A Luminous Tale … of Betrayal
The Madonna Secret by Sophie Strand (Rochester, VT: Bear & Company, 2023, 608pp)
David R. Weiss – September 14, 2023

Sophie Strand’s debut novel is audacious, inspired, mesmerizing. In The Madonna Secret she imagines—more accurately conjures up—the tale of Mary Magdalene, at once Jesus’ most intimate and most marginalized follower.

I first encountered Strand’s writing in essays on ecology, about which she writes with the twinned voice of science and mysticism. She brings that coupled awareness to this book as well. Her Mary is a nature mystic, who from her youth channels Earth energy as both moral force and erotic lure.

Her Mary is also Miriam, the Aramaic form of the name. This simple choice, to tell her tale by recasting persons (Jesus is Yeshua) and places (Jerusalem is Yerusalem) with Aramaic names constantly reminds us that Strand means to be speaking to us with an insider’s familiarity. The names are recognizable but not quite as we have known them (from the Greek), and this familiar-but-not-quite sensation helps persuade the reader that the story we are hearing is somehow closer to the truth than the one we have always been told.

Because Mary Magdalene exists as a character only at the edge of the gospels—and at its contested edges at that (prostitute? disciple? confidant? Lover?)—any telling of Miriam’s life must transcend both scholarship and legend. And Strand does this with supreme self-assurance. Her Miriam is alive with possibility. A figment of Strand’s imagination? Of course, but what a richly textured figment. She breathes believable life into Miriam.

Described as an eco-feminist tale, Strand captures both the vibrant ecology of the land and the oppressive ecology of Roman occupation and patriarchal culture/religion. Miriam moves through one with wonder and kinship. She bumps up against the other with indignant frustration and, at times, prophetic outrage. Whether either of these angles is historically accurate is immaterial. They are truthful to the tale Strand spins, and, in that spun world, they ring true. Moreover, they carry truth (wonder, kinship, frustration, outrage) from that world into our world, which is one of fiction’s generative gifts.

In her opening Author’s Note, Strand asserts, “because women are so often written out of stories, [this story] attempts to understand the diversity of female experiences during the Second Temple Period.” Hence, while Madonna features a whole cast of characters, both men and women, it is the women whose lives are plumbed at depth. Through them we experience the precarious edges of womanhood, from early (and violent) marriages, to birthing, to becoming accused and outcast. We also feel the silencing effect of tradition in limiting their learning, dismissing their voices, and fearing their power. And, in exquisite dialogue, we listen in as their living relationships unfold.

Similarly, Strand imbues Miriam’s entanglement with Power beyond-within herself with reverence for the ineffable sense of Mystery that sometimes haunts human life. It is an Earthen energy that is neither opposed to nor different than the biblical God, though never precisely identified with that God either. Rather it is Mystery that includes-eclipses the Jewish God. A numinous Presence that is not other than but larger than—and more sacredly sensual—than orthodox religious notions of divinity … framed mostly by male/patriarchal experience.

One might even venture to suspect that the Surging Energy Miriam channels is the same as that which the Hebrew prophets did. A presence more Real—both larger than and nearer than any Scriptural words can do justice to. Strand’s prose dances with this numinal energy, her words leaping across the page as if around a blazing bonfire (or burning bush?) … or with the devotional frenzy of a lover’s touch.

For all the story it tells, The Madonna Secret is at heart a narrative theology: an assertion-by-tale of the nature of Holy-Presence-as-Earthen-Love. In short, the book is a wonder. Which is why Strand’s portrait of Jesus (Yeshua) feels like … a betrayal.

Granted, she admits in her Author’s Note, “This book makes no claims to represent an authoritative interpretation of Jesus’s teaching or the meaning of his life. It is the story of one woman.” (One wonders, is that one woman Miriam or Sophie?—or both?) Yet she also avows that, even as a work of fiction, Madonna is “based on serious study of the primary documents” and “rigorous research.” And in her Acknowledgements, she credits the work of Marcus Borg, John Dominic Crossan, and several other Historical Jesus scholars.

She makes a number of “artistic license” choices rearranging relationships, characters, and events from their original gospel presentation. These all struck me as intriguing, evocative, sometimes even provocative twists. Except one. After Yeshua appears, first as a mystic in his own right, and a storyteller and community builder as well, it caught me off guard (the way a gut punch can catch you off guard) when Strand chooses to reduce him to an ultimately immature, tragic fool.

It is one thing for Strand to summon up, against the silencing forces of history, a very believable Miriam out of her aspirational eco-feminist imagination. One thing—and a wondrous thing. But it is quite another to decide in turn to silence the best Historical Jesus scholarship and frame Yeshua as a literary foil to Miriam. Of course, this is her tale, and there is nothing to say she can’t do this.

Still, I’m disappointed. Strand could have used her eco-feminist vision and her gift at narrative theology to reclaim the mystery and power of Yeshua alongside that of Miriam. If Mary Magdalene has been lost to a sort of vindictive silence; Jesus has been as effectively buried beneath a cacophony of doctrine that ironically domesticates the power of his humanity by clothing it in divinity. Instead of daring to reclaim the powerful humanity of both—as lovers, partners, birthers of a possible world—she seemingly chooses to sacrifice Jesus for the sins of patriarchy.

Truth is, that’s what killed him in the first place.

In any case, I commend the book. It’s a rich and captivating tale that surprises and enchants, even as it reveals a world fraught with struggle, terror, joy, and love. Plus, in rabbinic tradition, a good text is not one that settles questions but one that starts arguments. Because that’s where wisdom lies—in the tug (and play) of words between us. By that measure, The Madonna Secret is a rousing success.

If you read it, I’d be delighted to argue about it with you!

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David Weiss is a theologian, writer, poet and hymnist, “writing into the whirlwind” of contemporary challenges, joys, and sorrows around climate crisis, sexuality, justice, peace, and family. Reach him at drw59mn@gmail.com. Read more at www.davidrweiss.com where he blogs under the theme, “Full Frontal Faith: Erring on the Edge of Honest.” Support him in Writing into the Whirlwind at www.patreon.com/fullfrontalfaith.