Christ The Lord: Out of Egypt by Anne Rice–Review
Posted: December 9, 2010 Filed under: Books | Tags: Anne Rice, Books, divinity, humanity, language, story, temple Leave a comment »
There is a danger in telling stories that walk the line between the biblical and the extra-biblical, but Anne Rice has walked the line well. Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt deserves attention for her historically-fashioned, biblically-informed, and imaginative “construction” of Jesus’ boyhood. This novel has also won my praise for the brilliant themes employed throughout.
Christ the Lord takes a different narrative perspective than that of the canonical gospels; it is told from the first-person point of view of Jesus. Rice takes her creative stories and weaves them into the history we already have (the gospels and apocryphal writing) of Jesus’ early years and later ministry. The reader is forced to think “outside the box” of the gospels and to experience the boy Jesus in many new ways (singing, playing, working, falling asleep in synagogue, accidentally doing miracles, experiencing evil dreams). While the gospels are sufficient, it is fun to imagine our savior telling this story of his own childhood years.
The book was very helpful in my understanding of first-century Palestinian and Jewish culture. Aspects like a high value on family and community living are sometimes overlooked as the Gospels do not give us the early years of Jesus’ life in much detail. For example, Rice immerses the reader into a time when children were much more mature than the twenty-first century American child (traveling, working, memorizing most (if not all) of the Scriptures). From Jesus’ point of view, the reader literally feels like a member of Jesus’ family as they travel around, work, play, and try to survive.
There are many themes that are carried throughout the narrative. The four themes that impacted me the most were the themes of language, story, humanity and divinity, and the temple. Anne Rice makes it blatantly obvious that a plethora of languages were being spoken in the Palestine region in the first century. The ways she used this theme were helpful in my understanding of the political-cultural environment and its narrative and theological implications. From my own understanding of history, Rice has given an accurate depiction of the Roman Empire. Characters in Christ the Lord usually speak to the government officials in Greek (a product of the Hellenization of Europe) but to their own families in their mother tongue of Aramaic or Hebrew. It is much easier to get a real understanding of this forced taking on of Greek culture in the context of a plot-driven story than from a text book with charts and lists. Rice also weaves this language theme by showing that the Temple was where all of the Earth (people of every tongue) came to meet God.
Anne Rice simply tells a good story! One of the most moving parts of the plot involves a description of James’ asking for forgiveness from Jesus for his hatred and envy of Jesus’ status. It is so obvious that the reader is to identify with James in confessing that we too have desired the place of God. The emotions created in this scene allude all the way back to the Garden of Eden. Not only is Rice an excellent storyteller, but through her narrative she precisely points out that the religion of Israel was a religion of a story. They did have a theology and law, but these were set in the greater context of Israel’s rescue out of Egypt and becoming the people of God.
The third important theme to which I will respond is that of Jesus’ dual nature as both human and divine (I assume that Anne Rice believes that Jesus is without sin, and therefore, she is striving to portray that reality.). The author does a fair job of portraying this double nature of Jesus. For instance, I had never considered Jesus’ compassion much with regards to his human-divine nature, but to experience Jesus weeping at the sight and thoughts of death was very moving for me, the reader. The boy Christ shows the greatest of compassion for others’ lives, yet he is overcome with emotion in a very human way. Jesus goes through daily life without sin, and this must have been terribly difficult to portray. I applaud Anne Rice for her portrayal.
Many people would be uncomfortable with the thought of Jesus “discovering” his divinity and fulfillment of “Messiah”, but I do not see it as inconsistent with his human-divine nature. This is portrayed well as Jesus prods his family through many years of his life to tell him more of the angel, Bethlehem, and his family’s silence for these years. I thoroughly enjoyed this aspect of the narrative as I have never considered how Jesus learned of his special birth and calling. Rice has offered an interesting take on this mystery.
Lastly, the theme of the temple moves the plot along as Jesus’ family experiences violence in the temple, anticipates the journey to it, and as Jesus learns of his story in it. “The Lord dwells in the temple”, and the importance of the temple for the first-century Jews is experienced as the reader lives life from Jesus’ perspective. It is completely appropriate and moving that Rice subtly shows that Jesus is the true temple to which the grand story is pointing.
Overall, Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt was an excellent novel. It has challenged me in reading fiction, in thinking clearly about our certainties concerning Jesus’ childhood, and in seeing Jesus’ story (and childhood) as part of God’s grand design.
