Last week I picked up a leftover copy of Anne Rice’s second novel about Jesus (or Yeshua ben Joseph as he’s referred to in the book) from the “free book” shelf here at Christianity Today. I came to Rice’s book, Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana, as a skeptic given what I’d heard about the first book in the series Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt.

For those who thought Paul Young was out of bounds for putting words in the mouth of God in his bestseller The Shack, Anne Rice goes one further. She not only puts words in Jesus’ mouth but also thoughts into his head. She’s written her novels in first person voice with Jesus as the narrator.

I started the book on a flight out to Portland on Monday. I finished on the flight home on Wednesday. I couldn’t put it down. Rice absolutely won me over with her brilliant narrative style and respectful commitment to the absolute humanity and divinity of Jesus. Although I’ve studied the “fully God / fully man” doctrine at length from theological sources, I’ve never seen it handled better than in the fictional work of Rice. Some truths that are elusive to logic can only be grasped in story.

Of course a great deal of the book is fictional and it must be received that way, but in the later half she does enter territory familiar to Gospel readers—Jesus’ baptism, temptation, and the wedding at Cana where he turns the water into wine. I’d love to hear what others who have read these novels thought of Anne Rice’s depiction of Jesus.

Two additional notes that make these novels even more intriguing: First, Rice’s own journey from atheism to faith in Christ. She is a devout Roman Catholic who is committed to only writing “for the Lord.” But prior to this she was best known for her vampire novels including Interview With a Vampire. She’s vowed to never write another vampire novel despite pleas from her fans to do so. She’s said:

“To be able to take the tools, the apprenticeship, whatever I learned from being a vampire writer, or whatever I was—to be able to take those tools now and put them in the service of God is a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful opportunity. And I hope I can redeem myself in that way. I hope that the Lord will accept the books I am writing now.”

Rice’s story can be read in more depth in this article by Christianity Today.

The other interesting note is Anne Rice’s connection to N.T. Wright. In her research for the Christ the Lord novels, she came to highly respect Wright’s scholarship. What set his writings apart from many others was, as she puts it, “a Christian commitment to love in the prose itself.” Being a fan of Wright’s works myself, I was encouraged to find that he was an influence on Rice and her novels.

Listen to a conversation with Anne Rice and N.T. Wright.

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