The End

Well I finished reading Mary, A Flesh-and-Blood Biography of The Virgin Mother by Lesley Hazleton. Not sure if it was just my mind set while finishing it or what but really I started not liking the book any more.

Part 3 was about the women who Mary might have surrounded herself with after Jesus died until her final days. The first few chapters while being fiction of course helped maybe put a little light on how Jesus was prepared for burial and ultimately placed in the tomb, but I think Ms. Hazleton maybe even started doubting a lot of what the Bible says, because her tone or maybe it was me, but her tone basically starting denying that the male disciples were even around after the Crucifixion.

Instead of living out her final days with John, like Jesus tells her too from the cross (John 19:25-27), Ms. Hazleton makes it sound like that Mary just basically retired into a nearby village with all of the other women who were ever mentioned during Jesus' time on the earth, like Lazarus's' sisters: Mary and Martha, and Mary Magdalene. Actually I felt that Ms. Hazleton was kind of contradicting herself, one moment she was painting a picture of Mary be all knowing and maybe even running around being like one of the disciples and then she is talking about how Mary probably is just sitting around doing nothing all day maybe even tending to sheep again.

All in all I wished Ms. Hazleton would have stuck with more of the fictional writing instead of trying to compare Mary's life and everything that was going on around her to other cultures like Greek Mythology. But the one thing that the book has done, it has now moved Mary up on the list of people's feet I want to sit at when I get to Heaven and listen to her story because I do feel like she did get left out of one of the most important books of our time, whether due to whoever putting the final draft together of the Bible we currently read or maybe no one thought to record her actions like they did of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John but either way, I have a lot of questions to ask and I feel like she has lots of answers to give.