"The Road to Cana" is the second volume of Anne Rice's trilogy about the life of Christ.
I didn't enjoy this one as much as the earlier volume, but it was still a good read. Like many other Christians, Catholic and Protestant, Rice is enamored with the notion of Jesus as God Incarnate, emphasizing his divine nature over his human nature. She makes nods to his human longings -- the love he feels for a woman he knows, his desire to be alone for a while -- but far and away, the theme she keeps returning to is Jesus as God-who-chooses-to-be-finite. By the end of the book, Jesus is just oozing omniscience at will, eavesdropping on events, hearing the voices of everyone in the world, and seeing everything going on around him.
That's not my christology, but it's not my book either. If her Jesus becomes less interesting to me as the book goes on, her other characters remain fascinating to the end. There is the tension and anger between Jesus and his older brother, James; the simmering frustration of a rabbi who feels that Jesus has wasted himself as a carpenter; the delicate choreography his neighbors dance through when they ask him to pray; and, at times, the helplessness Jesus feels when things go awry.
"Out of Egypt" moved the young Jesus through the backdrop of history, as the Holy Family returned to Galilee from Alexandria just after the death of Herod the Great, and it was punctuated by the burning of Sepphoris and other moments recorded by Josephus and other ancient historians.
That continues here; as someone who has read extensively about ancient Rome and how the Judean and Galileean countrysides fared under the Caesars and under Pilate, and how the rumbles of politics in Rome made themselves felt across the Mediterranean, it's interesting to see how those things play out in Rice's imagining.
I've enjoyed seeing how the people in Galilee feel the shadow of Sejanus, witnessing the generational conflict over how to handle Pilate's legions and their ensigns when they come to Jerusalem, and all the other events that take place on the edges of Jesus' life.
Rice's "Christ the Lord" trilogy is the second fictionalized treatment of the gospels that I can recall reading. It's been worth the time to read.
I didn't enjoy this one as much as the earlier volume, but it was still a good read. Like many other Christians, Catholic and Protestant, Rice is enamored with the notion of Jesus as God Incarnate, emphasizing his divine nature over his human nature. She makes nods to his human longings -- the love he feels for a woman he knows, his desire to be alone for a while -- but far and away, the theme she keeps returning to is Jesus as God-who-chooses-to-be-finite. By the end of the book, Jesus is just oozing omniscience at will, eavesdropping on events, hearing the voices of everyone in the world, and seeing everything going on around him.
That's not my christology, but it's not my book either. If her Jesus becomes less interesting to me as the book goes on, her other characters remain fascinating to the end. There is the tension and anger between Jesus and his older brother, James; the simmering frustration of a rabbi who feels that Jesus has wasted himself as a carpenter; the delicate choreography his neighbors dance through when they ask him to pray; and, at times, the helplessness Jesus feels when things go awry.
"Out of Egypt" moved the young Jesus through the backdrop of history, as the Holy Family returned to Galilee from Alexandria just after the death of Herod the Great, and it was punctuated by the burning of Sepphoris and other moments recorded by Josephus and other ancient historians.
That continues here; as someone who has read extensively about ancient Rome and how the Judean and Galileean countrysides fared under the Caesars and under Pilate, and how the rumbles of politics in Rome made themselves felt across the Mediterranean, it's interesting to see how those things play out in Rice's imagining.
I've enjoyed seeing how the people in Galilee feel the shadow of Sejanus, witnessing the generational conflict over how to handle Pilate's legions and their ensigns when they come to Jerusalem, and all the other events that take place on the edges of Jesus' life.
Rice's "Christ the Lord" trilogy is the second fictionalized treatment of the gospels that I can recall reading. It's been worth the time to read.
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