Theology and Sexuality

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Book Reviews : BEATTIE, Tina, The Last Supper According to Martha and Mary (London: Burns &
Oates/Continuum, 2001), pp. 127, £14.95 pbk
Sara Maitland
Theology Sexuality 2002; 9; 252
DOI: 10.1177/135583580200900121

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 252-

Book Reviews

BEATTIE, Tina, The Last

Supper According to Martha and Mary (London: Burns &
Oates/Continuum, 2001), pp. 127, £14.95 pbk.
There is a great deal of talk about ’narrative theology’, ’artful theology’ or ‘a herme-
neutic of the imagination’, but (with the notable exception of the synoptic Gospels and
large sections of the Old Testament) there is not actually a great deal of it around. For
that reason alone Beattie’s fictionalized account of the events leading up to Jesus’
arrest - The Last Supper According to Martha and Mary -would be welcome. In addition
it is very good-powerful, moving, original and well written.
Having written ’fictionalized’ (and I am not sure what other adjective I could have
used), I become horribly aware that many people will see this as derogatory (which is
part of theology’s cultural problem.) I do not mean ’made up’, I mean ’treated as
though it were fiction’. Beattie brings both the techniques and the perceptions of mod-
ern novel-writing to bear on the very different genre of account that the Gospels offer.

In a sense there is nothing new about this - The Robe, The Man Born to be King and the
(brilliant) The Illusionist to name but three have all made modern fiction out of Bible
Stories, but Beattie’s intention is more overtly theological and apologetic than any of
these. Presumably this is why she sub-titled her book ’A Meditation’ even though it is
no such thing. (It might be a good resource for biblical meditation, but that is not the

same.)
The contemporary novel allows writers the freedom to use psychological ideas and
probabilities to thicken the plot, deepen the emotional authenticity, and engage the
reader at other levels than the cerebral. This is Beattie’s forte; she manages to bring
alive a social dynamic for a large group of individuals, and to create subtle and intrigu-
ing balances, relationships and reactions - which genuinely do add a drive and plausi-
bility to the outline plot that we all think we know. The relationships between the core
group of early Christians ceases to be pyramid shaped, with each individual relating
to Jesus individually, and becomes something much more real - a web of friendships,
tensions, loves and dislikes. In relation to a eucharistic community this is an insight of
real importance, and was for me the most valuable aspect of Beattie’s ’version’ of the
story.
Another of the novelistic techniques I referred to is an open admission of the
narrator’s’point of views a deliberate avoidance of any claim to objectivity or omnis-
cience. Beattie uses two first-person, present tense narrators-everything is seen
through the experiences of Martha and Mary of Bethany. I find it interesting that,
having adopted this narrative strategy, Beattie does not fully exploit it, since the
observations of the two sisters never contradict, nor even challenge each other. The
Gospel writers introduce a more complex and stimulating variety of accounts. This is

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 253

particularly intriguing, because she goes further than merely interpreting the Gospel
stories through women’s eyes and actually contradicts elements of the original.
Lazarus, for example, ceases to be Martha and Mary’s brother and becomes their serial
lover. The presence of non-Jews -performing non-Jewish religious rituals at the Pass-
over meal-also seems to me to make a patent nonsense of the major debates in Acts. I
think there is a theological question here, which is of some importance if this way of
doing theology is going to become more widely used, as I would very much hope.
Reinterpretation and expansion of the Gospel stories-in the light of modern psy-
chological or other historical and textual knowledge-is not the same exercise as deny-
ing or restructuring them. One of the best things about The Last Supper According to
Martha and Mary is that Beattie show just how far you can go creatively and imagina-
tively within the limits of the traditional facts. It is therefore an especial pity when she
breaks her own apparently self-imposed boundaries. (This is a bit unfair. I have picked
two of the very few examples of this - and then only because I think it a point of real
importance. Can, should, post-modern interpretation accept any sort of primacy or
authority for the four canonical versions? And if not, then what?)
I have my personal quibbles - all the women are so very nice and clever and pro-
gressive and perceptive in comparison to the men. There is an enormous amount of
sex (everyone is or has been or will be having it off with someone). Both these factors

are obviously constructed against the dominant reading, and this needs doing; but

there is a split here between the theological-political realities and fictional demands of
emotional likelihood. Peter in particular comes in for a fairly swinging attack: this has
become a feminist cliche (of which I am as guilty as anyone). I very much hope we are
not slipping into the habit we have accused more conservative Catholics of-over-
identifying Peter and the modern (and undeniably misogynistic) papacy. One prob-
lem with splitting Mary Magdalene from Mary of Bethany, in this sort of context, is
that you do yourself out of a good resurrection scene, even in potential.
Reading this book brought to mind a problem with narrative theology. I was forced
to realize that people and scenes we have fully imagined for ourselves take on a degree
of concrete reality that it is very difficult to abandon. I started feeling that even the
colour of someone’s hair was ‘wrong’. But this effect might diminish if there were more
such stories. Certainly I do not feel it in relation to pictures of, say, the Madonna and
child. Or is this because I am not a painter?
But ultimately this is a lovely book (I gave several copies as Christmas presents). It
is both bold and beautiful. And the last two pages are completely wonderful-
theology and poetry and humanity met together.
Sara Maitland

MOORE, Stephen D., God’s Beauty Parlour and Other Queer Spaces in and around the Bible
(Stanford: University of Stanford Press, 2001), pp. xv + 344.
This book takes the project announced in God’s Gym: Divine Male Bodies in the Bible
(London: Routledge, 1996) much further. Still as inventive, still as imaginative and
well-written, God’s Beauty Parlour not only extends the range of Stephen Moore’s
explorations into the biblical technologies that express and produce masculinity, it
sharpens the political and critical purpose of the project. I use ’sharpens’ here with
some deliberation because in a book that exposes the biblical fusion of hypermasculin-

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