Welborn on Rice
Amy Welborn reviews Anne Rice's Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt. Excerpts:
The most interesting, even fascinating part of the book is the "Author's Note," in which Rice explains why she wrote the novel and how she went about it. Her motivations are movingly related, as she characterizes her earlier work in a spiritual context, her reasons for leaving the Church at 18, and her return decades later. Christianity caught her interest again, paradoxically (or not) enough, because of another mystery: "I stumbled upon a mystery without a solution...the mystery was the survival of the Jews..." (309). Her obsession with this question led to a renewed interest in Jesus, a desire to understand him, and finally to this novel.
It's when Rice addresses contemporary Scripture scholarship that things really get cracking. It's fascinating and instructive to see an "outsider" to the field of Scripture scholarship look at it with wide-open, frankly innocent eyes, and be 1)appalled at the shoddy nature of much of what's out there and 2)even more appalled and mystified by the animus some of these scholars have for their subject. In short, she discovered, Many of these scholars who apparently devoted their lives to New Testament scholarship disliked Jesus Christ. Period.
She contrasts this with other fields and says that one would simply not find this. . .
I didn't find the [novel itself] very interesting. Rice is clearly fascinated by the social, cultural and political milieu, and really puts all of that center stage. Since the narrator is a child, even though he's, you know, God, the language is simple and stilted. There are some nice moments, mostly involving Mary. Those of you irritated by Rice's contention that Luke meant it when he said that Jesus grew in wisdom might find solace in the fact that every aspect of Jesus' family life she describes is consistent with ancient traditional Christian understanding - Mary's perpetual virginity, James as the son of Joseph from a previous marriage, per the Eastern tradition, and so on.
