Author: Sue Monk Kidd
Release Date: April 2020
Genre: Historical Fiction

Ana, the wife of Jesus of Nazareth. While fictional, as Kidd discovered in her research, entirely plausible. There is no record of Jesus from the age of twelve until his 30th year and in 1st century Galilee, it was a man’s civic, familial, and sacred duty to marry. As Kidd explains, Jewish men married when they reached the age of 20 and sometimes up to the age of 30. It was more than just an arrangement between two families, however, but how boys entered adulthood. According to Kidd’s research, “claims that Jesus was not married first began in the second century. They arose as Christianity absorbed ideas of asceticism and Greek dualism, which devalued the body and the physicality of the world in favor of spirit.” We must also remember that women in this time were marginalized and silenced. Could Jesus’s wife been erased from history as he became more glorified? As Kidd wonderfully states “if Jesus actually did have a wife … then she would be the most silenced woman in history and the woman most in need of a voice.”

Now most of us know, even if you’re not entirely religious like myself, the general story of Jesus and his role in the Christian faith. What we don’t often see is the human side of him. That is what Kidd strove to portray in this novel: his humanity. What was Jesus like as a 20 year old married man, working to support his family? Was he reserved and contemplative or kind and with predilection for jokes? What were his relationships like with his brothers and sisters? Did he share his ideas about God and the world around him with his wife? We can never know. But we can certainly imagine.

Before Jesus takes up too much of this post, let’s talk about Ana who’s story this really is. In a time where women were kept in the shadows and had their lives dictated by men, Ana was a bright light always striving to be seen for who she was. A scholarly type, she was lucky to have been born into a wealthy family where she could dedicate her time to writing. She was drawn to the hidden women of the scriptures and committed her time to recording those women’s stories so they wouldn’t be lost. There were many times where others tried to douse those passions, but she could never ignore the longing within herself.

What I found the most difficult about this book was knowing how it would inevitably end. Watching the devotion and growth of Jesus and Ana’s relationship slowly made my heart heavy with the awareness of what she would witness. I cannot remember a time where a book brought me to tears the way this one did as we watched Jesus’s crucifixion through his wife’s eyes. She did not mourn him as a prophet or the Jewish Messiah, but as her husband. A man she loved and thought about daily was persecuted, ridiculed, and executed before her. That scene left such a rawness inside of me for days. I still occasionally think about it and the kind of woman Ana was. She loved deeply, but also had such fire and want in her heart.

Recently, it came to me that Ana was a bit of a feminist. She continuously fought for and defended the oppressed women in her life but never developed hatred for the human male, who’s station was always above her own. She followed her own passions rather than bend to society’s expectation of her. And supported her husband’s ideals while never forgetting herself. Jesus ben Joseph of Nazareth loved and shared his life with Ana the writer and first feminist.

~Steph

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