Abstract
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The book has three parts. In the first, Wilson lays the groundwork by defining masculinity, summarizing previous scholarship on masculinity in Lukan studies, and sketching Greco-Roman constructions of masculinity with respect to social hierarchies, the body, and power. She then analyzes portraits of four “unmanly men” in Luke-Acts: in Part 2 the minor characters Zechariah (Luke 1) and the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8); in Part 3 the central characters Paul (Acts 9) and the crucified Jesus (Luke 22–23). In the conclusion, Wilson not only summarizes her work, but also makes observations about its implications for understanding God’s power and the exercise of power among human beings today. She provides an extensive bibliography and indexes of select modern authors and of ancient sources.
This is an important book that advances the discussion about the construction of gender in Luke and Acts. Wilson has limited her study to four characters because of space limitations. She has chosen these particular characters because each plays a key role in the Lukan narrative and because of the way these four men are portrayed as failing to protect their bodily boundaries and to embody expectations of masculinity concerning the body. In each instance, she sees Luke’s construction of unmanly men as pointing to the need for male followers of Jesus to derive their strength from God’s power alone, and not from cultivation of manliness.
Zechariah’s manliness is first exhibited by paternal and verbal power. When he loses control over the latter, he regains it only when he demonstrates reliance on God’s power and God’s word, which his wife Elizabeth and her relative Mary have already done. John the Baptist is thus born into a family where expectations of masculinity are set askew, paving the way for Luke’s depiction of Jesus as “born into a differently construed family, where God is in control and men are not on top” (p. 246). The Ethiopian eunuch, a consummate “unmanly man,” appears at a key juncture in Acts, as the gospel begins to spread “to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). This impotent character is depicted as an ideal convert, aligned with Jesus, who also embodies impotence as the Isaianic Suffering Servant (Acts 8:32–33; Isa 53:7–8). Paul, by contrast, is first shown as powerful, but then his manhood is undermined as he loses corporeal control when he is blinded on the road to Damascus. He regains this control when he submits to the one he formerly persecuted and allows the possibility that faithfulness to Jesus may entail further emasculation. In the case of Jesus, his power and powerlessness are held in tension throughout the Gospel, culminating when he is rendered unmanly by his lack of emotional control and loss of corporeal control in the passion and crucifixion. While emasculation was a temporary experience for Zechariah and Paul, Jesus is not “re-virilized” as they were. Jesus’s body, though resurrected, still bears the marks of his unmanly death. His resurrection “does not simply ‘reverse’ the crucifixion” and Jesus “does not emerge in Luke 24 and Acts as a manly victor” (p. 241). Luke continues to hold crucifixion and resurrection as inseparable, showing God’s power in Jesus as paradoxical powerlessness. Wilson concludes that the Lukan depictions of these four characters show the Way for male disciples: acceptance of a reconfiguration of masculinity that exhibits dependence on God’s power, embodied in the powerlessness of the crucified and resurrected Lord.
Wilson’s exegetical and historical-cultural work is well done and she has persuasively demonstrated her thesis. Though explorations of the notions of reversal and of Jesus’s powerlessness have long been standard in Lukan studies, Wilson has taken the analysis to a new level by applying the lens of masculinity studies not only to the character of Jesus, but to other males in Luke-Acts as well. As with all successful studies, she opens the way for other questions to be explored: does her thesis continue to hold for other characters in Luke and Acts? How do unmanly men relate to women in Luke and Acts? Wilson treats this latter question somewhat, asserting that “Luke’s female characters end up looking less marginalized than feminist interpretations often contend” (p. 3) and that Luke “depicts women performing so-called masculine acts” (p. 260). She concludes that Luke “does not perpetuate the trope of the ‘manly woman’ . . . he does not appear to advocate manliness as the norm toward which either men or women are to aspire” (p. 261). Another question that could be raised is this: Would early readers of Luke have seen his depiction of women such as Elizabeth and Mary, who proclaim prophetic words (Luke 1:42–45, 46–55), as destabilizing the gender hierarchy by “performing so-called masculine acts” (p. 260) as Wilson asserts? Or would they have seen Elizabeth and Mary as doing what women prophets such as Miriam (Exodus 15), Deborah (Judges 5), Judith (Jdt 16:1–17), Hannah (1 Sam 2:1–10), and Huldah (2 Kgs 22:14; 2 Chr 34:22) have done throughout Israel’s history?
In her conclusion, Wilson raises important questions about the implications of this study for understanding divine power and discipleship. Exploration of such questions will require several more tomes. Wilson notes that Luke depicts God’s power in paradoxical terms, using masculine designations for God and instigating acts that render human beings subordinate (e.g., Zechariah’s muteness and Paul’s blindness), while also showing the divine, embodied in Jesus, as vulnerable and powerless. She sees how God’s “unmanning of men throughout Luke and Acts” opens the question of “sacralizing suffering and validating divine violence” (p. 257). These are very complex topics, and like several of Wilson’s assertions in her analysis of Luke’s depiction of Jesus in the passion, they need much more discussion than this volume allows. For example, is the image of Jesus as Suffering Servant as strong in the Lukan passion as Wilson contends? Could the silence of Jesus in the passion be a strategy of nonviolent resistance rather than an evocation of Isa 53:7? What of the image of rejected prophet, which Wilson never mentions, but which is prominent in Luke-Acts? Does Luke clearly portray Jesus as God? Wilson states that it is not the case that “God is merely a manly man writ large” in Luke, pointing to Jesus as “fully God and fully ‘man-nonman’” (p. 257). To make this argument more persuasive, it will be necessary to flesh out how Luke has shown Jesus to be fully God.
While this book makes an important contribution to scholarly discussions on the construction of gender in Luke and Acts, it is written in a manner that also makes it quite accessible for non-specialists. Ministers, preachers, and teachers will appreciate the implications Wilson draws out for disciples today.