Review: "Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt"

I have been interested to read about Anne Rice’s return to the Roman Catholic Church, which she has written about in her autobiographic work, but I have not gotten to it yet.  What I did just read is her book, Christ the Lord:  Out of Egypt.

In the appended author’s note, Rice gives a brief overview of her relationship to the Roman Catholic Church from birth to today, and she explains the research that she did to write this book about the first thirteen years of Jesus’ life.  And she has done a great deal of research on all sides of the fence:  she read the biblical text, scholarly works on the dating and authorship of the texts – and, interestingly, concludes that the historical critical late-dating of the texts is spurious, historians like Josephus and Philo, the Gnostic writings, and modern theologians of all stripes.  She has put her work in.

What she comes up with is a very readable and compelling account of Jesus’ first thirteen years.  There were times as I was reading, I could feel grit in my clothes, and there are comments and turns of phrases which show she knows what the period was like.

In these things, this is an excellent novel.  However, I am concerned that some will read this, not as a novel, but as history.  Thankfully, she does not put this forward as history (as Dan Brown does his novels).  However, it is confusing to read her putting forth both a traditional/conservative biblical reading of the biblical texts while combining them with the Gnostic texts (which she finds, for some unwritten reason, “compelling”).

This makes for some historical curiosities:  on the one hand, she asserts that Jesus was born of a virgin, on the other, she says He has older siblings.   She asserts the Jewish understanding of Christ the Lord, but then presents Him as not knowing Who He is, and sinning – capriciously using His “abilities” to raise the dead, kill His childhood friends, and create living animals out of clay.

This is a well-written and enjoyable novel.   It makes me all the more interested in hearing Rice’s longer confession of her faith.  However, I would be careful who I would recommend this novel to, and I certainly would not give it to someone who wants to know Who Jesus is – the Real, Historical, Biblical Jesus, that is.