Beefing up the Bible
Elisa Segrave
ONLY HUMAN by Jenny Diski Virago, £14.99, pp. 215 ACCORDING TO MARY: THE LIFE OF MARY MAGDALENE by Marianne Fredriksson, translated by Joan Tate Orion, £16.99, pp. 222 Both these two novelists, who normally write about contemporary life, have here chosen characters from the Bible. Fredriksson, author of the popular novel Hanna's Daughters, is Swedish. In her intro- duction she writes that she was intrigued when she discovered in the Nag Hammadi library 'the fragment that remains of the gospel of Mary Magdalene'. (This refers to parts of the Gnostic 'gospels' buried near the town of Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt about AD 400, rediscovered in 1945.) Fredrikkson is fascinated by Magdalene as `the disciple whom Jesus loved the most, and a woman with no power to influence'.
Jenny Diski, whose last book was the autobiographical Skating to Antarctica, has selected three main characters from the Old Testament, Abram (Abraham), Sarai (Sarah) and God Himself. She has sublitled'her novel 'a comedy', God knows why. Although He delivers many playful and complex monologues in His endeavour to keep one step ahead of the humans He has created, the novel's general tone strikes me as profoundly pessimistic. Compared with the intellectual Diski, Fredriksson is an innocent. Her prose is simple, almost childlike. Sometimes its clarity is appealing, but she can be horribly unsubtle. In one chapter, St Paul has been interviewing Mary Magdalene on what she remembers of Jesus' teachings. She later asks Marcus, the scribe, why he didn't take notes. He replies, `The moment you started speaking, he [Paull sent me away.' Did he now?' said Mary, looking thoughtful.
Fredriksson has made her point about Jesus' women followers not being given their due by the male gospel writers (with long-lasting results in subsequent versions of early Christianity), but unfortunately she has also made Mary Magdalene sound like a character in an episode of Neighbours. Diski is too knowing and skilful to be caught out like this. She describes well the passionate physical love between Abram and Sarai. Ordered by his father Terah to marry Sarai before they all set off through the desert to the land of Canaan, Abram is first confused by suddenly having his half- sister as his wife and does not consummate the marriage. When he finally does, their unleashed feelings for each other grow, diminishing only in middle age with their mutual realisation that Sarai is barren. (Isaac is born much later — on God's orders.) Diski convincingly describes the couple's growing estrangement, caused partly by Sarai's resentment at her hus- band's new love object, God. She (and Fredriksson) both raise the interesting question of what happens to people, and their nearest and dearest, when they believe they have received a call from God.
Diski's Sarai has more psychological depth and seems far more real than Fredriksson's Magdalene, who is often too good to be true. That she was ever a prosti- tute is doubtful historically, but Fredriks- son makes her one, concocting an elaborate tale around her early childhood so that it wasn't her fault. She has the child Magdalene's parents killed by Roman sol- diers, then she is rescued by Leonidas, a homosexual Greek, who places her in a brothel to be brought up by its proprietor Euphrosyne, a friend of his.
Unusually, Fredriksson's Virgin Mary she calls her Mary of Nazareth — is assertive. 'Full of scarlet rage', at Caper- naum she accuses Mary Magdalene of seducing her son and expresses disquiet about His sanity, saying she has never understood Him. The two women then observe Jesus making 'a blind man see and a lame man walk'. I liked this unusual por- trait of the Virgin and wished we could have had more of her. She seemed much more human and less insipid than her prospective daughter-in-law. Fredriksson leaves us in no doubt of Mary Magdalene's love for Jesus. As in Michele Roberts's The Wild Child, she is Portrayed as His mistress, but Fredriksson, unlike Roberts, makes little of the sexual aspect of this, preferring to concentrate on the tenderness, admiration and pity Mary Magdalene feels for Him and His impend- ing tragedy. His vulnerability as a man is touchingly portrayed. Considering their closeness, it does seem plausible that the Magdalene (corroborated in the gospels of Mark, Matthew and John) was the first person Jesus appeared to from the tomb, making her the main witness to the Resur- rection.
Despite her portrayal of the Magdalene as too saintly, I was engaged by Fredriks- son's sincerity and her quest to understand the roots of early Christianity. I found the self-mocking tone of Diski's God, intellec- tually provocative though He is, jarring in contrast to Diski's compelling narrative about Abram and Sarai, from which I felt I was continually being dragged away to lis- ten yet again to one of God's self-centred monologues. Diski's novel ends bleakly, with the ancient Sarai, still unimpressed by Him, waiting to die. Fredriksson's ends with Mary Magdalene determined to spread her gospel. Is one author a sceptic, the other a believer? Only they know.
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