For those of you who have been following up on Anne Rice’s Out of Egypt with me I have an update for you. My last few posts I have been giving you things I like and don’t like about the book. This time I am going to update you on some of the things that I didn’t like that have worked their way out for me.
One of the first things I said I didn’t like had to do with Ms. Rice calling Jesus and his family carpenters. I said that my studies have shown that they were more than likely stone workers instead of carpenters. After reading on for a while I see that she in many places makes them more than just carpenters. They also do stone work and many other handyman type works. I like the way that she left open the possibility that they didn’t actually work exclusively with wood. I have always found it so cliché that he would be a carpenter. I would imagine in that area of the world that the majority of buildings would have been built with stone materials and mud and thatch.
I also expressed my concern over her ignoring the bibles reference to Jesus’ siblings. She also addresses this later in the book. She does it in a way that intrigued me. I now find that it is totally feasible that he may not have had an actual blood sibling. In the book Mary’s brother’s wife passes away of illness while pregnant. She has several small children that she leaves behind. When this happens Mary tells her brother that she will call these children her children and they will be Jesus’ siblings. She says several times to Jesus that these will be his brothers and sisters. If the portion of the bible that references his siblings was not written until many years later it is totally plausible that the writer would have called these children Jesus’ siblings. They may in fact have been cousins whom Mary "adopted" after the death of her Sister in law.
Finally, I want to point out a part that I found interesting. At one point in the book Mary’s brother is very ill. They are trying to get back to their home so that he can see it before he dies and Jesus believes that he may not make it. Jesus somehow heals his uncle and he survives. This is the same uncle whose wife later dies. After the death of his wife the uncle wonders out loud to Jesus if his wife was taken instead of him. He believes that perhaps God took his wife because he had spared him. He has no idea Jesus healed him. Jesus almost seems like he feels guilty and remorseful. Perhaps like he wondered if it were possible that his uncle could be right. It was a real view into what some of the qualms of Jesus’ life may have been. As a human I can imagine wondering if I had changed the future by my actions. Would Jesus have felt the same way?
I’m of to read more and I will either update you again or I will return with a full review.
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