There’s a very interesting idea behind Names of the Women. The history of the Christian church has been written by men, but it is clear from even a superficial reading of the New Testament, that there are many women involved in the story. Most of these women disappear into the background and even many of those that feature as individuals are not named. This book names fifteen women and tells their stories. It does this via a mixture of Biblical evidence, church tradition and imagination. In some ways, I have to say that the author here was, when I was reading the book, preaching to converted because I have been involved in the Christian church for 50 years and have, as far as I remember, always considered the women in the story to be key. However, it is definitely true that scant detail is provided in the Bible for most of these women and some who Thayil picks up on are ignored completely.

Some of the women are well known, even outside of Christianity. Mary, mother of Jesus, for example. Or Mary of Magdala. Some might require a working knowledge of the New Testament. The widow who dropped two mites into a collection box, for example. Some might require you to have had exposure to specific church traditions. Jesus’ two older sisters would be the prime example here. As I say, I have been a Christian for 50 of my 60 years, so I had a bit of head start. I couldn’t guess the name of every woman, but this is because they do not have names recorded anywhere and Thayil has imagined names for them here, but I did manage to place all of them in the story fairly quickly in their respective chapters.

We start at the crucifixion. As Jesus hangs on the cross, he speaks to Mary and we then jump forward a few days to Mary’s experience of the risen Jesus and her frustration at the men (his disciples) who will not believe her story but who then appropriate it once they have seen for themselves.

Later, on the next day and the days to come, when they tell the story of the risen body, they will paint themselves as brave men who went to the tomb to see for themselves. They will leave out the story of the woman who was first to enter the tomb. But they will not be able to erase completely the name of the woman.

The we meet Susanna the Barren who follows two men on the road to Emmaus where they encounter the risen Jesus. The men fail to understand what is happening and it takes an intervention by Susanna to explain things. And we read:

"WIth the passing of time the elders of the Church will ignore or forget his teaching with respect to women. They will build the Church on the witness of the women but they will refuse to record their names.
But this they cannot change, that the risen Christ appeared first to Mary of Magdala and it was the women who were the first leaders of the Church."

From there, a large part of the book works gradually backwards in time identifying women who have been ignored to one degree or another by church history. These early chapters have set the context for the book: the women who have been written out by male-dominated history have something to teach us and we need to hear their stories.

Some of the chapters have mixed timelines, but the general thrust of each one, for most of the book, takes us a bit further back. Towards the end of the book, this approach changes and the timelines becomes more mixed. This works less well for me: I preferred reading the book when there was a sense of (backwards) progression to each chapter.

But, so far so good. This idea of recovering the stories of the women in the Gospels feels challenging and thought-provoking.

However, there is a second idea very much at work as these women’s stories are told. The “cover up” that has led to these women being ignored has, at the same time, radically altered the message that Jesus taught. What the (male dominated) Church has been promulgating for 2000 years is a corrupted version of the truth. Interspersed among the stories of the women, we read of Jesus talking to Mary as he hangs on the cross. He is delivering a message that has been ignored by the church as the women have been written out of the story.

Despite my decades of living as a Christian, I would not claim that this is an entirely false position. It is hard to believe that 2000 of human interpretation has not in some places changed the message. It is all too human to interpret things in a way that suits us. In fact, it is hard to do otherwise. We see this in our own relatively recent history that has used the Bible to justify wars, slavery and subjugation of women (for example).

But it is a big leap, for me, to get to the Jesus presented in this book. Here we have a Jesus who says

"…for I want you to listen as I say to you that forgiveness is the recourse of the weak and we must not forgive."

Here we have a Jesus who is weakened because power leaves him when he performs miracles, who has a thirst for fame and renown, who makes sarcastic jokes at the expense of his disciples, who is talked into reluctantly resurrecting a man by the man’s two sisters (a miracle which all involved almost immediately regret, especially Lazarus, the man resurrected, who turns to drink because he cannot cope).

This is challenging stuff. The men in this book do not fare well. The Jesus presented in this book does not seem to be the kind of person who would attract thousands of followers during his life and billions afterwards. (But then, the “billions afterwards” are following the Jesus presented by the male-dominated version of the story.)

Overall, I found this to be a very uneven book. It started out challengingly and started to draw me in. The stories of the women are challenging and interesting. I struggle with the Jesus it presents, but I acknowledge this might just be 50 years of programming in my brain. If it had just been the stories of the women, it could easily have been a 4 or 5 star book for me, but the interpretation of the men in the book, especially Jesus, made it a struggle for me.

3.5 stars rounded down for now.

You must allow the women to speak …… Because if not for them, my teaching would amount to nothing. Mary of Magdala, and Mary and Martha of Bethany, and Susanna, and Joanna [wife of Herod’s steward] and the other women who provided for me out of their resources – without them I could not have continued …….

With the passing of time the elders of the Church will ignore or forget his teaching with respect to women. They will build the church on the witness of the women but they will refuse to record their names. But this they cannot change, that the risen Christ appeared first to Mary of Magdala and that it was the women who were the first leaders of the Church. This is the book of the martyrdom of Jesus, and this is the book of the women who travelled with him.

This book is an unashamedly feminist (or I think it would be more accurate to say female-centric) storytelling of the Gospel; a retelling inspired by the author’s Syrian Christian upbringing and by his storyteller Grandmother (who is named in the book’s dedication together with the other influential women in the author’s life).

It starts with the canonical gospels, often taking a marginalised detail – typically a female character given either only a name or a walk-on-part without a name and restoring both story and name to those characters in vivid acts of imagination (some of which draw further on Church traditions or non-canonical gospels).

Examples of the women included (who typically have a chapter each – each chapter ending with the name of the character (the chapters largely preceding backwards in time)

Mary of Magdala – who has a first chapter around Jesus’s resurrection and the first meeting with the risen Christ, and a second chapter where she sees Jesus heal the bleeding woman and the Caananite woman of Matthew 15, and where Mary becomes Jesus’s first female disciple (herself a wealthy woman who Jesus heals from what we would call depression)

Susanna – from Luke Chapter 8 - who is placed in the Road to Emmaeus encounter and later becomes an early preacher

Old Mary, mother of James and Salome (from Luke 24) – who gives a vivid account of the walk to Calvary

Aqulia – the unnamed maidservant who challenges Peter in Matthew 26 (and who in the chapter has a ringside seat in Caiphas’s sham trial of Jesus)

Mary of Bethany – who in her chapter is (as well as her more conventional Gospel interactions) the woman who anoints Jesus’s feet with her tears and precious perfume at Simon the Pharisee’s house

Martha of Bethany

Junia, widow of Jerusalem – with her mite (unnamed in the Bible), who also witnesses the entrance to Jerusalem

Ariamma the Canaanite – the unnamed woman caught in adultery, whose would be lynch mob are shamed by Jesus’s “let he who is without Sin cast the first stone)

Herodias

Salome (I have to say that these two chapters were disappointing – I had expected some form of retelling/justification of their acts around the murder of John The Baptist, or perhaps an explanation of how they came to be used as pawns by the authorities (or a front operation for Herod) in silencing John but instead the two come across as psychopathic

Joanna, wife of Chuza (here interestingly it is her husband unnamed in the Gospels) – and so part of Herod’s household – her account of John’s death and her subsequent journey to inform and then join Jesus is so much more powerful for the way in which (at least to me) it sticks to the author’s overarching intentions

Assia and then Lydia – two sisters of Jesus. Here the novel draws convincingly on a tradition that Joseph was an elderly widower with children from a previous marriage when he met Mary. His exile with her to Egypt starting a breach between his children from the first marriage and their younger step-brother which never entirely went away. The actual chapters themselves are set well after Jesus’s death - with one sister selling fake childhood relics and the other in a madhouse – and were not I have to say my favourite other than for the way in which both saw a different side of Jesus to others

Shoshamma – the wife of the penitent thief (who also encounters the penitent thief) – this was perhaps the most tangential chapter, with the gospel link only in the last paragraph.

Mary – mother of Jesus. This chapter draws heavily on the Gospel of James for her origins as daughter of Anna, dedicated to the temple and given to the elderly Joseph – before her virginal conception at a very young age.

Some of the chapters have (like the opening quote to my review) a strong challenge to the patriarchal and sometimes misogynistic way in which the Gospel has been taught by the church – a challenge with which I have a lot of sympathy. It is I think hard to the point of obtuseness (even if incredibly and tragically common) to read the gospels and so many of the stories here (plus some that are not – such as Jesus with the woman at the well) and not to see that Jesus was radically counter-cultural in his treatment of women. And while some of the parts seem to go to far – at one stage we are told Jesus followed up his rich man/camel analogy to say “It is easier for a woman to enter heaven than for a man” – even these make some sense on reflection, as what comes across strongly in these stories (and which fits the gospels) is that many men – even those keen to follow him - approached Jesus with a sense of entitlement and self-righteousness and with closed minds, whereas women (like children, the sick, the sinners) came with a sense of faith and openness.

There is also a framing device interleaved around some of the chapters which does not work for me – with short chapters of Jesus talking to Mary Magdala from the cross (or perhaps after it) and I think sharing an alternative – now lost - gospel with her. I could not see how having Jesus speak in this way (and in a way which at times felt not just contradictory to the real gospels, but to many of the stories of the women and even internally inconsistent between the short chapters) really helped the story.

Overall though – and despite my reservations around the Salome/Herodias chapters, the sister chapters and particularly the Jesus ones – I enjoyed the book and as a gospel-believing Christian found it simultaneously challenged and reinforced my faith and lead my straight back to the greatest story of all.

Names of the Women is a thought provoking tales of the silent and often unseen women who existed when Jesus was alive and delivering his message of God’s love. Mary of Magdala is asked to bear witness to Christ’s death and the stories of fifteen women with intertwined lives is revealed. Numerous women, often nameless in the Bible are noticed and given a voice. These include, Martha and Mary of Bethany, Junia the Widow of Jerusalem, Susanna the Barren, Ariamma the Canaanite and others. These women have remained loyal to Jesus and continued to spread his message, even when the disciples returned to their former lives some denied they knew him. These women proved all God’s children are equal.
A really interesting book which will make you think again about the story told in the Bible and how much deeper we need to read it.

I'm a huge fan of novels that are based on the nameless women from history & the Bible. The Red Tent is one of my top reads of all times.
This book started very strongly but I think my own lack of biblical knowledge was the problem, I didn't know the tales / parables where the women had been erased and so didn't understand all of the allusions here.
Readable and interesting- I will now try to improve my own knowledge

A daring reimagining of the New Testament story; Jeet Thayil puts the emphasis on the women presented in the Gospels and restores their role in the events that take place.

Stories of women whose lives overlapped with the life of Christ. Their voices finally heard, because with the passing of time the Church refuse to record their names.

They always endure and as is said in the book, they endure longer than the men.

Beautifully written.