Out of Egypt

 

 

I’ve been reading Anne Rice’s first person novel about Jesus, “Christ the Lord, Out of Egypt”. Though I don’t have any investment in Jesus from a religious standpoint and Rice aggressively does, she is a gifted writer and the narrative is compelling. The Jesus of the novel is a young boy who occasionally manifests remarkable, sometimes terrible powers and is troubled by the fact that his family seems to know more about his true origins than he does.

 

Jesus is a very likeable character here, humble and intelligent, and Rice’s descriptions of first century Judaea are riveting. Through the eyes of the young unknowing messiah, we see the great city of Alexandria with its temples and philosophers, and Nazareth with its dusty roads, strict Pharisees and Roman soldiers. I am especially pleased with the way Rice handles the latter two. Her Pharisees, while demanding are not cardboard villains, but a crucial element of Jewish culture, the final arbiters when some really knotty problem must be resolved. And the Roman soldiers, most of them, are not vicious animals but these poor bored bastards who are charged withkeeping the peace in a hot unyielding land many miles from home. Sometimes they do it with ruthless dispatch, but just as often they are seen struggling with dominion in a land whose people hate them passionately.

 

Finally --well, not exactly finally, as I haven’t finished the book --the Devil makes the first of what I assume will be several appearances. He is a beautiful but miserable being who seeks to draw Jesus into his circle of despair and emptiness. Jesus does not hate him in some gross operatic way, but recognizes that this is a treacherous spirit who must be refused at every turn. It’s deft writing, and like the rest of the book, enormously entertaining. You ask me kids, I say: check it out.

 

 

 

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