Mount Zion Ryan

I was at the library returning The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe audiobook when I saw this Anne Rice’s latest book on the shelf. It is called Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt. I’ve not been a big fan of her other books, well truth is I’m not all that big into vampire fiction. Anyway, Iread some good reviews (Orthodox reviews even) and thought I’d take a look.

I have a soft spot for fictionalized Gospels. They never really challenge my understand of Who Christ is, but I find the stories are often pretty compelling. I’ve not reread Kazantzakis since becoming Orthodox but I remember liking it. One of my favorites is by Jose Saramago. I think that these books helped me see the fully human side of Christ before I was Orthodox. And, as I had no doubts about His divinity, I could compartmentalize the books’ skepticism.

Since Mrs. Rice provided an Author’s note at the end, I thought it would be helpful to see what her agenda is, who Jese is for her, before reading the book. Her writing the book turns out to be a part of a larger return to the faith. She grew up in a traditional Roman Catholic setting.

She did gobs of research (especially on first century Palestine) and here are some of her comments regarding the skeptical “Who was Jesus” books:

• “What gradually came clear to me was that many of the skeptical arguements–arguements that insisted most of the Gospels were suspect, for istance, or written too late to be eyewitness accounts–lacked coherence…Absurd conslusions were reached on the basis of little or no data.”
• “The whole case for the nondivine Jesus who stumbled into Jerusalem and somehow got crucified by nobody and had nothing to do with the founding of Christianity and would be horrified by it if he knew about it…that case was not made. Not only was it not made, I discovered in this field some of the worst and most biased scholarship I’d ever read.”
• “And I also sensed something else. Many of these scholars, scholars who appearantly devoted their life to New Testament scholarship, disliked Jeus Christ…I’d never come across this kind of emotion in any other field of research, at least not to this extent.”
• “The people who go into Elizabethan studies don’t set out to prove that Queen Elizabeth was a fool…they don’t even apply this sort of dislike or suspicion or contempt to other Elizabethan figures.”

So, I am reading on convinced that Mrs. Rice’s motives are genuine and a product of her own faith in the Risen Christ.

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