Reviews

Mother of God: A History of the Virgin Mary by Miri Rubin

biblialex's review against another edition

2.0

I think I expected less art history and more social history. I learned a lot of interesting, bizarre, and occasionally terrible things, but it was all a bit of a slog. (And after all that, the past 400 years breeze by in one concluding chapter.) One thing that seems common across the centuries is that Christians shaped Mary into what they needed from her at a time, comfort or cudgel. (Or chaste elephant?)

I would be remiss to leave out the great entertainment value to be gained by texting your priest friend strange Mary facts-of-the-day. Said friend says I can no longer choose my own reading material, but what does she know?

siria's review against another edition

3.0

This is a hefty, wide-ranging overview of interpretations of Mary, mother of Jesus, from the origins of Christianity until the end of the sixteenth century, with a brief overview of later interpretations of Mary in a concluding chapter. As an overview of primary sources about Mary, this will be invaluable to students working on the topic. So too will be the discussion of views of Mary in medieval Islam (after all, Mary/Maryam figures more in the Qur'an than she does in the New Testament), and of the long-standing association between Mary and anti-Semitism. However, this really is an encyclopaedic text rather than a narrative one, and there is no overarching thesis. There are points where the array of materials cited—Miri Rubin makes use of literary texts, documentary evidence, art historical materials, and more—becomes somewhat dizzying. I'm not sure how truly accessible, or at least readable, this book therefore is for the general reader, but it will remain invaluable for the specialist.

alicihonest's review

2.0

It's just so...dense. And I'm a history major.