There’s no record of Jesus from the age of twelve until the age of thirty. His presence in the novel coincides in part with this unrecorded time period, with two notable exceptions: his baptism and his death. I invented the actions and words of Jesus during the unknown years the only way I could, through conjecture and reasonable extrapolation.
My portrayal of Jesus comes from my own interpretation of who he was based on my research of the historical Jesus and first-century Palestine, on scriptural accounts of his life and teachings, and on other commentaries about him. It was something of a wonder to discover that the human Jesus has so many different faces and that people, even historical Jesus scholars, tend to view him through the lens of their own needs and proclivities. For some he’s a political activist. For others, a miracle worker. He’s viewed as rabbi, social prophet, religious reformer, wisdom teacher, nonviolent revolutionary, philosopher, feminist, apocalyptic preacher, and on and on.
How would I fashion Jesus’s character? I envisioned him in his twenties as a thoroughly Jewish man living under Roman occupation, and as a husband working to support his family, but harboring an evolving pull inside to leave and begin a public ministry. I depicted him as a mamzer; that is, one who suffers some degree of ostracism—in Jesus’s case, because of his questioned paternity. I also visualized Jesus as an emerging social prophet and a rabbi whose dominant message was love and compassion and the coming of God’s kingdom, which initially he viewed as an eschatological event establishing God’s rule on earth, and ultimately as a state of being within the hearts and minds of people. I saw him as a nonviolent political resister who takes on the role of Messiah, the promised Jewish deliverer. And central to the character I’ve drawn is Jesus’s empathy for the excluded, the poor, and outcasts of all kinds, as well as his uncommon intimacy with his God.
It feels important to point out that the character of Jesus in these pages provides a mere glimpse of the complexity and fullness of who he was, and that glimpse is based on my interpretation of him, which is woven into a fictional narrative.
* * *
• • •
THE STORY IS IMAGINED, but I’ve tried through extensive research to be true to its historical, cultural, political, and religious backdrop. There are instances, though, in which I veer from the record or from accepted tradition for narrative purposes. The more noteworthy incidences follow.
Herod Antipas moved the capital of Galilee from Sepphoris to Tiberias somewhere around 18 to 20 CE. In the novel, this move didn’t take place until 23 CE. Sepphoris, a wealthy city of approximately thirty thousand, was a mere four miles from Nazareth, prompting many scholars to speculate that Jesus was exposed to a sophisticated, Hellenized, multilingual world. Scholars also conjecture that Jesus and his father, Joseph, both of whom were builders, may have found contract work in Sepphoris as Herod Antipas rebuilt the city during Jesus’s adolescent years. It’s unlikely, though, that he would have found work on the Roman theater, as portrayed in the novel. According to a number of archaeologists, the theater was constructed close to the end of the first century, decades after Jesus’s death. The mosaic of Ana’s face in Antipas’s palace was inspired by an actual mosaic found on the floor of an excavated mansion in Sepphoris. Known as Mona Lisa of the Galilee, it is an exquisite depiction of a woman’s face that dates to the third century.
Phasaelis, the first wife of Herod Antipas, was a Nabataean princess who covertly escaped back to her father in the Arabian kingdom of Nabataea when she learned that Antipas planned to take Herodias as his wife. The exact year she fled is debated, but I’ve almost certainly predated it by several years.
Christian Scripture states that Jesus had four named brothers and multiple unnamed sisters; I could only make room in the story for two brothers and one sister. My representation of James is likely harsher than he deserves, though in New Testament Scripture it does appear there was some conflict between Jesus and his brothers during Jesus’s ministry. James later became a follower of Jesus after his brother’s death and the leader of the Jerusalem church.
In the Scriptures, Jesus appears at the Jordan River to be baptized by John the Baptist, then immediately goes off into the wilderness, after which he begins his ministry. I’ve imagined, however, that after his baptism and retreat into the wilderness, Jesus spent some months as one of John’s followers. While there’s no mention of this in Scripture, there are conjectures by some scholars that Jesus was likely one of John’s followers and was deeply influenced by him, a premise I adopted.
Mary of Bethany is the woman named in the New Testament Scripture as anointing Jesus’s feet with an expensive ointment shortly before his death, an event that elicited criticism from Judas. I took the liberty of having Ana’s friend Tabitha perform this act of anointing instead.
In the novel, Ana rushes to Jesus on the street when he falls beneath the weight of the crossbeam. This deviates from a long-held nonscriptural tradition that a woman named Veronica went to him and wiped his face when he fell.
The Gospels in the New Testament describe Jesus as arriving in Bethany and Jerusalem in Judea the week before his death. However, in order to accommodate the timeline of the story, I had them arrive a number of weeks before the crucifixion.
I’ve attempted to adhere to the biblical stories of Jesus’s trial, crucifixion, and burial, though not all of the occurrences in these stories could be incorporated. The inclusion or absence of events depends on whether or not they are witnessed or discovered by Ana, the narrator. In the novel, Ana and a group of women walk with Jesus to his execution, remain there as he’s crucified, and then prepare him for burial. The Gospels give somewhat differing accounts of his death, but they all record the presence of a group of women at his crucifixion. Jesus’s mother and Mary Magdalene are listed among them. Salome, Jesus’s sister, and Mary of Bethany are not mentioned, but I inserted them in place of two other women who were. The scene in the novel in which the women walk with Jesus to his crucifixion is my invention.
The Therapeutae was not a figment of my imagination, but a real monastic-like community, near Lake Mareotis in Egypt, where Jewish philosophers devoted themselves to prayer and study and a sophisticated allegorical interpretation of Scripture. Thriving during the time period in the novel, the group is represented in these pages with a significant amount of factual detail. The forty-ninth-day vigils with their delirious all-night singing and dancing did indeed take place, the holy rooms in their small stone houses existed, as did female members and a devotion to Sophia, the feminine spirit of God. However, the Therapeutae’s practice of asceticism and solitude was far more prevalent and intense than I describe. In the story, I refer to their fasting and solitude, but I essentially reimagine the group as more interactive and body-friendly.
The Thunder: Perfect Mind is an actual document written by an unknown author believed to be female and dated within the novel’s time frame. Its nine pages of papyrus were among the famous Nag Hammadi texts discovered in 1945 in a jar buried in the hills above the Nile in Egypt. In the novel, Thunder: Perfect Mind is authored by Ana, who composes it as a hymn to Sophia. The passages of it that are included in the novel are from the real poem. I’ve read and reread this poem for two decades, awed by its provocative, ambiguous, commanding, gender-bending voice. Imagining Ana creating it as her great opus simply made me happy.
* * *
• • •
THE AUTHOR’S NOTE dwells heavily on the figure of Jesus for obvious reasons, but the story in The Book of Longings belongs to Ana. She wandered into my imagination and I couldn’t ignore her.
I saw Ana not only as the wife of Jesus, but as a woman with her own quest—that of following her longings in pursuit of the largeness inside herself. I saw her, too, as a woman able to become not only Jesus’s wife, but his partner.
The day Ana appeared, I knew one thing about her besides her name. I knew that what she wanted most was a voice. If
Jesus actually did have a wife, and history unfolded exactly the way it has, then she would be the most silenced woman in history and the woman most in need of a voice. I’ve tried to give her one.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to the following people and resources that helped me bring Ana’s story to life.
Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, my extraordinary agent and cherished friend, as well as Margaret Riley King, Tracy Fisher, Matilda Forbes Watson, Haley Heidemann, Natalie Guerrero, Zoe Beard-Fails, and Alyssa Eatherly, all invaluable members of the William Morris Endeavor team.
My brilliant editor, Paul Slovak, along with Brian Tart, Andrea Schulz, Kate Stark, Louise Braverman, Lindsay Prevette, Shannon Twomey, Britta Galanis, Allie Merola, Roseanne Serra, and the entire amazing team at Viking, all of whom have given me and this novel immense support, expertise, and enthusiasm.
Marion Donaldson and Headline Publishing, my wonderful UK editor and publisher.
Ann Kidd Taylor, my first reader, who offered me amazing feedback and insights. I would hate to write a book without her.
The many scholars whose books, lectures, and documentaries on the historical Jesus, the people, culture, religion, politics, and history of first-century Palestine and Alexandria, biblical interpretation, the Gnostic Gospels, and women and gender in religion formed the mainstay of my research. The Biblical Archaeology Society, which provided me with excellent resources. The Great Courses for their videotaped academic lectures.
The new translation of The Thunder: Perfect Mind by Hal Taussig, Jared Calaway, Maia Kotrosits, Celene Lillie, and Justin Lasser, with gratitude to Palgrave Macmillan for permission to quote from it.
Scott Taylor, for exceptional business and technical support.
Terry Helwig, Trisha Sinnott, and Curly Clark, who gave me endless listening and encouragement as I contemplated the idea for this book and worked to bring it into being.
My family, children, grandchildren, and parents, who fill my life with so much goodness and love, especially my husband, Sandy, with whom I’m blessed to share my life. Since that long-ago day when I turned thirty and announced to him I wanted to be a writer, he has offered me infinite believing and encouragement . . . for this book especially.
About the Author
Sue Monk Kidd's debut, The Secret Life of Bees, spent more than 100 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, has sold more than 6 million copies in the U.S., was turned into an award-winning major motion picture and a musical, and has been translated into 36 languages. Her second novel, The Mermaid Chair, was a #1 New York Times bestseller and was adapted into a television movie. Her third novel, The Invention of Wings, an Oprah's Book Club 2.0 pick, was also a #1 New York Times bestseller. She is the author of the acclaimed memoirs The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, a groundbreaking work on religion and feminism, and the New York Times bestseller Traveling with Pomegranates, written with her daughter, Ann Kidd Taylor.
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