Theology: Elizabeth Johnson, in Truly Our Sister, takes Miriam of Nazareth out of the vapid niches where we have clothed her in white and blue, given her an expression of pleading misery, and shows us a courageous woman afire with indignation at the state of her people;this Johnson does by concentrating on the researched details of Mary's place and times, and a close attention to her own words:"the arrogant in the hardness of their heart have been strewn about, and the powerful pulled from their thrones, our God has lifted up on high those who had been degraded; he has fed the hungry full with the best of gifts and those who are rich have been banished empty from his sight".
As Freyne says, women were admitted to the core group following Jesus; today they are not!
We have interpreted Jesus again and again, according to our needs: from Cynewulf's Warrior-Hero, through Herbert's lover-Christ, David Gascoyne's Christ of revolution and of poetry, to the "great absence" of R.S.Thomas and Leonardo Boff's Jesus Christ Liberator. Sean Freyne's close attention to the source texts, to research done in many disciplines, combined with a specialist knowledge of both Old and New Testaments, focuses on Jesus as he must have been, without sentiment or cloy. What emerges is a study of Jesus that takes him away from those dreadful icons of a simpering agony-aunt, to a courageous and self- examining man, living a life determined by his knowledge of the prophets and sharing his mother's indignation at the suffering of the oppressed.
Aware, since Schweitzer's Quest of the Historical Jesus, of the dangers of "modernizing" Jesus, Freyne confines himself to Galilee as the theatre of Jesus's ministry. He examines how the Pentateuch and the Prophets established a view of an ideal Galilee and how this impinged on Jesus the Jew. The book views Jesus's way of responding to ecological, social and political issues, thus providing a richer way of reading Jesus's movements throughout his ministry and of savouring the background to his words and parables. While he inevitably uses theological terms and techniques, including a wealth of reference and footnotes, Freyne's work is more reader-friendly than most theological texts. Though demanding a concentration and seriousness from his reader, he has succeeded in producing a book available to the "common reader" and, in our time, when people such as George W. Bush and Mel Gibson feel free to appropriate Jesus, it is vital that the reality of Jesus suffering under Roman oppression ably abetted by Herodian sub-captains, be appreciated by as many people as possible.
Chapters of absorbing interest occur in Freyne's viewing of Jesus's awareness of the ecology of Galilee; also in his reading of Isaiah and his prophecies. If Isaiah saw the coming Messiah as "Prince of Peace", how much did this notion affect Jesus's view of imperialism and how to fight it? Suggestion is everywhere in this book, and gentle persuasion; the outcome is manifold, but the overall result is "that the historical Jesus saw his career in the light of his own inherited religious tradition and that he was inspired by particular aspects of that tradition in the choices which he made during his public ministry". Jesus appears, not as part of a Zealot-style revolt against Rome, but as working for a kingdom of peace where servanthood was to be the ideal for rulers and wisdom involved a trust in the creator God and his promises.
After all, this Jesus was the son of Mary, a Mary indignant for a world of justice and peace.
John F. Deane is a poet; his latest book is "Manhandling the Deity", Carcanet 2003.
Jesus, A Jewish Galilean, By Sean Freyne, T & T Clark/Columba Press, pp212. €24.99