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The
Passion of Maryam
A novel by Loren Woodson
Plain View Press
The Passion of Maryam is
a dramatic search for the person embodied in the icon
of the Virgin Mother. What might she really have been
like? What might her relationship have been with her
charismatic son and with God? While Mary and Jesus—Maryam and Yeshua—are
usually pictured as embodying unsullied good, what if
it had been the case that both, from the beginning, had
been forced to seek the holy from an abyss of evil? Would
that not reveal a particular depth and reach to their
unique lives? In a meditation on good, evil, and the
divine, the novel finds within the icon a pious first-century
young woman who suffers a profound violation that plunges
her into doubt about her faith and beliefs in the God
of Israel. She endures to become a wife and mother, who
struggles with her entrancing and enigmatic firstborn.
Their interaction at his cruel execution shines light
into the shadowed layers of their relationship with each
other and with the Holy One, God of Israel, and climaxes
her struggle to turn unfathomable evil into the transcendent
mystery of the divine. This reveals anew the imperishability
of a mother’s love, even as it exposes the cost
to her and her son of being chosen by God.
To ensure as accurate a picture as possible of the novel’s
first-century setting, seven years of research went into
exploring numerous biblical and scholarly sources, including
the study of Hebrew and Greek and visiting the Holy Land.
My debt to the large number of Biblical scholars with
whom I have consulted and whose works I have read is
enormous. A select bibliography is available.
Reviewers Choice Award Semifinalist |
