Every year at this time, I start thinking of all the things that would be nice to get done before Christmas. Then inevitably I realize that it's not going to happen.
But this year I am making some Christmas posts here. I'm sure we'll see some creative stuff from AOL-J'ers again this year. And be sure sometime during the season to check out Marcia Ellen 12 Days of Christmas series from last year. It's creative, entertaining and (as always) beautifully illustrated.
The latest (Dec. 2004) issue of Bible Review has an article that gave me a good idea for Christmas posts. I wish they would make at least some of their articles available online. But it's pretty widely available at the Border's and Barnes & Noble bookstore chains these days. (One good thing about these large chains is they provide a broad market for niche magazines.)
The December 2004 issue has an article that, unlike almost all their articles, doesn't bear the author's byline. Instead it notes that it "is based on the writings of Jane Schaberg and appears here with her approval." Jane Schaberg is a professor of Religious Studies and Women's Studies at the University of Detroit Mercy, a Jesuit college. The article "based on" her work is called "Before Mary: The Ancestresses of Jesus." It apparently draws heavily from her article "Feminist Interpretations of the Infancy Narrative of Matthew" (Journal of Feminist Studies of Religion 13 [1997]) and her book The Illegitimacy of Jesus: A Feminist Theological Interpretation of the New Testament Infancy Narratives (1994).
The first chapter of Matthew names only four women in Jesus' genealogy prior to Mary: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and "the wife of Uriah" (Bathsheba). So it's worth taking a look at who they were, and I'll use separate posts for each of them. Schaberg also thinks that a specific comparison to Mary was intended: "Scholars generally agree that Matthew viewed these four women as precursors to Jesus' mother, Mary, the fifth and final woman in the genealogy."
One of my favorite theologians, Eugen Drewermann, who is alsoapracticing psychoanalyst, gives quite a bit of attention to those four in his commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, as well. So I'll also try to look at his interpretation of their significance.
A summary with quotations of Schaberg's Illegitimacy of Jesus is available online.
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