Jesus as a child

For Christmas I received a copy of Anne Rice's latest novel, Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, and have just finished reading it. It is an imaginative first-person account of Jesus' life at around age 8, beginning in Alexandria and following the family journeys out of Egypt and eventually back to Nazareth, through all the violent turmoil and instability that arose in the aftermath of the death of Herod the Great. Anne Rice is noted for her historical research, making the setting of her novels as accurate as possible. This one is no different. It would be worth reading just to get a better sense of the cultural and geographic setting of New Testament accounts.

More impressive, however, is her imaginative insights into the process of Jesus' developing self-awareness and self-understanding. Just how did the child Jesus grow in "wisdom and stature" and in his own understanding of the mission he had been sent to fulfill? If he was, as the orthodox creeds insist, truly human (as well as truly God), then his understanding must have passed through some normal human development process. Of course, the gospels do not tell us about this process, and so in the end knowing the answer to this question must not be essential to the life of faith — but reflecting upon it certainly can broaden one's conception of what Christ's nature as truly human really was — and by extension, what it may mean for us to be redeemed and transformed into truly human persons.

For this, Anne Rice is to be commended. Read her book — you won't regret it.