Reviews for El Mesias - El nino judio (Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt)

The average rating for El Mesias - El nino judio (Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt) based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-02-01 00:00:00 Todd Barnett I have wanted to read this book evver since I heard about it. I hadn't read any of Anne Rice's prior stuff, but on a professional level (I'm a Lutheran pastor) and just on a level of personal interest I thought I'd give it a try. The very concept of this novel--writing a fictional book about Jesus at age seven, in the first person, from a perspective that takes New Testament and Apocryphal writings seriously--is, needless to say, hugely ambitious. And when your main character is someone who 2 billion people on this planet believe to be the Son of God, it's clear that whatever kind of book you write, not everyone will be pleased with where your imagination takes you. All that being said, however, I think Anne Rice's portrayal is fascinating. I won't say it was flawless, but it was fascinating. There are several aspects of the story that I thought were insightful: -Jesus being raised in a solidly "middle class" family, if you can say that about a first-century family. To be able to travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem, Bethlehem to Egypt, Egypt back to Jerusalem, and back and forth from Nazareth to Jerusalem on a yearly basis (all of which the NT says Jesus' family did), that takes certain means. I'm fascinated by Rice's idea of Joseph--quiet, principled, hard working, maybe a little stubborn from time to time, but generally a very good man. -The roll models that mold Jesus. Many of these arise from Rice's imagination--Uncle Cleopas and "Old Sarah," for example--and if you pay close enough attention, you can see that she put a great deal of thought into what and who would have created the kind of teacher that Jesus would become. My favorite little detail was the rabbi in Nazareth who walks with a limp from being robbed, beaten, and left for dead on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho. Sound familiar? -Rice's historical research. She did a LOT of homework for this book, and it shows. Sometimes it's even a little heavy-handed, where she'll insert sentences and even paragraphs of information that, while interesting, do not advance the plot. OK, I get it. You've read up about first-century Judea. But it's ironic, considering all her historical research, that she adopts apocryphal gospels so uncritically. The book's opening sequence is lifted directly from the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, which most scholars date to the second or third century at the earliest. Makes for an interesting story, I guess, but if you're going to go to such pains to make it realistic, then why go there? My warning to most anyone who will approach this text is that it is a piece of fiction, and yet almost noone, religious or secular, will truly approach it as such. If you want to really enjoy this book, then this Jesus has to become a fictional character for you. This is Anne Rice's Jesus, not "your" Jesus. This is a fictional first-century Jewish boy, a creation of the piety and imagination of one woman, not a real human being. I think the learning I take from this book is that in Western society, almost everyone has their "own" Jesus. Whether we're religious or secular, whatever we regard our relationship with Jesus to entail, we all have a mental construct of who Jesus was or is, that may or may not bear any resemblance to Rice's Jesus, or to the historical Jesus of Nazareth. It's fascinating when all those "Jesus's"--hers, yours, the Jesus of the New Testament, the Jesus of history--interact.

Review # 2 was written on 2007-08-29 00:00:00 Logan Ross Why is it that the first-person books set in ancient times invariably have a hyper-simple, naive narrative style? This is supposed to be Jesus telling his own story, not as a child but as a man (there are some nods to "when I was a child, I spoke as a child" in the narrative, just in case you didn't catch on that this is JESUS THE CHRIST narrating, even though I believe it was Paul who was supposed to have written those words), and I'm just not buying that Jesus was Forrest Gump with a better copy editor. Many people say it's written in the voice of a seven-year-old, but the narrator at one point actually writes something like, "But I was a child then and there were many things I didn't understand." Rice depicts him as having received a good education in Greek, educated in the literary tradition of Old Testament, so if you take that along with the stories Jesus tells in the Gospels, there's no reason to think his narrative style would not be more complex, perhaps even lyrical. But, no, it's the same narrative voice as I've found in C.S. Lewis's Till We Have Faces (one of my favorite books, mind) or Martha Rofeheart's first-person novels about Cleopatra and Sappho or The Red Tent. It's the "I am a person in the ancient world. Even though I am an educated and worldly Queen or a celebrated poet or the Messiah, I am a simple person because you see, I live in the ancient world" voice. And in this simple voice, Jesus tells you about his childhood, about his need to know who he is and why. This is the most enjoyable part about the book, the struggle of a little boy who knows that there is something different about him. I only regret that Jesus the boy is a bit too serious. We get to see so much of serious Jesus in the Bible, and I wish Rice had chosen to show parts of his personality that might have been neglected. However, she chooses to take up the story just as Jesus decides he won't have fun and play like other children, which makes him nearly the same as the Jesus of the Bible, just smaller and not yet filled in on the details of his birth and parentage. You want to give the kid a ball and tell him to have some fun. Sure, you're the Messiah, but you don't need to worry about that just yet. The historical details are interesting and seem well-researched. Some of that research really wants you to know it was there because you see, you really ought to be clear on the fact that there were many languages spoken in Jerusalem in the early first century. Even Latin! Did I mention that there were many languages spoken in Jerusalem in the early first century? Even Latin? Oh, and Mary is so innocent, like a child! Very innocent. Because she's a virgin, you know. Innocent, just like a child. I found Anne Rice's author's note annoying. She writes against New Testament scholars who "hate Jesus Christ" and offer faulty arguments against him and yet doesn't mention who these scholars are and in what way their arguments are "based on assumptions." (If it's the assumption that perhaps Jesus was not the Son of God, I think that's a fine assumption for an academic to make in doing research.) And all the personal stuff about her return to Christianity made the book seem so damned earnest that I just couldn't even enjoy it as a story.