Behold the Man: Jesus and Greco-Roman Masculinity.(Book review)

doi: 10.1017/S0009640709000535

Behold the Man: Jesus and Greco-Roman Masculinity. By Colleen

M. Conway. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. xii + 258 pp. $65.00 cloth.

In the early twentieth century, churchmen such as Warren Conant sought to virilize Jesus in the hopes of bringing men back to the church. Later in the twentieth century, some feminist theologians sought to uncover a feminine agenda in Jesus' ministry to support modern women's issues. Colleen Conway's book Behold the Man shows that gender has been a central concern in representations of Jesus from the beginning.

Conway begins by reviewing ancient constructions of masculinity and illustrating these constructions with "case studies" of Caesar Augustus, Philo's Moses, and Philostratus's Apollonius. Even for scholars familiar with this material, a close reading of these chapters is beneficial because Conway reminds her readers that there were multiple---and sometimes competing--models of masculinity in antiquity and that "marginalized gender discourses" (as opposed to the "hegemonic masculinity" of the imperial project) could be used to resist imperial power without rejecting gender ideology altogether.

Among the undisputed Pauline epistles, Conway focuses particularly on the Corinthian correspondence and Galatians. She argues that since Paul mentions the crucifixion most frequently when his masculinity is being questioned, references to the crucifixion bolster Paul's masculine status. Overall, Conway sees Paul's Christology as akin to imperial apotheosis traditions and, therefore, she does not read the Pauline traditions as countercultural or as subverting hegemonic masculine ideology.

Conway begins her analysis of each Gospel by investigating how the titles applied to Jesus masculinize him. In Mark, the titles show Jesus' divine status and ruling authority. Jesus' miracles are to be understood as challenges to Roman imperial power. The healing of the Gerasene demoniac, for example, is described as a "thinly veiled 'exorcism' of Roman military occupation" (94). Mark's relationship with hegemonic masculinity is ambiguous, however, as the passion narrative makes clear: at his death, Jesus is filled with fear and anguish. Conway suggests that the noble death tradition might alleviate some of this tension. She surmises that the ambiguous portrayal of Jesus' masculinity may be attributable to the recent display of Roman power in Jerusalem.