Snippet from a review:
Has anyone read this as of yet? The reviews look very positive so far, particularly pertaining to her meticulous research, which I always thought was one of her strongest points. I have it on order, but I was wondering if any of you folks could offer opinions.
I was waiting for someone to start a thread about it. I really liked it. I don’t like Anne Rice, and I’m not Catholic (although I am a former Christian), but the reviews were good so I decided to read it. Now I want her to write about when Jesus is older.
Just thought about this thread again today, and I’m bumping it.
Sorry that i killed it!
I skimmed it. Her research was godawful in this case. Rice has chosen to follow the worst kind of fundy apologetics and cast aspersions on mainstream scholarship which she accuses (in her preface) of “disliking Jesus.” The basis for her conclusions is essentially that she thinks contemporary scholarship “robs Jesus of power.” In other words, she basically says that she doesn’t find objective scholarship aesthetically pleasing to her personally, therefore it must be wrong (she pleads that “Jesus is our LORD” and that any conclusion contrary to that must be false). She bases her premise of the book on a bogus theory about the date of Jesus’ birth and procedes from there. The story itself is typical Rice. Self-indulgent, verbose, slow-moving. There’s no homosexuality, though. It’s just religious glurge.
After reading her preface, I was really disappointed to she that she seems to have really gone around the bend with this religious kick she’s on. I know her husband died and this gives her comfort, but she’s starting to sound like a nutter.
You should just change your name to PontiusPilateSmurf!
I haven’t gotten around to actually reading the novel. I did read her postscript/testimony & have of course the mirror opposite view of DtC’s.
N. T. Wright as a font of “fundy apologetics”? Oh- I guess one must be an
ignorant fundy if one actually believes in the God & Jesus of the Bible.
I have vacation this week & will use that time to read the novel. I’m really interested if the future volumes pick up on her belief in the major significance of 70 AD (I’m wondering if she’s full or partial preterist).
Interestingly enough, also on my reading list- Brouwer (sp?) and Hanengraff’s preterist novel THE LAST SACRIFICE. And a book having little in common with either- Tori Amos’s interviews/autobiography.
I wonder what would happen if Ann Rice researched learning how to write.
I’ve always considered Biff to be the definitive discussion of young Jesus.
Not going to read the book, but it IS my new favorite exclamation. Now, when someone surprises me, I don’t say “Holy shit!” anymore, I say “Christ the Lord out of Egypt!” 
Alright, someone else who’s read Biff. ::high five::
“Let’s go get some coffee”
BIFF is on my “To Get” list!
Anyway, I finished CTLOOE- not bad, interesting perspective, definitely orthodox.
However, not great either. Problem A- she is writing from the POV of Jesus looking back to when he was a little seven-year-old kid wondering why everyone he loves acts so weird around him. There’s a lot of sadness & confusion- not a lot of fire. Which is also the result of Problem B- she is being so reverent about the Person of Jesus, that she writes with an extremely stilted reserve.
The last chapter is the best- when Young JC realizes the purpose for His Incarnation. Her afterwod, telling of her journey back to faith, is better still, tho cynics may see it differently. G I do disagree with her eccentric choice of dating JC’s birth as 7 B.C. - I know it’s to match the 4 B.C. date of Herod’s death as well as the 7B.C. Mars-Jupiter conjunction in Pisces. There is good reason, shown by Ernest Martin, for questioning both & moving the date up to about 3-2 B.C.
I have never read Rice before but a friend loaned me this book and I thought it was very good. I don’t know about how good or unbiased her research was, that is not my area of expertise at all, but from her notes it certainly sounds like she was passionate about reading and learning as much as she could. I did grow up studying the Bible both formally and informally althought I admit my knowledge of the fall of Jerusalem is lacking. I thought that the way she portrays Jesus as a human child is very believable and very sympathetic. I especially enjoyed the relationships between Jesus and Salome and Jesus and his mother and I do look forward to reading other books she might do on this topic. I wasn’t looking for a historical account in her novel, just an idea of what Jesus might have been like as a child and I though on that level it worked.
(One nitpick that did stand out to me as far as accuracy - Mary says in the book that she remained untouched by men even after Jesus was born. Is this a common belief? I always thought it was known that she did have other children after Jesus and I would be suprised if that was not the case.)
Anne Rice loves her some Jeebuz, yes she does.
The doctrine of perpetual virginity is particualr to Catholicism and is not in the Bible. The Gospels are pretty unambiguous in saying that Jesus had several brothers and sisters. Paul’s epistles refer to James as the “brother of the Lord.”
Hell, even Josephus refers to the execution of someone he identifies as “James the brother of Jesus, the so-called Christ.”
Only two of the Gospels even claim a virgin birth. Mark and John seem unaware of it and Paul never mentions it either, yet all of them matter-of-factly claim that Jesus had siblings and none of them try to explain it or qualify it.
Well, it’s dedicated to her son Christopher, so at least gays sort of get a “word out”.
Starting to? Puh-lease! The woman’s been going to signing dressed in a black wedding dress and telling how Lestat talks to her in an audible voice for a decade now. She’s already driven to Crazyland, she’s just circling for a parking place now. 
Taking Rice’s track record into account, we should expect young Jesus to get him some hot monkey-lovin’ with a gay vampire.
Eastern Orthodoxy also holds to the lifelong virginity of the Blessed Mother, as did Luther, Calvin & Wesley. I think the EO tradition is the sibs were the children of Joseph & a deceased wife, while the RC tradition has them as the kids of Cleophas, who they ID’d as Joe’s brother.
However, the tradition of Mary as ever-virgin seems to go no further back than late 2nd century (IF that early), and as I don’t have the Hellenist, non-Hebraic hangup about marital carnality that the early Gentile Church Fathers did, I see no reason not to think Mary & Joe had kids of their own.
What do you mean starting to? She went off the deep end years ago. Her whole, “I don’t need an editor” schtick, the hissyfit on Amazon.com, the freaking out over the casting of Tom Cruise as Lestat and then slobbering all over him when she saw the movie, etc.
The woman is cracked.
Sampiro, is it possible you’re related to Anne Rice?
I’ll give you the others, but I don’t blame her for the original freak out. Nor do I blame her for changing her mind after seeing the movie.