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Comments: (Full disclosure: I've plagiarized most of the following from a review at Amazon.com).
As the book opens, Yeshua bar Joseph (Jesus of Nazareth) is 30 years old, and a man on the brink of embracing his identity and his purpose. He's God in the flesh, as he himself knows, but he also struggles with the human desires for companionship, family, and acceptance. His relatives and the local villagers sometimes call him Yeshua, the Sinless.
From the opening pages of this book, we see the drama of village life, relational conflicts, and restrained divinity. Rice, through Yeshua's eyes, lets us in for peeks at the heart of God, as it relates to the human struggle. This culminates in Yeshua's face-off with Satan in the wilderness, during forty days of fasting--a masterpiece of textured prose--and in the following incident with Mary of Magdala. From there, Rice shifts her story from conflict into beauty, as Yeshua verbalizes his purpose to his new followers and his family.
(Ken again) I recognize that some folks could be uncomfortable with the idea of an author adding new anecdotes and dialog to the historical record about Jesus. In response, I'd simply point out that other types of artists do essentially the same thing. Painters and songwriters, for example, embellish all the time, but they're not criticized because the extra details aid our understanding of Jesus, and ultimately help us relate to Him better. We filter their embellishments thru scripture, of course, and reject anything that is inconsistent with truth. We should grant an author the same privileges, and hold them to no less rigorous a standard.
