HIM
“Women, of course, can not be sons of God.” In Nazareth, the virgin Maryam gives birth to a baby girl. Named Avigayil, for her grandmother, she is an unusual child: alert, quiet, attentive, her first words a polite rebuke. At five years old, the child declares that he is a boy and demands to be called Yehushua. This boy, and soon man, can work miracles and speak for God. I can imagine the kinds of readers who would call for the book to be burned, but I found it to be deeply, and movingly, reverent. I am also struck by its shelving as science fiction, and what kinds of questions that raises: what is the boundary between fiction and religious text? In what ways are all religious texts a kind of fiction, and all fiction a kind of gospel?