On the Bookshelf by Nancee Cline

The Gospels tell us almost nothing about Jesus as a little boy. In Christ the Lord, Out of Egypt, novelist Anne Rice offers a story about what his childhood might have been like.

So much of what we imagine of the Holy family is limited by Christmas card art. We see Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus on a donkey fleeing to Egypt across the desert. This is the same desert the Hebrews spent 40 years crossing. Is it realistic that one man and new mother/bride would cross it alone? Rice offers us another picture: a large extended family; many men, many animals, safety in numbers, supporting each other, camping along the way.

What about their years as refugees? The family finds work and prosperity in Alexandria. They are good, reliable, skilled artisans in a flourishing city. Seven years in Alexandria, and wouldn't they all have learned to speak Greek? Wouldn't all the children—Jesus and his cousins—have learned it, as well as studied Hebrew in school? Of course they would have absorbed Aramaic, the common tongue of their parents. Jesus might easily have been trilingual. In this novel it is absolutely believable. This is background information for the story that begins in Alexandria.

The news that Herod has just died frees the family to return to Israel. As the adult men debate the implications and the future, we witness it through the eyes of a seven year old. The story is told in first person...Jesus tells us what happened to him during this transitional year. It is all described by a child who loves his faith, and who delights in all of creation. He occasionally has bewildering –or comforting—flashes of insight, echoes of heaven.

The extended family packs, and leaves. We make the journey back through a politically smoldering Israel, an explosive Jerusalem, and on to the quiet village of Nazareth. We witness the customs lived out by a devout, disciplined Jewish family. There is great detail about the celebrations, the foods, the simple daily rituals for cleaning and praying. There are many lively debates among the men folk concerning the political situation, speculations on the next king, Rome's next step, the local insurgents, and mixing it all up with the scriptures they know by heart. As a favorite uncle states, “every Jew is a philosopher on the Sabbath. “ Jesus listens carefully and ponders all these things.

This year in the life of Jesus marks both his return to Israel and the gradual loss of childhood freedom and innocence. By the time he is 8, he is becoming aware of himself as set apart, and he longs to discover who he is and what he has come for. Rice walks a delicate line in keeping this child fully human, yet divine. For me she succeeds. This simple, understated story makes me happy. Every time I read it, I feel my heart expand.

The author's notes are a wonderful addendum. Rice describes her own faith journey which is significantly enhanced by her journey through the research. After a childhood in the Catholic Church, she becomes an outspoken convert to atheism. Decades later, as her husband is dying, she finds her faith again. Once she decides to write this novel, she pours herself into learning all she can. She reads the classics, the skeptics, the revisionists, Jewish and Christian scholars, past and present. The scope and depth of her studies are detailed.

In the Apocrypha, Rice finds “tantalizing tales” of the boy Jesus who could perform miracles like turning clay birds into living creatures... She explains that the legends are often “fanciful, some of them humorous, extreme to be sure, but they had lived on into the Middle Ages, and beyond.” She admits, “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 that spoke to me.”

The legends spoke to me as well. After I started reading Christ the Lord, Out of Egypt, I had vivid dreams of my sons as seven year olds. It is not that my children seemed holy, but rather that the author captured the essence of children so beautifully. Jesus cuddles with his mother, loves to fall asleep next to her. He thinks she is beautiful. He has special affection for babies and old people. Praise comes easily to his lips, as does compassion for suffering. As I read (and in my dreams) I saw sweet, unarmored faces, trusting innocent eyes, easy laughter, easy tears.

Most of us have longed to have Jesus hold us in his arms. In this book, it is the other way around.

CLICK HERE FOR JULY 2007  BOOK REVIEW: The Personal Reflections of Joan of Arc, by Mark Twain

CLICK HERE FOR JUNE 2007  BOOK REVIEW: Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace by Maxine Hong Kingston

CLICK HERE FOR MAY 2007 BOOK REVIEW: WHY I AM A missional + evangelical + post/protestant + liberal/conservative + mystical/poetic + biblical + charismatic/contemplative + fundamentalist/calvinist + anabaptist/anglican + methodist + catholic + green + incarnational + depressedyet-hopeful + emergent + unfinished CHRISTIAN by Brian McLaren

CLICK HERE FOR APRIL 2007 BOOK REVIEW: The Colonyesus by John Tayman

CLICK HERE FOR MARCH 2007 BOOK REVIEW: Christianity for the Rest of Us by Diana Bass

CLICK HERE FOR FEBRUARY 2007 BOOK REVIEW:Dreams from My Father, A Story of Race and Inheritance by Barack Obama

CLICK HERE FOR JANUARY 2007 BOOK REVIEW: Summary for 2007

CLICK HERE FOR DECEMBER 2006 BOOK REVIEW: The Dream of God by Verna J. Dozier

CLICK HERE FOR NOVEMBER 2006 BOOK REVIEW: Pastwatch, the Redemtion of Christopher Columbus by Orson Scoot Card

CLICK HERE FOR OCTOBER 2006 BOOK REVIEW: Small Wonder by Barbara Kingsolver

CLICK HERE FOR SEPTEMBER 2006 BOOK REVIEW:The Chosen by Chaim Potok

CLICK HERE FOR AUGUST 2006 BOOK REVIEW: LIrrestible Revolution, living as an ordinary radical: by Shane Claiborne

CLICK HERE FOR JULY 2006  BOOK REVIEW: The Piano Shop on the Left Bank, by Thad Carhart; Zen and the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel; Saturday, by Ian McEwan; Gift From the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindberg

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