"Judith Christ."

The Anchoress, writing about the problem some feminists have with the use of male pronouns to refer to God, points to this book -- "Judith Christ Of Nazareth, The Gospels Of The Bible, Corrected To Reflect That Christ Was A Woman, Extracted From The Books Of Matthew, Mark, Luke, And John" -- which addresses the problem somebody somewhere apparently has with the idea that Jesus was male. Is it worth getting upset about that book? Maybe not. There are many versions of the Bible, some rewritten in slang or as comics. It's just another way to take in the material. It's not as if someone is messing up the only copy. If you're concerned about blasphemy or heresy, and you think this book is a problem, don't read it. I have much more of a problem with demands that shared rituals be rewritten to eliminate the masculine references to God -- even though the argument that God is not male is much stronger than the the argument that Jesus is not male.

The "Judith Christ" version of the Bible reminds me of Virginia Woolf's "Judith Shakespeare," in "A Room of One's Own." Except it's not like it at all. Woolf envisions a female equivalent of Shakespeare -- Shakespeare's sister -- and works out that she would never have achieved anything. But "Judith Christ" gets to do exactly the same things Jesus did, mostly because virtually no effort was put into the creation of the new book. Just a few "search and replace" commands would do the trick. It would take some imagination to come up with the Virginia Woolf-style treatment of "Judith Christ."