Mary of Nazareth by Marek Halter

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I have a hard time giving a Christian book a bad review, so to be honest up front, that’s one of the reasons why this book is rated 3 stars, not 2.

I picked this book up to read at the library, because I enjoy reading fiction books about Biblical women (the Red Tent immediately comes to mind). I’ve never read a book by this author, & I was intrigued to read a book from a Jewish prospective – one that is slightly different from the Christian framepoint I was raised with.

I enjoyed the book until about the halfway point, when I started to get frustrated with how slowly the book was progressing & how far fetched Miriam’s life was. Yes, it’s fiction, so there is some poetic license here, but I just can’t believe she really did & said half the stuff she was portrayed to have done (but it made for interesting reading, so that’s OK). But I kept reading, because I was enjoying the reading – but now we’re three quarters into the book, & she still hasn’t gotten pregnant, you know, the part she’s most famous for. All of a sudden, a few pages from the end, she announces she’s pregnant & then she conveniently marries a man she knows, Yosef. And then the last chapter, the bit at the end — well, let’s just say it goes pretty much against what I was raised to believe. I don’t know much about the Jewish faith, only the basics, so perhaps this section would make more sense to someone with more similar beliefs to the author.

I do give the book 3 stars, however, because I did enjoy the book, just didn’t love it, the book was well written, & it gets points because of the interesting twists & turns the book takes.



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