Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt
A Novel
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4.5 • 63 Ratings
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
Having completed the two cycles of legend to which she has devoted her career so far, Anne Rice gives us now her most ambitious and courageous book, a novel about the early years of CHRIST THE LORD, based on the Gospels and on the most respected New Testament scholarship.
The book’s power derives from the passion its author brings to the writing and the way in which she summons up the voice, the presence, the words of Jesus who tells the story.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Rice departs from her usual subject matter to pen this curious portrait of a seven-year-old Jesus, who departs Egypt with his family to return home to Nazareth. Rice's painstaking historical research is obvious throughout, whether she's showing the differences among first-century Jewish groups (Pharisees, Essenes and Sadducees all play a part), imagining a Passover pilgrimage to Jerusalem or depicting the regular but violent rebellions by Jews chafing under Roman rule. The book succeeds in capturing Jesus' profound Jewishness, with some of the best scenes reflecting his Torah education and immersion in the oral traditions of the Hebrew Bible. As fiction, though, the book's first half is slow going. Since it is told from Jesus' perspective, the childlike language can be simplistic, though as readers persevere they will discover the riches of the sparse prose Rice adopts. The emotional heart of the story Jesus' gradual discovery of the miraculous birth his parents have never discussed with him picks up steam as well, as he begins to understand why he can heal the sick and raise the dead. Rice provides a moving afterword, in which she describes her recent return to the Catholic faith and evaluates, often in an amusingly strident fashion, the state of biblical studies today.
Customer Reviews
Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt
This is a book about the life of Jesus. It is incorrectly categorized as "horror" in the iTunes bookstore. The second book of the series Christ the Lord: The Road to Caanan is categorized as "religious". It's a very interesting historical fiction book written from the point of Jesus as a young boy.
Christ the Lord, Out of Egypt
Very good HISTORICAL NOVEL, not "Horror"
Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt
I read this book after receiving a recommendation from our Bible Study coordinator. Ann Rice did a wonderful job weaving first century history with Jesus' discovery of who he was and what he was to become-Our Lord and Savior. I was struck by how terrifying it must have been to live at that time with the incredible cruelty inflicted on the Jews by the Romans and by their own Jewish Leaders.