A Bible for feminists

With his brave new novel, Jeet Thayil has attempted what writers haven’t in 2,000 years since the Christian scriptures came into being—telling the story of the women whose lives overlapped with Jesus Christ’s

Every year, on Good Friday, thousands of worshippers gather at the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem, to retrace what is said to be the final steps of Jesus Christ, before he was crucified at Golgotha. A wooden cross is lugged by followers as reminder of the deadweight that Jesus was forced to drag past a jeering crowd, nearly 2,000 years ago. It’s, however, during the last leg of the mournful journey, from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to the Chapel of Saint Helena, where the mood becomes most sombre. This part of the procession is led by a group of Arab Christian women—their uphill climb through the stone steps of the ancient city seems evidently dreary, as they lift the cross one last time, reciting prayers in Arabic. “The hand that rocks the cradle, carries the cross,” Kusumita Das, a freelance writer currently based in Israel, wrote on Instagram earlier this month, sharing pictures from this journey.  

Having read the just-launched brave novel by Jeet Thayil, Names of the Women (Jonathan Cape, Penguin Random House), a look at Das’ images made us ask: Why are there women here, but not in the Bible?

A similar question, though differently framed, plagued Bengaluru-based poet-writer Thayil. He wanted an answer to, “What happened to the women who stayed with Jesus through the crucifixion?” This became the genesis of his fiction title.  

Booker Prize shortlisted author Jeet Thayil, who was born into a Syrian Christian family in Kerala in 1959, says the Bible did wield an enormous influence in his early years, but mainly as a literary text. Pic/Getty Images

In the New Testament of the Bible, largely authored by Jesus’s disciples—some of whom were witness to his life, death and resurrection—the names of women were relegated to brief mentions. In Thayil’s novel, some of them become protagonists and the driving force in Jesus’s life, despite never really suffocating him with their presence.  

The book opens with Jesus on the cross, addressing Mary of Magdala, the first to witness his return from the dead, asking her to “write” his story for what it is, and to spread his radical message. As the novel unfolds, we learn the stories of 15 women whose lives overlapped with Jesus’s. There is Lydia and Assia, both sisters of Jesus; Martha and Mary of Bethany; Aquila the maidservant, Herodias, wife of Herod Antipas, and his mother, Mary, among others, whose names, says Thayil, have either in the past been “spoken in passing or not at all”.

“I was always aware that the Bible was a text written by men, and men of a certain historical period, which has a lot to do with why we are fascinated by the brutality and gore of those stories. It’s the same reason Game of Thrones was so popular. That kind of overt blood thirst for power is far removed from our time. Except [that] it isn’t, of course. I think the idea of a violent, vengeful, unforgiving God is the definition of a certain kind of masculinity. I’m not going to say ‘toxic’ just because it’s such a trendy word. But you know what I’m getting at. And I’ve always wanted to correct that imbalance, to give the women of the Bible equal space. I did it first in poems,” says Thayil, of what convinced him to write a novel that at once, appears to be a challenge to a canonical text, and at the same time, a retelling that we forgot to write. In his opinion, all the female voices have been silenced in the Bible. “Not one has received the attention and imaginative empathy she deserves.”

Thayil, as he states in his book bio—interestingly devoid of any of his literary exploits—was born into a Syrian Christian family in Kerala in 1959, and educated at Jesuit schools in Bombay, Hong Kong and New York. The Syrian Christians of Kerala trace their church to St Thomas, who arrived on the Malabar Coast, around 50 AD. Thayil’s grandmother, Chachiamma Jacob, was the last of the family who recited from memory the hour-long service in Aramaic, Malayalam and Sanskrit, which still defines the faith. “I think the Syrian or Kerala Christians are an odd bunch generally. They’ve retained so much of the Hindu tradition, particularly in their birth, marriage and funerary rites, that they have a special place in the circus of faiths that is India,” says Thayil.

Having grown up in such a household, the Bible did wield an enormous influence in his life. “But mainly as a literary text,” he insists, “…and it continues to do so today. I mean the language, really, the cadence and rhythm of it. I think I’ve absorbed those verses in so deep a way and for so many years that I’m no longer conscious that I’m borrowing the language of the Bible.”

It is possibly this measured and commanding prose, which he seems to have adopted, that gives his novel heft. The voice, we admit to him, is so distinctly familiar to that of the Bible itself.  Was that intentional? “Always. For me that is the engine of this book, the tone of voice, the rhythm, that high register and particular diction we associate with the Bible. It’s a language that gives itself, naturally and without self-consciousness, to poetry,” he says.

Apart from the Bible, which he says he is “over-familiar” with, Thayil also read the apocryphal gospels at great length, to help write his fiction. “The Gospel of St Thomas and the Gospel of Mary struck me in particular, because in both those gospels women inform the text. Why were these gospels considered non-canonical? 

Why are they even called apocryphal? Why is the church so insecure that it will not give these systems of knowledge as much attention as much as the other gospels? I think you know the answer to these questions,” he says.

Any retelling of a text has the potential to ruffle feathers. The Bible more so, because the very name carries the weight of indisputability. Thayil’s purpose with his novel, though, doesn’t seem to be to rewrite the text, as much as to open it up, and allow room for its forgotten characters to grow.

He tells us about Mary of Magdala, the first to have found Jesus’s body missing from the tomb, where he had been laid to rest. “...the Romans have taken him. Or might have been the twelve, his disciples, the fearful men…” Thayil’s Mary considers.  When she returns to the tomb the same evening, Jesus appears to her—it’s the first of the visits, he makes to his followers, assuring that he has resurrected—“telling her to speak of the things she has seen”. Her story in Thayil’s novel is not exactly like it is in the Bible, and is even more different from what’s portrayed in popular literature. “It enraged me that so many writers and filmmakers and church leaders insist on portraying her [Mary of Magdala] as a ‘fallen woman’. Fallen into what? From which height, exactly? There isn’t a single piece of evidence anywhere in the Gospels that she was a prostitute. I believe it is a deliberate programme of malign intent to strip her of authority and dignity. Which is why I wanted to make her the centre of my book, along with the figure of Christ, and why the novel begins with the words, ‘Write, Mary’.”

That it is a powerfully feminist work, also means that Thayil’s Jesus shows contempt where needed, and appreciation where ignored. “Remember,” Jesus tells the men around his table, after Mary of Bethany has poured an expensive perfumed spikenard on his head, and is rebuked by them for her extravagance. “…Remember that on the day before my death she brought a gift to sweeten my last hours.”  But as the narrator points out in the book, “these men and others like them will write their versions of the story… Some of the accounts will forget to mention that Jesus defended her.”  
  
At no point in the novel does it really feel that Thayil has attempted to upend the original text, except for the final page, where a string of powerful statements by his Jesus, breathes new meaning and purpose into his work. “I guess I wanted to bring the story full circle, into the present and towards the future. When Christ says, ‘My God does not require blood sacrifice’—which is almost the last line of the book—well, those are words for us today in this country as much as anywhere,” Thayil thinks.

As for why it has taken 2,000 years for a feminist “new testament” of the old story, Thayil says, “Strange you should say that. It was a question that baffled me throughout the writing of the book. I found it hard to believe that it hadn’t been done before. It seems so obvious and overdue.”

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