Ann Rice's Jesus vs. the Vampires

I’ve been fascinated to read Ann Rice’s recent book, Christ the Lord - Out of Egypt. In it, she spins a well researched but finally fantasic tale of Jesus as a Jewish boy around the time he was 12. She pays careful attention to the elements of his Jewish environment. She readily acknowledges the work of Paula Fredriksen, who I have mentioned before in this blog. Where she parts company with Fredricksen has to do with the question that asks, "Is Jesus somehow irreducibly different than you and I?" She builds her answer, a yes, on a shaky interpretation of the notion of “only begotten son,” which she ties with the complex assertion of being virgin born. As an aside, again I recommend Amy-Jill Levine’s provocative discussion of the virgin birth in her recent book, The Misunderstood Jew.

I see little ontological difference between Rice’s present Jesus and her past army of vampires. They are all supernatural, a notion that simply does not speak in a post-modern age. Not surprisingly, she also draws on non-canonical fantastic tales where an angry out of control boy Jesus “zaps” a playmate to the consternation of his parents and the concern of his neighbors.

Instead, let me ask the following question which is implied in reference to the trinity. Is there a difference between talking about a divine Jesus and a supernatural one? I would like to chew on that for a long while. I think John Cobb, whose work was the subject of my STM, maps a way to draw that distinction between supernatural and divine in his book, Christ in a Pluralistic Age.