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The Victorians were fond of fanciful biographies about Jesus. These biographies, popular first in Germany and then in England, started with the Gospel stories of Jesus but then elaborated upon the story through the fancy of the author. This genre was called “Liberal Lives” (‘liberal’ in this usage meaning ‘freely interpreted’). These books are long out of print, but those who have read them say they simply portray Jesus as a Victorian—with Victorian values and Victorian etiquette. They thought they were filling in the missing pieces about Jesus, but mistakenly filled in those pieces with their own culture.
Well, the genre is back, and it has roared back. Anne Rice (author of “Interview With a Vampire”) began this with “Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt,” first published in 2005. That book elaborates on the ‘hidden years’ of Jesus. This year she has published a second novel, “Christ the Lord: the Road to Cana,” covering the early adulthood of Jesus.
In both these books one can see that Anne Rice has done an immense amount of research. These books contain a lot of information from the 1st century Ancient World, with details in Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek and Latin. She says that doing all this research brought her back to the practice of her Catholic faith. The book begins with a jarring scene where the people of Nazareth stone two teen-age boys who are suspected of having a physical relationship. Then we are given Jesus’ thoughts on gay people. This is followed by Jesus’ thoughts on oppression (the Romans), religion (the Temple priests), and the search for a fulfilling human relationship. This is the biggest part of the book— Jesus’ quest for a meaningful relationship. It is like “Sex and the City” meets 1st Century Palestine. Yes, the Jesus that Anne Rice presents to us is simply a modern American liberal.
This year Deepak Chopra, well known to those who regularly watch Oprah and author of dozens of books in the self-help genre, has also written a biography of Jesus called “Jesus: a Story of Enlightenment.” This book gives us a Jesus who is very ‘New Age.’ Here, Jesus has an innate knowledge that he has a predestined mission with cosmic consequences but does not know what it all means. So he does on a grand search, being led by the Divine.
His quest which finally ends in the Himalaya mountains where he learns of his true nature and comes to enlightenment via a mountaintop guru before returning to Galilee. Yes, the Jesus that Deepak Chopra presents to us is simply a modern New Age American with Hindu-leaning sensibilities.
The weakness of the Victorian-era “Liberal Lives” genre was that Jesus was consistently cast as a Victorian. This seems to be the same weakness of the current spate of Jesus novels but this time casting Jesus as a modern American. Although both books are written by very popular authors who regularly revisit the New York Times bestseller lists, and these two books are rising in those lists, I find that neither book has that much to offer the reader, and the Jesus seen in both books is probably light-years away from the real Jesus. These “liberal lives” are just too liberal.
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