{"id":994,"date":"2008-03-06T22:36:00","date_gmt":"2008-03-06T22:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2008\/03\/jesus-sexuality-and-the-anne-rice-books\/"},"modified":"2013-06-21T10:14:19","modified_gmt":"2013-06-21T17:14:19","slug":"jesus-sexuality-and-the-anne-rice-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2008\/03\/jesus-sexuality-and-the-anne-rice-books.html","title":{"rendered":"Jesus, sexuality, and the Anne Rice books."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a>I never did finish reading Anne Rice\u2019s Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt<\/a><\/i> last year, but I probably should<\/i> get it back from the library and finish it at some point; it was a very intriguing mix of deeply traditional yet spectacularly innovative storytelling. It\u2019s one thing to suggest<\/i> what Christ might be thinking, as Mel Gibson did in The Passion of the Christ<\/a><\/i> (2004), by using flashbacks and point-of-view shots, but it\u2019s quite another to tell<\/i> us what Christ is thinking by writing an entire book \u2014 nay, an entire trilogy! \u2014 in the first person, from Christ\u2019s point of view. Even C.S. Lewis, after writing The Screwtape Letters<\/a><\/i> from a demon\u2019s point of view, said he didn\u2019t dare write a book from the opposite angelic point of view, because \u201cevery sentence would have to smell of Heaven.\u201d How much more daunting would a book written from the point of view of God himself be. And yet, Jesus is not merely God; he is a man, too, and the challenge for all Christians is to identify with his humanity and, through it, to identify more fully with that aspect of his divinity that is imprinted on all of us by our Creator yet is currently obscured by our corrupt and sinful nature. Novelists just have to meet this challenge in a different way from the rest of us.<\/span><\/p>\n

Anyway, one of the reasons why I should probably finish the first book soon is because the second book in Rice\u2019s trilogy, Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana<\/a><\/i>, came out this week \u2014 and as one who wrote an entire essay on the treatment of sexuality in Jesus films (for the book Scandalizing Jesus?: Kazantzakis\u2019s The Last Temptation of Christ Fifty Years On<\/a><\/i>), I am very intrigued to read this<\/i> bit from Cindy Crosby\u2019s review<\/a> in Books & Culture<\/i>:<\/p>\n

With the plotting of a master storyteller, she weaves together Jesus\u2019 love for a beautiful fifteen-year-old village girl, the gifts of the magi, the wedding at Cana, his baptism, and the opening steps of his ministry. . . .<\/p>\n

Rice wants us to understand Jesus in the context of his culture. What would it have meant to be thirty and unmarried in Nazareth? In one early scene, his older brother James demands of Jesus, \u201cWhat\u2019s the matter with you? \u2026 When will you take a wife? \u2026 There are two men as old as you in this town who\u2019ve never married. One is crippled. The other\u2019s an idiot.\u201d In one early scene, two boys unjustly accused of homosexual acts are stoned to death. \u201cBe careful men don\u2019t say the same things of you, Yeshua,\u201d his friend Jason tells him, complaining, \u201cWhere is your wife, Yeshua, where are your children?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If I\u2019m not mistaken, Anne Rice\u2019s son is gay, and her vampire books, among others, have had their share of homoerotic content. I have also heard that Rice wrestled with the Church\u2019s teaching on sexuality in particular as she made her way back to Catholicism a few years ago. So it is interesting to see these elements introduced into what is, to all appearances and by all accounts, a deeply, devoutly, and even traditionally constructed life-of-Jesus work.<\/p>\n

And it will be very interesting to see how Jesus\u2019 relationship with that 15-year-old girl compares to, say, his chaste interest in Mary the sister of Lazarus in Roger Young\u2019s Jesus<\/a><\/i> (1999; my review<\/a>).<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I never did finish reading Anne Rice\u2019s Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt last year, but I probably should get it back from the library and finish it at some point; it was a very intriguing mix of deeply traditional yet spectacularly innovative storytelling. It\u2019s one thing to suggest what Christ might be thinking, as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1116,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nJesus, sexuality, and the Anne Rice books.<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I never did finish reading Anne Rice's Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt last year, but I probably should get it back from the library and finish it at some\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2008\/03\/jesus-sexuality-and-the-anne-rice-books.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Jesus, sexuality, and the Anne Rice books.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I never did finish reading Anne Rice's Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt last year, but I probably should get it back from the library and finish it at some\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2008\/03\/jesus-sexuality-and-the-anne-rice-books.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"FilmChat\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-03-06T22:36:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2013-06-21T17:14:19+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/_MwnH1kpbPRM\/R9Du7jqt5mI\/AAAAAAAABLw\/dTCkYCoUBpA\/s400\/christthelordtheroadtocana.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Peter T. 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