his Louis Riel seems to focus in part on his own sexual practices, and increasingly, his political activism around sex work. Mary Wept Over the Feet of Jesus is a kind of sequel to Paying for It, his memoir/work of scholarship in favor of the legalization of prostitution.
First off, Mary Wept is a beautiful artifact by Drawn and Quarterly, lovingly designed, and Brown's work here as an artist is wonderful, just top-notch. The book features 170 pages (in a smaller book, I love the size!) of Brown's meticulous and gorgeous rendering of nine Biblical stories and parables for the purpose of illuminating his controversial views about prostitution as he sees it represented in the Bible. It also features 100 pages from the typically meticulous scholar Brown including an afterword, notes, acknowledgements and bibliography. It's not finally a story as most comics are, but an argu-story using the nine stories as evidence for what Brown sees as the best parts of the Bible's loving perspective on sexuality and spirituality, contrasting the views of the loving Jesus (which Brown likes) with the views of the restrictive Paul and James (which he doesn't like).
Brown says in his notes that he is a Christian, though he doesn't see Jesus as one of the trinity, not God; his Christianity is more mystical, more focused on love than commandments. He's also a member of the Canadian Libertarian Party, so he doesn't believe the government or religion should legislate what people do with their bodies, among other things. Brown thinks Jesus not only hung around with the lower classes, the sinners, the poor, the prostitutes, and so on, which is well known; he thinks Jesus may actually have thought prostitution was a good thing for society, not an evil. Jesus doesn't condemn; he's a lover, not a hater.
One of the more controversial positions Brown takes is that he thinks that Mary, mother of Jesus, actually may have been a prostitute. There's scholarship he cites to support this, and there are a few Biblical anecdotes about people at the time calling her that. If you know anything about Jesus and prostitution and the Bible you have maybe heard that Mary Magdelene was a prostitute; she is the one who "anoints" Jesus. Centuries of folklore has it that they may have been lovers, much derided by The Church, of course. Brown doesn't go there, but he likes the idea of the Bible depicting Jesus being anointed by a prostitute as a symbolic gesture. Christians maybe mainly think this act as demonstrating Jesus's democratic leanings (his loving sinners), but Brown thinks it demonstrates that Jesus actually supports prostitution, which among people of his day had its strong support from many people including some Christians as connected to deities, the idea of Holy Whores, holy ecstasy, sex as a good thing not a dirty thing. He does not make reference in his book to the current focus on sex trafficking in the process of romanticizing prostitution, which I think he at least ought to have addressed, but he is entitled to making his case, and he is not alone in arguing for the legalization of prostitution.
So it's a strange book, a work part artistic renderings of Biblical stories from his particular interpretive point of view (he's not claiming by any means to be objective), and part Biblical scholarship. I think he probably loses most comics fans with the Biblical scholarship, and most of the Biblical scholars with the comics and marginal theories. But like Crumb's gorgeous Book of Genesis, Brown reveals that The Bible is a strange and rich book with possibly more feminist and socialist leanings in places than the right wing fundies would ever want to acknowledge. It's a hybrid art book and meticulous inquiry, where Brown takes seriously works of scholarship many Biblical scholars dismiss. It's fascinating overall, though sometimes in places also boring (those notes!), especially for general comics readers. But you can't know why he has chosen the Biblical stories without his copious notes, so you have to read at least some of them. I can't imagine there are many other than Brown fans, sex workers and Biblical scholars that would be interested in this pretty esoteric book. I grew up as a Christian, read the Bible daily as I grew up, and I'm an academic, so I personally wasn't bored by his sort of mystical Christian angle. I'm kind of intrigued if not completely convinced by his views. I'll read anything Brown does, odd as it may sometimes be.
PS: Here's couple things I did not do in this reflection on the book: 1) list the stories/parables Brown selects for his inquiry and 2) explain how they all fit together into a pretty coherent vision of what the Bible/Jesus--at its best--has to say about sexuality and spirituality. That's the core of the book. Someone else can do that for ya. Sorry, this is already ungodly long and summarizing the way the book makes it's case, eh, that's a whole other essay, and worth doing.
Here's The Comics Alternative interview with Chester Brown:
http://comicsalternative.com/comics-a...
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Second Chester Brown book of the week, and a third to follow within 24 hours. I took this one out from the library, but there are actually some choice bits that makes me want to purchase the book for a future read (including the extensive notes at the back). This is his take on the genealogy of Jesus as discussed in the Gospel of Matthew, and he dives a bit more in depth with tongue-in-cheek illustrations of Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, and Mary.
As I am getting used to with Chester’s books (I have no idea why I refer to him by his first name, but it feels a bit more comfortable), not a lot happens. Very quick read. I would say that, despite my “meh” 3-star rating, this is worth a read if you have any sort of academic (or otherwise) interest in Biblical stories. His takes on Ruth, Job, the coming about of the writing of Matthew, and The Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14) specifically made me chuckle. He illustrates the events surrounding “For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath”, and you cannot help but laugh. -
Chester Brown draws comics like it was a traditional craft practised since ancient times: a vocational path to God. Reading this book put me into a slow meditative trance. It's like Sufi cartooning.
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Chester Brown is something of... an oddity among cartoonists.
Not just in terms of creative output (which ranges from unflinching autobiography, absurdist fiction, non-fiction treatments of historical events, to searing polemics) but as a human being as well.
In his mannerisms, tone of voice, etc.. the man is genuinely weird (just look him up on YouTube or some such), and holds some pretty controversial, sometimes unpopular views as an outspoken libertarian, pro-prostitution/anti-traditional relationship advocate and unorthodox Christian (some offshoot of the gnostic school, more than likely). Now such a combination contained in one individual to me is utterly compelling, which partially explains why almost everything he’s ever published is residing on my shelf; he's also, in fact, a master practitioner of the craft, just not in the sense most would define it.
His oddness is palpable to such an extent, that even undisputed lord of cartooning R. Crumb – not exactly a slouch himself at acting eccentric – described him as being“ [...] probably the result of one of those alien abductions where they stick a needle in a human woman’s abdomen and impregnate her. He is a very advanced human.[…] I am sure to many people he’s a dry, emotionless person.[…] Chester Brown’s neutrality in the world is, in my estimation, quite admirable.”
With
Mary Wept Over the Feet of Jesus, a spiritual (for once, this can be taken quite literally) sequel to his memoir/polemic
Paying for It, Brown revisits the subject of prostitution, only this time as it was viewed in the biblical world. In this previous work, Brown detailed his journey from being stuck in an unsatisfying monogamous relationship ( he uses the term “possessive monogamy” ) to evolving into a john who regularly visits prostitutes, and ultimately ends up visiting only one, with her still seeing other clients. He loves her and has sex exclusively with her, but doesn’t “own” her sexually. Ever since, conventional relationships have held no appeal to him anymore.
Now that, as a subject in and of itself, would have provided plenty of grist for the mill, sparking more than its fair share of controversy, but Brown - naturally - wasn’t satisfied with it being just that. To augment the memoir, he laid out in the second part of the book a series of appendices, with each of them relegating virtually every conceivable anti-prostitution argument to the paper bin in a lucid, ruthlessly logical manner. Doing this, he had firmly planted his foot in the realm of the polemic, something I had never seen done before in the medium of the "graphic novel".
For his
Mary Wept Over the Feet of Jesus Brown – as an unconventional Christian – sought to find out (with years of biblical scholarship under his belt) whether there was anything in the Bible that doesn’t portray disobedience to religious law (of which not engaging in prostitution is one) as an outright immoral act, or might even condone it. As it is, the theme of prostitution figures heavily in this book.
Adapting well-known elements of the Bible, such as Cain and Abel and the parables of the Prodigal Son and of the Talents, with some more obscure ones thrown in, he puts forth the main argument that those man-made laws (at least, as can be deduced from -certain versions of - the stories) weren’t designed to be strictly observed.
Excerpt from 'The Parable of the Talents'. In the Nazarean version (the one Brown draws from), this person (a slave) isn't punished for spending all his master's money on prostitutes, but is on the contrary rewarded with his freedom, for he showed himself to possess a free and enterprising spirit.
Above all else, inventiveness, independent thought and creativity are encouraged by God, just as long as you don’t hurt your fellow man. Love in its various expressions reigns supreme, and is the ultimate arbiter of what’s deemed good or evil/moral or immoral in these tales.
He goes a bit further, even. According to Brown, Jesus was the ultimate expression of this mutually respectful relationship between a non-judgmental God and free Man, since Jesus - God's favourite - wasn’t brought into the world by immaculate conception, but was a product of his mother Mary’s polygamy (while still being with Joseph). In this view, thus, the mother of Jesus most likely was a prostitute and consequently, Jesus a bastard, since he didn't come out of a marriage. This stance is mainly supported by the writings of Matthew (more specifically, by the genealogy he put down for Jesus, which would hint at his mother being a prostitute) and by the subsequent scholarship which expanded on those writings, as he had to cleverly conceal his message in order to not attract the censors at the time. It was meant to be noticed only by "those with eyes to see".
Matthew contemplating the nature of the "virgin" Mary
Now since I am the exact opposite of being well-versed in biblical scholarship (surprising, I know), there’s no way for me to even mount a substantial counter-argument to this. However, Brown’s extensive use of annotations (which he provides for every one of his works) are so seemingly well-researched that there’s enough there to stimulate further contemplation and perhaps, God forbid, me actually diving into some scholarship myself.
However! There’s a big but here. No, not yours Chester, but get that scrawny Canadian behind over here, you got some explaining to do, mister!
See, exactly why Brown and his editor believed this could possibly have succeeded as a graphic novel or even as a polemic, I haven't the foggiest.
Whatever the merits of his cartooning (the - as always - assured line work, the deceptively straightforward, economical yet effective storytelling) might be, there’s something of the self-indulgent about the whole enterprise. I’m just not sure who this was for exactly. While an interesting experiment, it doesn’t quite belong in this medium, since there is no main character, or characters to hold onto. The dry, academic tone of the work absolutely dominates; luckily it didn’t go on long enough for me to get annoyed at it, presumably because over the years I’ve grown accustomed to - and even come to find endearing - Brown’s penchant for intellectual rigor.
A hint at this is provided by Brown himself, with the two first sentences of the obligatory acknowledgments:“This book is largely a response to two biblical scholars whose work I respect: Jane Schaberg, and John Dominic Crossan.”
Chester, this might sound totally bonkers, but why didn't you then just write a prose book about it, in which you can go full-on academic at your heart's content? Why inflict this obsession of yours -for by now, it clearly is an obsession - on the poor, unsuspecting comics crowd?
Also, it’s hard to see why Brown - if we suppose he was more interested in the polemical aspect than in its value as a sequential narrative– saw the usefulness in bringing to bear religious arguments for his pro-prostitution stance. Those just don’t fly in a largely secularized society anymore. Furthermore, in my view he had already supplied more than enough convincing non-religious ones to at least tolerate its practice, and even made headway in removing some of the remaining stigma that still surrounds it.
This book will do little in furthering that cause, I suspect.
A silver lining does present itself though: surely he must have gotten the whole prostitution thing out of his system by now, and can move on to other topics. Right, Chester? Hey, euhm, Chester, what's that you're working on there? God, just lemme see, you hard-ass!... Prostitution in the Torah?! Fucking hell! -
It's a 170 page comic book with a 100 page afterward and notes. Which leaves me asking... Why? Why do that? If you want to write a book, write a book. If you want to write a comic, write a comic. Then there's the content. It's weird. And yet not weird. Bible stories, but bent slightly because, well, the author sleeps with prostitutes. So, not surprisingly, his version of the bible is pro prostitution.
He writes this without a wink or a smile. And so the book feels like it wants to be taken seriously. (Very seriously, given the 100 pages of notes.) But it's a little hard to take seriously because, well, it's more than a little obscure and crazy. Which I like, in a way, because that's what makes Chester Brown interesting.
At the same time, who could possibly give a crap? The book feels like a religious person trying to justify their behaviour from a religious perspective, and worse, they are completely oblivious to the self serving nature of the exercise. Sleep with whores, dude. Enjoy it. Don't justify it with your bible.
As a non religious reader, I was hoping for either more crazy, more humor, fewer notes, more story, more something.
There's this idea of voyeurism. If you get to look through windows, you'll see crazy private behaviour. Sex, drugs, madness. In truth, looking through windows you'll probably just see a lot of people watching TV and eating frozen dinners. That's how this book feels. Brown promises some twisted voyeuristic lunacy. What I got was watching him reading the bible and staring off into space.
That's it? Is that really it?
Yes, that's it.
Honestly, this book deserves one star, but I'm a fan. Yes, a fan of Chester Brown wrote this review. Imagine how scathing I would be if I weren't a fan. -
When I first discovered Chester Brown it was in the underground comic Yummy Fur, which was part, ... well, what does "Yummy Fur" make you think of?
And in the back he was re-telling word for word (I think) one of the Gospels.
It is wild that
after all this time,
after he has developed as a graphic story-teller,
he has found a way to marry what seemed like diverse interests.
And the foot notes (pun intended) are extensive! (her har har)
but, seriously, they are!
Great premise, well argued and reasoned,...
and superbly rendered. -
I was going to give this two stars... but it's Chester Brown so gave it 3.
I'll be honest and admit that I didn't read all the author's notes at the end of the book where he explains the point he's getting at, which is basically that sex workers get a pretty bad rep in the Bible. Chester Brown is a weird one as it's often hard to tell if he's being funny or not, and this is probably the first book of his I barely laughed at, so I get the impression he's being unflinchingly serious with this.
I watched one of his pubic talks about how he pays for sex earlier, what's strange is that he stands up for their rights but seems to insist on using the term "prostitute"... which is pretty old school and pejorative. I can understand him using it in the title for this book - as that's the traditional label for sex workers until quite recently - but it's weird that he uses it in the notes and also in regular speech... because otherwise he seems to be fairly right on about it, so I'm surprised no one has taken him to task on it. -
I have complicated feelings about this book.
On one hand, it's illustrated and comicksed beautifully (yeah, I'm inventing a word here). The lettering is magnificent, the line weight cry-worthy, and the pacing and storytelling is perfect. Five stars to all of that. Chester Brown is a masterful cartoonist and I will always be excited to read his work.
On the other hand, the book feels incomplete. There is no central story that ties the anecdotes together. But. There are footnotes. I tried to read them, but ended up skimming, as they were very dry (as footnotes will be). They did give me some insight into what he was trying to accomplish, but a reader shouldn't have to read beyond the book in order to glean purpose from a story. And despite reading them, I still wasn't clear as to what the point of the book really was.
Note: I was not brought up religious and I know pretty much nothing about the Bible, so all I was looking for was a good story. I didn't feel like I got that, but I was entertained, and the art and cartooning was brilliant, so I'm still glad I read it. I wonder if someone who gives a shit about the Bible would feel differently. -
An interesting look at some of the women of the Bible, with an eye on prostitution. There are some interesting interpretations of the stories, customs and cultural views of the time. I find this sort of pondering interesting. Community and/or cultural views have changed over the past 2000 years and the words of the Bible can be obscure & vague....what exactly are the stories saying? Another view or thought is always welcome, I find.
The stories within are interesting and a fun read. However, just reading the stories doesn't quite get across the point the author is trying to make. There are about 100 pages of notes and explanations in the back. These are interesting, for sure, and sometimes ramble on a bit much but they do give a very good focus to what the author is portraying in the stories themselves. Together the stories and the notes make a good team.
A fun read and an interesting one. As far as graphic novels go, this one is enjoyable and worth the read. -
Luv me even MORE Chester Brown
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I'm normally a big fan of Chester Brown's work but this one left me cold. The art & storytelling is fine, but the endnotes reveal that Brown should not pretend to be a historian and stick to writing comics. His attempts to justify his belief that the Bible provides support for prostitution are a stretch, to say the very least. Perhaps the weakest part of his argument for this view is his interpretation of the Parable of the Prodigal Son. This parable reminds him of the Parable of the Talents, which some scholars believe has been censored to remove a more sympathetic view of those who purchase sex from prostitutes. He writes "Comparing the two stories, I began to think that The Prodigal Son had also been censored, although in a more subtle way. . . In my opinion, the Nazarean version of The Talents shows what The Prodigal Son was really like before Luke tampered with it." Fine, Brown is welcome to his own personal opinions and interpretations of this text. But in the very next paragraph, Brown writes, "When he censored the parable, Luke neglected to change a small but telling detail." Brown is claiming censorship based on nothing but his belief that the parables are similar. That's it -- no other evidence is given to support this claim and it is presented as fact without any basis to support it. Sorry, that's not how you do history, Charles!
I personally don't care whether or not the Bible supports prostitution, and certainly wouldn't be opposed to that reading on any political or moral grounds. But I do object to shoddy history and claims based on leaps of logic and lack of any substantial evidence. Not recommended to anyone except die-hard Charles Brown fans. -
I can't imagine what kind of flak that haters will give Chester Brown for daring to write this book. It will undoubtedly be a lot. But that is why I really, really, really love Chester Browns books. He's not afraid to put it out there - warts and all - and damn the torpedoes.
I loved this book. It's thoughtful and intentional, and best of all, it's very well researched. You can call him what you want, but he knows his stuff and his arguments are sound and backed up. I have always liked his illustrating technique and the simplicity of his style works well with the stories he presents for his arguments.
This wee tome is well worth the read. It's also a great party fight-starter,for those of you who like to stir the pot. -
Chester Brown seems to be searching for a biblical justification of prostitution, but, as an atheist, i found the whole thing pointless. In the afterwords, he writes about his intepretation of others' interpretations of the stories and parables found in the Bible, and I was annoyed because it seems obvious to me that he only exposes what he found to corroborate his opinion about how the prostitution is glorified in the "holy books"... I was excited about a new book by Chester Brown, because I usually love what he does, but that one is just not for me.
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I very much enjoyed this book, but that could almost go without saying. I like almost anything Chester Brown writes, and it's so infrequent that we get anything from him. However, I'm still trying to process this book, wondering how this might fit in his oeuvre and his intensions or purposes for writing it. We'll be interviewing Chester soon about this book, and I can't wait.
Update - our interview with Chester Brown on The Comics Alternative:
http://comicsalternative.com/comics-a... -
A graphic novel that tries to argue that Jesus was pro-prostitution and didn't want people to obey God's commandments. While I'm a fan of radically unconventional interpretations of the Bible, this premise is poorly argued at best and is clearly just an attempt for the author to justify his perverted obsession with prostitutes. You can cherry-pick every instance in the Bible when someone does something rebellious and nothing bad *seems* to happen (like when Lot's daughters sleep with him), but what about all of those times when people rebel and actually do get severely punished? (e.g. The entire Kingdom of Israel being wiped off the face of the earth for, among other things, whoredom).
There are essays at the end of the book where the author goes into great depth to explain his positions over prostitution and the Bible, but you shouldn't have to write two essays IN ADDITION to the graphic novel you created to defend your position. The story itself should just be enough. But it isn't because there is no originality in n Chester's retelling of the Biblical stories. Whenever he does do something original it strikes me as very lazy and minimal at best.
The illustrations themselves are perfectly average at best, and repetitive at worst. Most of the male characters look identical to each other.
Not recommended at all. -
I would recommend this book only if you are 1) a Chester Brown fan, 2) intrigued by biblical hermeneutics, and 3) feel passionately about sex work. I can only check off two of those boxes, so I while I was interested by this curious theological argument in comix form, I found this to be an odd book. Brown's main contention—that the Bible teaches respect, and even reverence, for prostitution—is interesting, but feels thin, as do the scenes he uses to support it. He lays out his case in far more detail in the back of the book, but since these written notes are not paired with his art, they feel as if they're trying to make up for his comics' inability to get his point across. I enjoyed Brown's previous book about his experiences paying for sex, but it did a much better job of weaving narrative and argument into a coherent whole.
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Oddly for a graphic novel, this also purports to be a work of scholarship. Brown has researched deeply, but not widely--and this is exactly the problem with ideologically-driven research, whether it is driven by the need to explain a literal 6-day creation or the need to prove that the Bible (or some of its writers) supports prostitution. If you cherry-pick scholarship, use dubious etymology, and plain ignore dissenting viewpoints, you can craft a pseudo-argument that looks pretty nifty despite being paper thin.
3 stars for creativity, 1 for scholarship. -
This kind of blew my mind.
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Must read. By every human in the planet.
Although, almost the half of it are explanations and references. Something inbetween making-of and a dialogue between Chester Brown and Christianity. -
Chester should make the whole bible into a comic!
Especially his interpretation of it, with typical Chris Ware passive glares and upside down morality.
Great read, notes included ;) -
I have a lot of thoughts about this book. I picked it up at the library because I was intrigued by the title, and then discovered that I needed to do more than just casually flip through it.
Brown notes in the end of the afterwords that he considers himself a Christian, but that others might not, at least partly because he doesn't believe that Jesus is divine. He notes that either way, he is very religious. Reading that paragraph was key to me understanding this book and what Brown has done with it.
The first half of this book is Bible stories in comic book form, as interpreted by the author. The second half is the afterwords -- which explains how the book came about, and more of the ideas explored -- and the notes section -- which gives detailed scholarly notes (including quotations from sources) about each of the stories and why it was interpreted the way it was.
A huge amount of scholarship went into producing this book. The author used multiple sources and put lots of thought and effort into each story and character portrayal. However, I disagree with almost all of it. I can tell that Brown loves this work and desires to be true to the sources and to what he is doing, but I think that he is wrong. I am glad that I read this book, and I am grateful for the time and effort that Brown put into the afterword and the notes section so that I can understand his thinking better, but I still think that he has missed the point.
Content warning: Many of the stories include sexual situations and nudity (male and female). -
I'm not sure what to think of this book. It wasn't amusing, it wasn't very clever, and it wasn't even entertaining. It was honestly a waste of time and effort on Chester Brown's part. I really thought this would be an interesting read, give some enlightening or new information about ideas or concepts that are so familiar to us but are suddenly shown from a completely different perspective.
Nope.
This was book about sex. It was porn. That's all there was to it. -
Boeiende studie over prostitutie en religieuze gehoorzaamheid in de bijbelse verhalen. Als vanouds grafisch topwerk (dynamiek door statische beelden! Uitgewerkte profielen! Vette silhouetten!), maar inhoudelijk wisselvallig. Weer een beetje te belerend (bijna de helft van het boek bestaat uit handgeschreven, verhelderende, vaak overbodige 'notes'), en geregeld hierdoor ronduit vervelend.
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Another great read by one of my favorite graphic novelists. Again, like with "Paying for It", Brown does a great job backing his work with more examples and informations.
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You'll never look at "feet" in the Bible the same way ever again.
This was a sometimes interesting interpretation of the Bible as a
"secret history," where references to an acceptance of prostitution in the Ancient World and to the possible illegitimate ancestry of Jesus are portrayed through a series of Biblical stories and parables drawn as a graphic novel. The Afterword, Notes, Acknowledgements and Bibliography take up about 1/3rd of the book (i.e. it requires 33% of the book to explain what the other 66% is about).
Chester Brown's graphic stories are not necessarily exactly the Biblical versions that you may have read previously. They have been tweaked with interpretations and variations as drawn from Biblical Apocrypha e.g.
Biblical Apocrypha: Books Excluded from the King James Version with a particular favourite being "The Gospel of the Nazarene" e.g.
The Nazarene Gospel Restored which some scholars consider a pre-censored version of the "Gospel of Matthew" and/or with Brown's own views or re-interpretations.
Brown credits esp. Jane Schaberg's
The Illegitimacy of Jesus: A Feminist Theological Interpretation of the Infancy Narratives, Expanded Twentieth Anniversary Edition, Yaram Hazony's
The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture: An Introduction and John Dominic Crossan's
The Power of Parable: How Fiction by Jesus Became Fiction about Jesus as influences on his thinking. -
I found this book to be a very accessible, question-inducing read. It was very interesting to read an apologetic (in the context of a largely sexphobic religion!) for sex work from a man who regularly patronizes sex workers. I thought the religious scholarship was very good and interesting, but his treatment of the actual sex workers leaves something to be desired.
I thought these were great reviews and discussions of his work by sex workers, for sex workers and I encourage you to pay more attention to their thoughts tbh
http://titsandsass.com/mary-wept-at-t...
http://titsandsass.com/paying-for-it/
(edit: wrt his religious scholarship, at one point in his footnotes he says it makes more sense to read a particular parable in a abcabc structure rather than a abccba structure because the former is more intuitive. However a "abccba" structure in a story is called a chiasmus and it is a common device used in the Bible. Here is a good explanation of what that looks like in the Bible
https://www.christianity.com/wiki/bib...) -
Really interesting book and points within theology. Brown makes the case that Mary, the mother of God, was a sex worker, and the stories of Tamar, Ruth, Rahab, Bathsheba are included (because normally women's genealogy wouldn't be included in biblical or historical texts) to set a precedent of sex work. This theory explains how Jesus can be so radical and loving towards sex workers, and how Mary of Bethany, whom Jesus insisted anoint him to christ, was a prostitute, and Jesus still insisted she be the one to make him christ. (Also interesting that "feet" references "penis" in hidden texts/meanings). Brown included a lot of notes and his specific reasonings for how he interpreted these scenes from various bibles and translations. I really enjoyed the graphics, learning about this subject, and Brown's interpretations.
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Molto interessante, questa riflessione di Brown su Bibbia e Vangeli. Tanto che è anche interessante leggere la (lunga) sezione di note a corredo di questi piccoli racconti a fumetti che riscrivono passaggi delle Scritture.
Per quanto riguarda i racconti: Brown mantiene il suo stile secco, dalle linee nette e dalle ambientazioni essenziali. Le tavole sono rigide griglie di 4 vignette verticali, i personaggi si dispongono come burattini inespressivi (vedere episodi come Caino e Abele). Al contempo la loro stolidità riesce ad essere funzionale agli eventi descritti. Al di là che lo stile di Brown è questo, la sua volontà di sfuggire da qualsiasi tentazione drammatizzante sembra condurci verso la questione di cui vuole dibattere. E' la sua tesi, qui, ad avere il ruolo centrale, e null'altro può intromettersi nel processo.
