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by Minerva Waters
Daughter of Jerusalem, by Thom Lemmons (Multnomah Publishers, 1999)
This book is written for Christians by a Christian. It is meant to
tell the tale of how meeting Jesus made a radical change in the life
of a sinner. As such, in places it gets a little preachy, so if the
reader is not Christian, this book probably will not be too enjoyable.
As a young girl on the edge of womanhood, Mary Magdalene is in love
with a fisherman who is betrothed to another. He begs her to meet him
one night. She agrees, and, unable to restrain himself, he rapes her.
When her parents learn what happened, they blame her and cast her
forth from their home. She is taken in as the slave-concubine of
a Greek man. In the usual course of things, she becomes pregnant and
gives birth to a daughter. Her owner demands it be exposed, which
drives Mary out of her mind. She lashes out wildly, and, left to do
as she pleases, takes up dancing to entertain her owner and his guests,
which makes her owner more and more enamoured of her.
In a fit of anger one day, she leaves, wanders for a while, and
falls into the company of a band of wanders following a young
rabbi. In time, she falls in love with the rabbi Jesus (in a chaste
way, of course). In the course of their wanderings, they must stop
occasionally to rest and buy food, and while at the market one day
Mary rescues a young pickpocket from Roman soldiers and takes her
back to where the group is staying. The pickpocket, to Mary's delight,
turns out to be her daughter, who was given to another woman instead
of being exposed.
Some time later, Jesus is arrested, killed, and rises, telling Mary
to be brave and carry the good news to others. Shortly after, Mary
falls in love with a newcomer (Gaius) to the group and marries him.
They decide to carry Jesus' message to Gaius' homeland of Gaul (France).
My main issue with this book is that, besides being preachy, things
seem to work out a little too well with no loose ends. Mary just
happens to find her daughter, she just happens to finally
fall in love with someone she can actually marry, etc. It's a little
too clean and pat, especially for an adult book. For a children's
book, it might not be too bad, though. I did like that the author
included the legend about Mary's journey into France, though.
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