Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt (2005)

As a Christian and a huge fan of speculative fiction, I was eager to read this book. While I found certain sections of the book very touching and moving in seeing Christ's human side as a young boy and his divine side as the Son of God, mostly I found the book to be tedious and a bit pedantic. ( )

For me Anne Rice has always been a little hit and miss, and this novel is no exception. There was nothing I liked about this novel. The writing was sub-par, the material was bland and flowery. Granted she took on a different aspect of Christ's life, and I could tell she did her research, but the end result wasn't a compelling book. Anne Rice needs to go back to writing about vampires because if this is what her future writing is going to be like, I will be tuning out.
Carl Alves - author of Two For Eternity ( )

Christ the Lord by Anne Rice. Epiphany-OviedoELCA library section 13: adult fiction. This author usually writes about vampires, but “now for something completely different”: biblical biography! The adolescent Jesus bar Joseph is the main character, and Rice picks up his life story around age 8 as his clan returns from Egypt to resettle in Nazareth. Jesus has a problem though. He cannot pry information about his birth from his family, or why his clan sojourned in Egypt. His parents have forbidden him to ask questions ‘for his own good.’ Still the questions burn in his mind. Why did the angel come to Mary? Why was he born in Bethlehem? What happened there? If Joseph is not his father, then who IS? Why did the clan flee to Egypt? What did Herod do after the wise men visited Jesus in Bethlehem? Snippets from clan members and their evasiveness tell him that something sinister happened.
He is also frightened and bewildered by the fact that he can heal people, can catch glimpses of heavenly multitudes, can even make dead people come back to life. His parents catch him doing such things from time to time and warn him not to reveal his supernatural powers to others.
Rice’s careful research puts this book a step above your usual biblical novels. Jesus is the narrator in the first person, which gives the novel a compelling immediacy. Her descriptions of the great temple in Jerusalem, of the lands Jesus’ clan travels through from Egypt to Jerusalem, of the little village of Nazareth and the verdant hills and fields surrounding it, are all so descriptive that the reader can easily visualize it all. There are enough Biblical references to make the entire story seamless, for example, Jesus’ meeting his young kinsman John (the Baptist) who goes to live with the ultra-orthodox Essenes, or Jesus’ visit to the rabbis in the temple when his parents worriedly look everywhere for him for three days. It is during this visit that Jesus finally finds out about his birth from the temple rabbis. Herod’s murder of thousands of infants in an effort to kill the infant Son of David is so shocking that Jesus has a breakdown of sorts. Talk about trauma and guilt!
Upon the family’s return to Nazareth, Mary tells Jesus the whole story of his birth. She tells him to guard his power until God shows him the time to use it. She also says that God did not send him to be born to a rich family, or the family of a temple priest, or even a village rabbi. God sent Jesus to Joseph bar Jacob, the carpenter, and his betrothed, Mary of the Tribe of David in Nazareth. God has his reasons for this, and it is not their job to ask why, just to obey. This gives Jesus a measure of peace that has previously eluded him.
In the last chapter Jesus realizes why God sent him to earth. It is a meaningful ending, especially because we know what lies in Christ’s future. Jesus’ adolescence may well have been quite similar to this. Rice is able to put express an adolescent’s growing pains, thought processes, fears, wishes and hopes. It’s a good character study of Jesus as a youngster.
In an Author’s Note Rice tells how she wrote this book. She located and read many primary source materials, organized what was relevant, and wrote a thoughtful novel. As a result, Rice now sees a great coherence to the life of Christ and the origin of Christianity that previously eluded her. Ultimately, it has helped her reconnect with her Catholic faith. ( )

I'm trying to be fair; this really isn't my kind of book. It's highly speculative and it's fiction. Then I'm reminded of the book I just published about Revelation; it, too, is fiction (well, 1/3 of it is fiction) and it, too, will surely be considered highly speculative by many. I'd like to think, however, that my book is grounded in more solid research than Rice's; mine is, after all, hailed by other scholars as historically plausible.

Given, then, that we are discussing a purely fictional account of Jesus' years as a child, my review must be based upon whether or not the story held my interest. It did for a time; Anne Rice is a good writer. But I have a quest to learn (I seldom read fiction), and I really felt I was learning very little, so I nearly didn't finish the book.

I think readers who do not have a background in early Christian literature will be at a disadvantage. For example, in the story, the child Jesus sculpts a bird out of clay, then gives it life and it flies away. Um, really? But scholars will recognize the story from the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, which Rice latches onto and includes in her book, caring not that no historian of this gnostic gospel considers it to be true. The story is pure mythology, and not even Biblical myth.

Who, then, is the audience for this book? Not fundamentalist Christians, who will take offense at this portrayal of the Christ child. It isn't "biblical." Not historians, who will be unable to take it seriously. If Anne Rice is celebrating her return to Christianity with this series (the book is the first of a promised series) then it's an odd way to start out, wouldn't you think?

The answer, of course, is that Rice is writing mythology after the manner of Gospels; she collects stories, builds a personality for Christ as a youngster, then puts it all together in much the same way as Gospel writers did 2,000 years ago...honoring Christ not in fact, but in storytelling. And that's why I'm writing this review today, 5 days before Christmas. Today, as I drive down the streets of Minneapolis, I see manger scenes; scenes I know to be mythic, but beautiful and inspiring none-the-less. We have taken two contradictory Gospel renditions of Jesus' birth (Matthew and Luke), spliced them together, added some nice touches, and created an idyllic Christmas picture. In the same spirit of honoring Christ in myth, we can enjoy Anne Rice's fictive "gospel", and even give it ... well, four stars. ( )

It's rubbish. ( )