Christ The Lord
Out of Egypt
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3.7 • 3 Ratings
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- £4.99
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
'[W]hen I found Rice's work I absolutely loved how she took that genre and (...) made [it] feel so contemporary and relevant' Sarah Pinborough, bestselling author of Behind Her Eyes
'[Rice wrote] in the great tradition of the gothic' Ramsey Campbell, bestselling author of The Hungry Moon
In Israel, in the turbulent first century, a baby is born to a humble Jewish family - but to a great destiny. His is an uneasy childhood, as he begins to come to terms with his extraordinary powers, and the whispered mysteries surrounding his birth.
The tyrannical rule of King Herod has driven the family from the Holy Land to the relative safety of cosmopolitan Alexandria. But on Herod's death, they decide to return home to Israel, to Galilee, a troubled land under Roman occupation, at a time of chaos and turmoil, insurrection and confusion...
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Rice departs from her usual subject matter to pen this curious portrait of a seven-year-old Jesus, who departs Egypt with his family to return home to Nazareth. Rice's painstaking historical research is obvious throughout, whether she's showing the differences among first-century Jewish groups (Pharisees, Essenes and Sadducees all play a part), imagining a Passover pilgrimage to Jerusalem or depicting the regular but violent rebellions by Jews chafing under Roman rule. The book succeeds in capturing Jesus' profound Jewishness, with some of the best scenes reflecting his Torah education and immersion in the oral traditions of the Hebrew Bible. As fiction, though, the book's first half is slow going. Since it is told from Jesus' perspective, the childlike language can be simplistic, though as readers persevere they will discover the riches of the sparse prose Rice adopts. The emotional heart of the story Jesus' gradual discovery of the miraculous birth his parents have never discussed with him picks up steam as well, as he begins to understand why he can heal the sick and raise the dead. Rice provides a moving afterword, in which she describes her recent return to the Catholic faith and evaluates, often in an amusingly strident fashion, the state of biblical studies today.
