Review of Anne Rice's Christ the Lord

I want to be honest from the start and tell you that when I first saw an article about this book, I was skeptical. Anne Rice is a fairly young Christian, coming out of years of studying and writing about very dark things. There has been a lot of hype about this book and how the former queen of all things dark is now attempting to write a first person narrative of the early years of Christ. Also noted in the articles I've read has been the fact that she relied on many extrabiblical sources, such as the apocryphal gospels. So yes, I was skeptical.


Nonetheless, I picked up the book, and was - I admit - quickly hooked. She's a great writer, and this is a really good story. Now the very first chapter contains a story that I immediately recognized from the apocryphal Infancy Gospel of Thomas, where Jesus causes the death of another child, using his divine power, and then raises the same child from the dead. For those not familiar with this gospel, let me just quote Wikipedia a site which attempts to present a balanced view of most things:

The text describes the life of the child Jesus, with fanciful supernatural events. One of the episodes involves Jesus making clay birds, which he then proceeds to bring to life, an act also attributed to Jesus in the Qur'an, thus indicating the text may have had substantial influence on Arabic tradition by the 7th century. In another episode, a child disperses water that Jesus has collected, so Jesus makes the child's body wither into a corpse, and another child is killed by Jesus when he accidentally bumps into him.

When Joseph and Mary's neighbor's complain, they are miraculously struck blind by Jesus. Jesus then starts receiving lessons, but arrogantly tries to teach the teacher instead, upsetting the teacher who suspects supernatural origins. Jesus is amused by this suspicion, which he confirms, and revokes all his earlier cruelty. Subsequently he heals a friend who is killed when he falls from a roof, and another who cuts his foot with an axe.

Note that Rice also uses the story of the clay birds. Here is what Rice has to say about her use of this source in her "Author's Note" to the book:

Then there were the legends -- The Apocrypha -- including the tantalizing tales in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas describing a boy Jesus who could strike a child dead, bring another to life, turn clay birds in to living creatures, and perform other miracles. I'd stumbled on them very early in my research, in multiple editions, and never forgot them. And neither had the world. They were fanciful, some of them humorous, extreme to be sure, but they had lived on into the Middle Ages, and beyond. I couldn't get these legends out of my mind.

Ultimately, I chose to embrace this material, to enclose it within the canonical framework as best I could. I felt there was a deep truth in it, and I wanted to preserve that truth as it spoke to me. Of course, that is an assumption. But I made it. And perhaps in assuming that Jesus did manifest supernatural powers at an early age I am somehow being true to the declaration of the Council of Chalcedon, that Jesus was God and Man at all times.

For those interested, here is a link describing that Council. I would agree with the dual nature of Christ - that is basic theology. But I don't think her explanation gives adequate validation to her use of a non-Biblical source that so clearly contains false assertions about Jesus.

At this point some may think that I am being too dogmatic in my approach to this book. Perhaps so. I will say that I did not find fault with Rice's reliance on certain Catholic beliefs about Mary - for example her perpetual virginity. Rice takes the traditional Catholic view that James was a son of Joseph from a previous marriage and that although he took Mary as his wife, they did not have relations. That's not how I read the scripture, but its also not all that important. I was willing to go along with her on that issue, because I don't think it reflects one way or another on the character or nature of Christ.

I did take issue, however with a variance that Rice seems to have taken from scripture. The climax of her book takes place when Jesus is eight years old and returns to the the Temple with his family. She works in the account (from Luke 2:41-52) of Jesus getting left behind at the temple for three days. This works nicely into the arc of her story. However, a close reading of Luke will reveal that this in fact happened when Christ was twelve years old, not eight. Not hugely important I suppose, but it does reveal a willingness in Rice to ignore scripture in order to make her story work.

For those who still think I'm taking these details too seriously, let me say this. I am familiar with two other fictionalized accounts of biblical stories. There are more, I'm sure, but the two that I am most familiar with are Paul by Walter Wangerin Jr. and The Red Tent by Anita Diamant. I read the first of the two (my wife read the second) and while I don't recall finding any discrepancies between the ideas in Paul and the Biblical account, I didn't pay as much attention. Why? Because it doesn't matter that much who Paul was. Was he tall or short? Nice or mean? Doesn't really matter.

But it does matter who Jesus was. Every detail matters. Why? Because this was God incarnate. So any detail of who he was, reflects directly on the nature of God. That's no small thing - but it seems to me that Rice is treating it as a small thing. Yes, its a fictional account, but let's be honest - even a fictional account is an attempt to affect how the reader views the details of the non-fiction event. For Rice to pull in material from such clearly false sources as the Infancy Gospel seems inexcusable.

I would love to be able to recommend this book. It is enjoyable, and I think there's some good aspects to it, but I think that all of it is outweighed by Rice's treading too carelessly on sacred ground. Worse, I get the impression that she has plans to continue the series, and delve further into the early life of Christ. I hope that if she does so, she'll do it with more care.

Let me conclude by saying that I do think some good will come of this book. Rice has a huge following, and I hope and pray that many who are far from Christ will read this book and become intrigued - perhaps even come to saving faith. But overall, I think that she has overstepped herself - putting too much trust in her own research and the praises she has heard from years of success, and not enough trust in the years of diligent study and prayer by the rest of the body of Christ.