Review of Chester Brown, Mary Wept Over the Feet of Jesus, New York, Drawn & Quarterly, 2016

Abstract

Chester Brown’s graphic novel Mary Wept Over the Feet of Jesus reinterprets 10 different biblical stories, followed by an afterword and extensive notes. Brown argues Jesus supported prostitutes and advocated against blind obedience to God. While he references various biblical scholars in his notes--most notably Jane Schaberg, Yoram Hazony, and John Dominic Crossan--Brown is not formally trained as a biblical scholar. Indeed, this book might better stand in for a short novel or the Sunday comics than for a scholarly monograph. (But, who doesn’t enjoy reading the Sunday comics?) In this review, rather than lamenting or detailing Brown’s lack of scholarly training, I will attempt to bracket some of these concerns and assess Mary Wept on its many merits. Brown’s background as a graphic novelist with a keen interest in Christianity allows him to produce a fascinating artistic work that tackles theological and social concerns regarding sex, prostitution, and obedience in early Christian history. His comics are known for their thorough notes and citations, and, happily, Mary Wept is no exception as Brown quotes a number of historians and biblical scholars in his intriguing research. Several of his reinterpretations focus on the women mentioned in Gospel of Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus—Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, and Mary—in order to highlight the ways all of these women could be seen as prostitutes or as engaging in prostitute-like behaviour. (One of the book’s later vignettes depicts Matthew himself finding inspiration for how to hide the clue of Mary’s true identity as a prostitute within this genealogy) The focus on these women expands to the questioning of religious obedience and laws more broadly. This is seen particularly in Brown’s reinterpretations of Cain and Abel, the anointing of Jesus, and Jesus’s parables concerning the talents and the prodigal son. By asserting the presence of prostitutes in several biblical stories, he ultimately presents a view that could be quite liberating, not only for modern sex workers, but also for individuals who feel alienated by a perceived Christian tradition that fears sexuality and advocates strict adherence to rules and norms.