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Class Prep
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The Gender of Jesus
 At the beginning of our course, we looked at the gospel author Mark's portrait of Jesus, at how Mark's Jesus corresponded to the Roman masculine ideal and how he treated women. We return to the question of the gender of Jesus now at the end of our course, but our focal "text" is not a gospel. Instead, it's early Christian and some contemporary art, where we see the gender of Jesus deployed in very different ways and for very different reasons. For example, in this mosaic from Ravenna, Italy, Jesus' figure is clearly male, but also curvaceous, like a woman's body. Why is he often depicted as androgynous?-
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 As you read Thomas Mathews' chapter "Christ Chameleon" from his book, The Clash of Gods, ask yourself both how Jesus was depicted and what purposes this served. Consider particularly how certain gendered assumptions about the Roman gods were overtaken by early Christian artists in order to make the visual case that Jesus was a more adequate and powerful deity than any member of the Roman pantheon. You might also consider common images of Jesus that you see today. What is his race? What are his physical features? How is he gendered? Remember— we have NO record of what Jesus really looked like. So representations of Jesus are entirely based on artistic choices. In our contemporary context, ask that basic feminist question: whose interests are being served by the portraits you have seen?-
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- Assigned Readings
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- Secondary: Mathews, "Christ Chameleon," in The Clash of the Gods (Camino);
online class prep
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- Slides for Lecture
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- Further Reading
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- Ciarrocchi, Joseph W., Ralph L. Piedmont and Joseph E. G. Williams. "'Who Do You Say I Am?': Personality and Gender Dimensions in Men and Women's Images of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph." Research in the Social Scientific Study of Religion 9 (1998) 127-45.
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- Clines, David J. A. "Ecce vir, or, Gendering the Son of Man." In Biblical Studies/Cultural Studies: The Third Sheffield Colloquium (ed. J. Cheryl Exum and Stephen D. Moore; Gender, Culture, Theory 7/JSOTSup266; Sheffield: Sheffield University Press, 1998) 352-75.
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- Cottrell, Jack. "The Gender of Jesus and the Incarnation: A Case Study in Feminist Hermeneutics." Stone-Campbell Journal 3:2 (2000) 171-94.
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- Gleason, Maud W. "By Whose Gender Standards (If Anybody's) Was Jesus a Real Man?" In New Testament Masculinities (ed. Stephen D. Moore and Janice Capel Anderson; Semeia Stuides 45; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003) 325-7.
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- Kwok Pui-lan. "Engendering Christ." In Toward a New Heaven and a New Earth: Essays in Honor of Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza (ed. Fernando F. Segovia; Maryknoll, New York: Orbis, 2003) 300-313.
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- Levine, Amy-Jill. "The Word Becomes Flesh: Jesus, Gender, and Sexuality." In Jesus Two Thousand Years Later (ed. James H. Charlesworth and Walter P. Weaver; Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Trinity Press International, 2000) 62-83.
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- Moore, Stephen D. "Ugly Thoughts: On the Face and Physique of the Historical Jesus." In Biblical Studies/Cultural Studies: The Third Sheffield Colloquium (ed. J. Cheryl Exum and Stephen D. Moore; Gender, Culture, Theory 7/JSOTSup266; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998) 376-99.
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- Moxnes, Halvor. "Jesus in Gender Trouble." Cross Currents 54:3 (2004) 31-46.
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- Speckman, McGlory T. "Feminist Notions in Christian Portraits of Jesus: Implications for a Gender Inclusive Christology." Acta patristica et byzantina 12 (2001) 158-78.
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- Sources
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- Photographs:
- "Baptism of Jesus," Cathedral of Ravenna, in Thomas F. Mathews, The Clash of the Gods: A Reinterpretation of Early Christian Art (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1999).
- Stephen Sawyer, "Undefeated," Art for God. Online, http://www.art4god.com/html/?go=product&id=un, 5 April 2010.
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