Welcome to the Apocrypha, Rice
Posted by Andrea Graham in : Andrea's PostsAccording to World Magazine After much soul-searching, Anne Rice has made up with Jesus and dedicated her craft to His Glory. Hallelujah. She’s starting the latter by beginning another life of Jesus story, told from the same view point as the Gospel According to Jesus. I haven’t read her book, so I’m really not in a position to review it, but she admits herself the information on Jesus’ childhood is so scant she had to turn to the apocrypha, slicing out the heresies. I’ll leave how she did to someone who has read it, but while I’m sure it would be great reading, I want to remind everyone this is as fictional as the sources she was forced to use. In my experience, stories about the life of Jesus tell us more about the author and their view of Christ than they do about Jesus.
As I commented to Adam, there is probably a reason for the silence and I suspect the reason was there wasn’t anything worth writing about during that time, besides of course the events the scriptures do mention. One reason I suspect this is our friend Luke the gospel writer. From what I know of Luke, if something worth writing a novel about actually happened, he would have dug it up and recorded it in his book in nice gentilian chronological order.
Of course, that does not stop us from wondering or even speculating, nor could Luke have anticipated that 2000 years down the road we would care about the ordinary boyhood trials the rest of the fallen world would’ve afflicted on Jesus, for instance it’s probable that Joseph died sometime between his twelvth and thirtieth birthday.
The truth is, no one knows, that’s why those of us with wild imaginations have been writing stories about the silent years for 2000 years. Still, besides Luke, you also have to consider the reaction to Jesus when he came home to Nazareth during his ministry. The reaction wasn’t, “Oh, Jesus, thank God you’re home, please bestow on us your pearls of wisdom and heal your uncle Charlie, he’s gone sick again.” It was, “Hey! Who does this guy think he is! He’s the local carpenter for crying out loud! Why has he gone off and left his mother and brothers and sisters to play Rabbi?” They talked themselves into such a huff, they tried to stone him. This is not the reaction of people who have been seeing Jesus perform miracles since he was seven years old. While his little brothers may have sniffed and said, “I always knew he had a messiah complex,” they didn’t figure out he really was until their not-so-crazy big brother rose from the dead.
BTW, the crazy part is scriptural, at one point in the gospels Mary and his brothers interupt one of Jesus’ meetings to try and take him home because they think he’s off his rocker.
Then you also have the wedding feast at Cana, the scriptures state this was his *first* miracle. Considering she later decided her boy was nuts, and if anybody should know better it was her, when she said, “they have no wine,” that may have been the first century equivalent of sending your son down to the corner market because you’ve run out of milk. If so, his response may make more sense, since if she was originally asking him to do a miracle, he’s chiding her for asking for a miracle then performing it. Jesus does that sort of thing, but here it makes more sense if she had a natural solution to the problem in mind. For all we know, what he may have been thinking was something along the lines of, “Mom, I invented wine, I don’t need to run down to the marketplace to get some and you ought to know that.” But the fact she may have missed it indicates that nothing this spectacular had happened since the events surrounding his birth.
So, anyway, Welcome to the Apocrypha, Rice, it’s a fun club and no more sinister than the Ultimate Fan Fiction, so long as we don’t take ourselves too seriously and mistake our musings for scripture.
Still, in a way, we can take comfort in the idea of a Christ Child living an ordinary life and growing up to be a carpenter. It means when He came to show us the way, He took no short cuts. He left all His Glory and Power behind in Heaven and lived like one of us–only he was without sin. That’s why he said, “Be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world,” because the same power he used is available to us. That’s also why he said the things He did, we can do also. The most amazing thing about “the ultimate supernatural hero” as Rice described Jesus, is that we can be like Him, even in all our human frality.
In my book, the Kingdom of God breaking into our ordinary modern world is the ultimate supernatural thriller. I think it’s time to take God out of the box we’ve stuck him in and start dreaming again.
Comment by Adam Graham [Member]
Thanks for posting this, Andrea. Well, you’re right on about the book and it apocrypha status, I’m still quite fascinated by it. I think it has some potential to bring some people to the Lord, which is fine as long as Rice is honest (and it sounds like she is) about the apocryphal status of the stories. I generally don’t buy new books, but I could consider an exception. However, I have to be careful about that because I’ve got a cheapskate reputation to uphold.
Comment by Michael [Visitor]
Then go to the Library. Sometimes it pays to purchase a book as you are more vested in learning the information. Would you go to war with a cheap rifle? Your life is at stake as well as those who depend on you. Don’t cheap out on the tools you need to succeed.
Comment by Adam Graham [Member]
Well, I bought “Guerilla Marketing for Writers” but I doubt the Anne Rice novel is quite as necessary. Some books are worth buying and on that I’d agree. A novel is kind of a challenge in terms of expense. I’ve got to think about it some more.
Comment by Jeremy Pierce [Visitor]
John does tell us at the end of his gospel that there’s so much more to write about Jesus’ life that even the whole world couldn’t hold all the books, so I’d be a big hesitant to assume that his childhood was unremarkable. It’s certainly raw speculation to do what Rice has done, but I’m not sure if it’s any less speculative to assume that little of interest happened during his childhood besides what the gospels tell us. It may be correct, but I don’t think we should have any assumptions either way.
Comment by Andrea Graham [Member]
Obviously, I don’t know what Jesus or Mary was thinking when she asked him to get more wine for the wedding, but the core of my argument is based on scripture. It’s safe to assume Jesus was a remarkable child, being sinless and all, but it’s also safe to say the miracle at the wedding feast was exactly what John said it was–his first. Also, Luke did his research and summed up Jesus’ childhood pretty well. He obeyed His parents and grew in stature before God and man. And again, if you take His family and neighbors’ reactions to His ministry, it’s pretty obvious the local carpenter didn’t have a reputation for the miraculous. The bible states His power (on Earth at least) came from the Holy Spirit–and that he recieved the infilling at His baptism. Philipians Chapter 2 says about the same thing on the subject:
5 Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:
6 Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God:
7 But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men:
8 And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.
And in John 17:5, Jesus prays, “And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.”