Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt - Anne Rice

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Category: Historical fiction. Acquired: Christmas 2007 or 2008. Re-read: July 2009 (Alaska cruise!) Briefly: creative and thought-provoking imaginings on the life of Jesus Christ as an 8-year old, as He first starts to become aware of who He is.

Comments: Like many, I was surprised when this book first appeared a few years ago, written by a well-known author of vampire-oriented horror tales. I was more than a little afraid of what I'd find between the covers. But Anne Rice's spiritual re-awakening is real, and is a story worth reading in its own right. Before returning to the faith of her youth, she questioned it thoroughly and deeply, and with scholarly completeness. In the end, she felt the critics who wanted to paint Jesus as non-divine, and the Gospels as late compilations and forgeries, totally failed to make their cases. She says, in fact, that their bias and even hatred towards Jesus drove them to some of the poorest scholarship she'd ever seen in her years of historical studies.

The story she's written is virtually all extra-biblical, although it is reassuringly accurate in areas where it does overlap with the scriptural or historical record, e.g. the descriptions of Mary and Joseph, the Jewish culture of the time, the actions of Herod and his successors, etc. It starts with the (extended) family returning from Egypt to Palestine, still under Roman occupation and torn by rebellion. Jesus is 8 years old, and is aware that he's different from others, but unsure exactly how, and why. (I find that plausible enough, given that he was fully human). He knows that there are topics that his mother and father won't let him ask about. He knows that there was some sort of excitement when he was born, but not the details. He knows that the local townsfolk of Nazareth talk about his mother behind her back, as if she were in some sort of disgrace.

Over the course of the book, Jesus learns bits and pieces of what happened in Bethlehem, but still hasn't figured out how it all relates to him. He senses that what he really needs is the answer to one key question: Why did Herod have to kill all the Jewish boys aged 2 or less? Then Passover comes, and the family goes to the temple in Jerusalem. Driven to find answers, Jesus goes to the leaders of the temple, becomes separated from his mother and father, and voila - we're back in Luke chapter 2.

I though this was a great book. While not intending to be devotional or inspirational, it may just expand and enrich your mental image of what a fully-human/fully-divine being would be like. We're lucky to have an author of the caliber of Anne Rice writing Christian fiction, and I'm looking forward to the next book in this series, Christ the Lord: Road to Cana.