A male scholar looks at the Bible’s women

When I picked up this book and scanned the table of contents to see which biblical women James McGrath writes about, I admit that I made some hasty judgments. What will he—a male scholar—add to what I have learned, studied, preached, and taught for the last 40 years about these women of the Gospels? Also, I thought, he’d better not make Jesus “the exceptional Jew,” portraying Jesus as good by making all other Jews look bad! Then when I flipped through the chapters and saw that each scholarly examination is preceded by an imaginative fictional narrative, I wondered if the book was going to be schmaltzy.

As if he could read my (unkind) thoughts, McGrath meets each of these prejudgments head-on in the book’s introduction. He makes the case that male scholars should be exploring women in the scriptures because women’s studies have been marginalized instead of normalized. In most pulpits and study groups in church basements and living rooms, the male perspective that has come down through history gets repeated. Men and women need to do the scholarship, McGrath contends. He notes that he has surrounded himself with women scholars and conversation partners to sharpen his own thinking.

He also clearly identifies the potential pitfall of making Jesus the exceptional Jew. “Denigrating Judaism to elevate Jesus simply will not do. Jesus was a Jewish man in a Jewish context, and it is thoroughly implausible to think in terms of Jesus vs. Judaism.” McGrath follows his own advice on this matter throughout the book. If anything, he makes Jesus into the exceptional man.