"That was a great book."

"What was a great book?"

"Anne Rice’s CHRIST THE LORD: OUT OF EGYPT."

"What was it about?"

"Jesus, as a seven-year-old, learns who He is and what His purpose involves."

"How can anyone make a story out of that? Where is the drama? What about the action? Does the ‘good versus evil’ element ever come into play? How is it possible to make a fictionalized story about Jesus?..."

So went the debate I had within myself when I first learned noted author Anne Rice was writing a novel about Jesus. It is always a moment to pause and quietly celebrate when anyone of stature chooses to invest their talents into spreading the news; but Jesus’ childhood? The only account from the Biblical records was a brief episode at the Temple, at the age of twelve, when He was separated from Mary and Joseph. How could it be possible to build a full-length novel, compelling enough to invest one’s time, from that? Perhaps, even more importantly, with such minute details from the historical record, how could any author write a story about the childhood of Jesus bar Joseph, learning He was the son of another, without incurring the hostile wrath of Christians all over the planet for committing sacrilegious fraud?

Anne Rice, I tell you, has done it.

CHRIST THE LORD: OUT OF EGYPT is a marvelous work of fiction that not only tells the story of the Jewish people at the epoch of two thousand years ago, it also viably relates what life might have been for Jesus, growing from a boy into a man, learning the story of His birth. Untold numbers already, in the two thousand years since, know the story. Even if they do not accept Jesus as the Savior of mankind, they have heard the story from somewhere. Here, we get to see the boy Jesus learn it Himself.

The setting starts off in Alexandria Egypt. Jesus lives there with his mother Mary, her husband Joseph (He refers to him as ‘Joseph’, suspecting someone else as His father), his older brother James, and a host of family members who live with them in the Jewish quarter of the city.

As the story begins, Jesus is playing in the street with some boys. He inadvertently kills one of them (Eleazar) when he rears up in power to vigorously defend his side of the street in the game. Commotion erupts as all the adults go wild with a frenzied discourse. No one knows exactly what to do; no one knows quite what happened – at least not in what any are telling. There is a secret from the start of which none willing to speak.

First, there were the sparrows of clay brought to life; now, there is this.

Jesus runs to his mother, frightened. He does not understand what happened. His family (his mother, Joseph, his brother James, his cousin John, his uncles Cleopas and Alphaeus, his aunts Mary and Elizabeth), though they remain mum, He does detect an undercurrent of knowledge bubbling there.

Dashing from His mother over to the dead boy’s home, He tells Eleazar to get up.

Eleazar does so, and immediately he begins beating on Jesus with a fury, calling Him, in disparaging terms, the ‘Son of David’. Over and over again, he cries out against him, while beating on Him, ‘Son of David! Son of David! Son of David!’
In an effort to quell the turmoil caused, Joseph announces that he and his family would be leaving Egypt. Herod was dead. They could now return to the land of Israel.

How he knows this, people question him; and he responds by telling them the news would arrive shortly by Roman courier that Herod is no more. In the meantime, they would begin making preparations – thus, CHRIST THE LORD: OUT OF EGYPT.
They return to Israel. They visit the Temple for the Passover. They see Jerusalem in an uprising. They encounter Roman soldiers dispensing justice to ensure the peace in the land. They live their lives as God’s chosen people, the Jewish race that has remained intact, miraculously, over thousands of years. And along the way, Jesus learns, piece by piece, the story of being born in Bethlehem, of angels visiting his mother and Joseph, of shepherds, of magi, or Herod and his atrocities.

My desire to read this book came from what I perceived of Anne Rice’s sincerity in her attempt to write a viable story of Jesus as a boy. I saw her talking about it on TV, and I read interviews conducted with her in print; and my conclusion was this book would not be something to make Jesus into something He was not.

Sadly, when the book was available for purchase in my own area, I failed to leap at the chance to acquire my own copy, as I still had reservations.

Anne Rice’s Catholic beliefs held me back. There are decidedly Catholic elements suffused throughout the story (James, as an older brother, being one), but these are not presented in a manner that takes away from the central theme: Jesus discovering who He is. They are simply present as part of the tale. While I do not agree with these views, there is no effort here to promote any Catholic agenda. CHRIST THE LORD is an effort to promote Jesus.

Secondly, I was not all that sure on how a Jesus story, absent His always knowing who He was, would gel with my beliefs. There is no evidence from the Biblical records showing He always knew (as is implicitly followed in the Protestant faith), so the possibility that He learned it as He grew is feasible. The question now was how one presents such in a manner that is never trite in its execution, making Jesus appear more along the lines of some fantasy superhero who conjures the powers of the universe at His every whim.

I believe Anne Rice manages this by actually telling the story of the Jewish people: their Diaspora, their subjugation to the Romans, their religious practices, their everyday way of life, their culture handed down through their teaching and their stories. She doesn’t tell the Jesus story everyone – aside from Jesus (a unique vantage point, I thought) knows; she tells the Jewish story we do not know, but Jesus does.

Through the experience of seeing the land, the culture, and the people, we see Jesus bar Joseph – as it is His experience we are seeing.

CHRIST THE LORD: OUT OF EGYPT tells an amazing story of self-discovery. It is obviously not going to be something those seeking mere titular thrills will enjoy; but for those who actually want to go a step further, beyond the exterior of what excites our senses, deeper into something of more meaning and substance, this is the awe-inspiring first act to something words cannot describe.

I eagerly await act two.

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