The second novel about Christ by acclaimed author Anne Rice, who once wrote about vampires, is due out on March 4. Here’s an excerpt from Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana, followed by Rice’s reasons for depicting as she did Jesus’ encounter with Satan.
The Gospels are tight writing. They tell us what we need to know about Jesus, but not all we want to know. Desires can be dangerous, and many writers over the centuries have conjured up a Jesus that fit their imaginations but not the Gospel evidence. The test of faithfulness: Does the author make more vivid the biblical account or substitute for it a nonbiblical fantasy?
Eleven years ago, had someone suggested that Anne Rice, the unbelieving author of Interview with the Vampire and other bestsellers of a decidedly non-Christian cast, would be writing novels about Jesus, the betting line would have been that she'd make Satan the hero. But in 1998 she "began to be more and more concerned with my relationship with God" (see "Into the Light," Dec. 3, 2005).
An explanation by the author
Paul Hawthorne/Getty Images
WORLD asked Rice why she gave Satan the same physical features as Jesus, and what else entered her thinking in constructing the scene you've just read. She responded, "I can't claim to know how the idea of Satan's appearance (the double of Christ) came to me, except it seemed right at the time, especially since I believed Satan would strongly tempt Our Lord to be the warlike Davidic Messiah that many expected the Messiah to be."
Rice also had the sense that "Satan would want to present Jesus with a lavish image of Himself in fine clothes, and the regalia of power. The Temptation has been done in any variety of ways in mini-series and film, but never to my satisfaction. The conventional film temptation scenes seem too easy. The Devil is always played too simply."
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COVER STORY |
Issue: 
No pious baloney
