Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

by Christopher Moore

“You’re kidding. A sequel? Revelations 2, just when you thought it was safe to sin?” “It’s a Gospel.” “A Gospel, after all this time? Who?” “Levi who is called Biff.”

the way, his name was Joshua. Jesus is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Yeshua, which is Joshua. Christ is not a last name. It’s the Greek for messiah, a Hebrew word meaning anointed. I have no idea what the “H” in Jesus H. Christ stood for. It’s one of the things I should have asked him. Me? I am Levi who is called Biff. No middle initial. Joshua was my best friend.

Children see magic because they look for it.

began to walk away. “Wait. Be nice to your father, Joshua bar Biff”—my own father used my full name like this when he was trying to make a point—“Is it not the word of Moses that you must honor me?” Little Joshua spun on his heel. “My name is not Joshua bar Biff, and it is not Joshua bar Joseph either. It’s Joshua bar Jehovah!” I looked around, hoping that no one had heard him. I didn’t want my only son (I planned to sell Judah and James into slavery) to be stoned to death for uttering the name of God in vain. “Don’t say that again, Josh. I won’t marry your mother.” “No, you won’t.” “I’m sorry.” “I forgive you.” “She will make an excellent concubine.” Don’t let anyone tell you that the Prince of Peace never struck anyone. In those early days, before he had become who he would be, Joshua smote me in the nose more than once. That was the first time.

Mary would stay my one true love until I saw the Magdalene.

Joseph had regained his composure by now. Evidently, once you accept that your wife slept with God, extraordinary events seem sort of commonplace. “Take her back where you found her, Joshua, the prophecy has been fulfilled now.” “But I want to keep her.” “No, Joshua.” “You’re not the boss of me.”

“I have to go.” “What is your name?” “I’m Mary of Magdala, daughter of Isaac,” she said. “Call me Maggie.” “Come with us, Maggie.” “I can’t, I have to go.” “Why?” “Because I’ve peed myself.” She disappeared through the door. Miracles.

“Right, I’m the simple one.” I don’t know if now, having lived and died the life of a man, I can write about little-boy love, but remembering it now, it seems the cleanest pain I’ve known. Love without desire, or conditions, or limits—a pure and radiant glow in the heart that could make me giddy and sad and glorious all at once. Where does it go? Why, in all their experiments, did the Magi never try to capture that purity in a bottle?

Oh, he’ll tell me useless angel stories—of how Gabriel disappeared once for sixty years and they found him on earth hiding in the body of a man named Miles Davis, or how Raphael snuck out of heaven to visit Satan and returned with something called a cell phone. (Evidently everyone has them in hell now.)

“Alphaeus,” Joshua called, “does the work get easier once you know what you are doing?” “Your lungs grow thick with stone dust and your eyes bleary from the sun and fragments thrown up by the chisel. You pour your lifeblood out into works of stone for Romans who will take your money in taxes to feed soldiers who will nail your people to crosses for wanting to be free. Your back breaks, your bones creak, your wife screeches at you, and your children torment you with open, begging mouths, like greedy baby birds in the nest. You go to bed every night so tired and beaten that you pray to the Lord to send the angel of death to take you in your sleep so you don’t have to face another morning. It also has its downside.”

The book is exactly as I suspected, a Bible, but written in a flowery version of this English I’ve been writing in. The translation of the Torah and the prophets from the Hebrew is muddled sometimes, but the first part seems to be our Bible. This language is amazing—so many words. In my time we had very few words, perhaps a hundred that we used all the time, and thirty of them were synonyms for guilt.

Our people were making way for the Roman army. (There would be nearly a million Jews in Jerusalem for Passover—a million Jews celebrating their liberation from oppression, a very dangerous mix from the Roman point of view. The Roman governor would come from Caesarea with his full legion of six thousand men, and each of the other barracks in Judea, Samaria, and Galilee would send a century or two of soldiers to the holy city.)

At the river’s edge (no more than a creek, really) we saw a boy about our age, with wild hair and wilder eyes, standing waist-deep in the water. He was holding something under the water and shouting at the top of his lungs. “You must repent and atone, atone and repent! Your sins have made you unclean. I cleanse you of the evil that you carry like your wallet.” “That’s my cousin, John,” Joshua said. Trailing out of the water on either side of John stood our brothers and sisters, still tied together, but the missing link in the string of siblings was my brother Shem, who had been replaced by a lot of thrashing and bubbling muddy water in front of John. Onlookers were cheering on the Baptist, who was having a little trouble keeping Shem under water. “I think he’s drowning Shem.” “Baptizing,” Joshua said. “My mother will be happy that Shem’s sins have been cleansed, but I have to think we’re going to be in a lot of trouble if he drowns in the process.” “Good point,” Josh said. He stepped into the water. “John! Stop that!” John looked at him and seemed a little perplexed. “Cousin Joshua?” “Yes. John, let him up.”

John and his parents shared supper with us that evening. I was surprised that John’s parents were older than Joseph—older than my grandparents even. Joshua told me that John’s birth had been a miracle, announced by the angel. Elizabeth, John’s mother, talked about it all through supper, as if it had happened yesterday instead of thirteen years ago. When the old woman paused to take a breath, Joshua’s mother started in about the divine announcement of her own son’s birth. Occasionally my mother, feeling the need to exhibit some maternal pride that she didn’t really feel, would chime in as well.

John grabbed me by the front of my tunic and pulled me close, staring into my eyes as if he was looking into my head. “You aren’t lying, are you?” He looked at Joshua. “He’s not lying, is he?” Joshua shook his head. “I don’t think so.” John released me, let out a long sigh, then sat back in the dirt. The firelight caught tears sparkling in his eyes as he stared at nothing. “I am so relieved. I didn’t know what I would do. I don’t know how to be the Messiah.” “Neither do I,” said Joshua. “Well, I hope you really can raise the dead,” John said, “because this will kill my mother.”

minimum. His heart was in the right place, he really did want to cleanse our people of their sins, it was just that no one would believe that God would give that responsibility to a thirteen-year-old. To keep John happy, Josh and I let him baptize our little brothers and sisters at every body of water we passed, at least until Josh’s little sister Miriam developed the sniffles and Joshua had to perform an emergency healing on her. “You really can heal,” John exclaimed. “Well, the sniffles are easy,” Joshua said. “A little mucus is nothing against the power of the Lord.”

“Have at it, Josh,” I said. “Lay your hands upon the affliction and heal it.” Joshua shot me a dirty look, then looked back to his cousin John, with nothing but compassion in his eyes. “My mother has some salve you can put on it,” he said. “Let’s see if that works first.” “I’ve tried salve,” John said. “I was afraid you had,” said Joshua. “Have you tried rubbing it with olive oil?” I asked. “It probably won’t cure you, but it might take your mind off of it.” “Biff, please. John is afflicted.” “Sorry.”

“Well, like where Joshua left his destiny and whether or not he’s allowed to, uh, have an abomination with a woman.” “It’s not an abomination if it’s with a woman,” Josh added. “It’s not?” “Nope. Sheep, goats, pretty much any animal—it’s an abomination. But with a woman, it’s something totally different.” “What about a woman and a goat, what’s that?” asked John. “That’s five shekels in Damascus,” I said. “Six if you want to help.”

mother, came to me in a panic. “Biff. Have you seen Joshua?” The poor woman was distraught. I wanted to comfort her so I held my arms out to give her a comforting embrace. “Poor Mary, calm down. Joshua is fine. Come, let me give you a comforting embrace.” “Biff!” I thought she might slap me. “He’s at the Temple. Jeez, a guy tries to be compassionate and what does he get?” She had already taken off. I caught up to her as she was dragging Joshua out of the Temple by the arm. “You worried us half to death.”

“You should have known you would find me in my father’s house,” Joshua said. “Don’t you pull that ‘my father’ stuff on me, Joshua bar Joseph. The commandment says honor thy father and thy mother. I’m not feeling honored right now, young man. You could have sent a message, you could have stopped by the camp.”

I do manage to escape the angel, I’m not going to be able to make my living as a professional mourner, not if you people don’t have the courtesy to die. Just as well, I suppose, I’d have to learn all new dirges. I’ve tried to get the angel to watch MTV so I can learn the vocabulary of your music, but even with the gift of tongues, I’m having trouble learning to speak hip-hop. Why is it that one can busta rhyme or busta move anywhere but you must busta cap in someone’s ass? Is “ho” always feminine, and “muthafucka” always masculine, while “bitch” can be either? How many peeps in a posse, how much booty before baby got back, do you have to be all that to get all up in that, and do I need to be dope and phat to be da bomb or can I just be “stupid”? I’ll not be singing over any dead mothers until I understand.

Once we were into the wash of merchants and sailors around the harbor, I said, “He gave us the money back because the angel scared him, you know that?” “So his kindness allayed his fear as well as benefiting us,” Joshua said. “All the better. Do you think the priests sacrifice the lambs at Passover for better reasons?”

We stopped at a stand and bought a hot black drink from a wrinkled old man wearing a tanned bird carcass as a hat. He showed us how he made the drink from the seeds of berries that were first roasted, then ground into powder, then mixed with boiling water. We got this whole story by way of pantomime, as the man spoke none of the languages we were familiar with. He mixed the drink with honey and gave it to us, but when I tasted it, it still didn’t seem to taste right. It seemed, I don’t know, too dark. I saw a woman leading a nanny goat nearby, and I took Joshua’s cup from him and ran after the woman. With the woman’s permission, I squirted a bit of milk from the nanny goat’s udder onto the top of each of our cups. The old man protested, making it seem as if we’d committed some sort of sacrilege, but the milk had come out warm and frothy and it served to take away the bitterness of the black drink. Joshua downed his, then asked the old man for two more, as well as handing the woman with the goat a small brass coin for her trouble. Josh gave the second drink back to the old man to taste, and after much grimacing, he took a sip. A smile crossed his toothless mouth and before we left he seemed to be striking some sort of deal with the woman with the goat. I watched the old man grind beans in a copper cylinder while the woman milked her goat into a deep clay bowl. There was a spice vendor next door and I could smell the cinnamon,

“You know,” I said to the woman in Latin, “when you two get this all figured out, try sprinkling a little ground cinnamon on it. It just might make it perfect.”

Camels bite. A camel will, for no reason, spit on you, stomp you, kick you, bellow, burp, and fart at you. They are stubborn at their best, and cranky beyond all belief at their worst. If you provoke them, they will bite. If you insert a dehydrated amphibian elbow-deep in a camel’s bum, he considers himself provoked, doubly so if the procedure was performed while he was sleeping. Camels are wise to stealth. They bite. “I can heal that,” Joshua said, looking at the huge tooth marks on my forehead.

“Balthasar?” Joshua asked. “Yeah,” said Balthasar, who stood up now and was only a little taller than I was. “Sorry, I don’t get many visitors. So you’re Joshua?” “Yes,” Joshua said, an edge in his voice. “I didn’t recognize you without the swaddling clothes. And this is your servant?” “My friend, Biff.”

“I could kick that punk’s punk ass,” the angel said, jumping on the bed, shaking a fist at the television screen. “Raziel,” I said, “you are an angel of the Lord, he is a professional wrestler, I think it’s understood that you could kick his punk ass.” This

Before we knew it a year had passed, then two more, and we were celebrating the passage of Joshua’s seventeenth birthday in the fortress. Balthasar had the girls prepare a feast of Chinese delicacies and we drank wine late into the night. (And long after that, and even when we had returned to Israel, we always ate Chinese food on Joshua’s birthday. I’m told it became a tradition not only with those of us who knew Joshua, but with Jews everywhere.)

“That my will had been broken by my feelings for you.” “You love me?” “How was I to know?” The magus sighed. And Joshua laughed here, despite the dire circumstances. “Of course you do, but it is not me, it’s what I represent. I am not sure yet what I am to do, but I know that I am here in the name of my father. You love life so much that you would brave hell to hold on to it, it’s only natural that you would love the one who gave you that life.” “Then you can banish the demon and preserve my life?” “Of course not, I’m just saying that I understand how you feel.”

and broke the silence. I thought of how Joy had taught me to read and speak Chinese, to mix potions and poisons, to cheat at gambling, to perform slight of hand, and where and how to properly touch a woman. All of it without expecting anything in return. “Are all women stronger and better than me?” “Yes,” he said.

I thought about the old magus as I looked at the wall stretching over the hills, then at the line of travelers ahead of us. A small city had grown up at the entrance to the wall to accommodate the needs of the delayed travelers along the Silk Road and it boiled with merchants hawking food and drink along the line. “Screw it,” I said. “This is going to take forever. How long can it be? Let’s go around.” A month later, when we had returned to the same gate and we were standing in line to get through, Joshua asked: “So what do you think of the wall now? I mean, now that we’ve seen so much more of it?” “I think it’s ostentatious and unpleasant,” I said. “If they don’t have a name for it, you should suggest that.” And so it came to pass that through the ages the wall was known as the Ostentatious and Unpleasant Wall of China. At least I hope that’s what happened. It’s not on my Friendly Flyer Miles map, so I can’t be sure.

The yak provided just enough milk and cheese to remind the monks that they didn’t get enough milk and cheese from one yak for twenty-two monks.

There’s not much to know about yaks beyond that, except for one important fact that Gaspar felt I needed to learn through practice: yaks hate to be shaved. It fell to Monks Eight and Seven to bandage me, set my broken legs and arm, and clean off the yak dung that had been so thoroughly stomped into my body. I

He wouldn’t even mimic the action of fighting with swords and spears with a bamboo substitute. At first Gaspar bristled at Joshua’s refusal, and threatened to banish him from the monastery, but when I took the abbot aside and told him the story of the archer Joshua had blinded on the way to Balthasar’s fortress, the abbot relented. He and two of the older monks who had been soldiers devised for Joshua a regimen of weaponless fighting that involved no offense or striking at all, but instead channeled the energy of an attacker away from oneself. Since the new art was practiced only by Joshua (and sometimes myself), the monks called it Jew-dô, meaning the way of the Jew.

“We can’t go home,” Joshua said at last. “I don’t know enough yet.” “No,” said Gaspar, “I suspect that you don’t. But you know all that you will learn here. If you come to a river and find a boat at the edge, you will use that boat to cross and it will serve you well, but once across the river, do you put the boat on your shoulders and carry it with you on the rest of your journey?” “How big is the boat?” I asked. “What color is the boat?” asked Joshua. “How far is the rest of the journey?” I queried. “Is Biff there to carry the oars, or do I have to carry everything?” asked Josh. “No!” screamed Gaspar. “No, you don’t take the boat along on the journey. It has been useful but now it’s simply a burden. It’s a parable, you cretins!”

The river—wider than any in Israel, but shallow, yellow with clay, and still against the heavy air—seemed more like a huge stagnant puddle than a living, moving thing. In this season, anyway. Dotting the surface, a half-dozen skinny, naked men with wild white hair and not three teeth apiece shouted angry poetry at the top of their lungs and tossed water into glittering crests over their heads. “I wonder how my cousin John is doing,” said Josh.

“Eek, a tiger,” Rumi said, as we stumbled into a small clearing, a mere depression really, where a cat the size of Jerusalem was gleefully gnawing away on the skull of a deer. Rumi had expressed my sentiments exactly, but I would be damned if I was going to let my last words be “Eek, a tiger,” so I listened quietly as urine filled my shoes.

know who you are,” said Melchior. His voice was melodic, and every sentence he spoke seemed as if he were beginning to recite a poem. “I recognize you from when I first saw you in Bethlehem.” “You do?” “A man’s self does not change, only his body. I see you grew out of the swaddling clothes.” “Yes, some time ago.” “Not sleeping in that manger anymore?” “No.” “Some days I could go for a nice manger, some straw, maybe a blanket. Not that I need any of those luxuries, nor does anyone who is on the spiritual path, but still.”

Joshua looked at the blood on his hands where he had touched his forehead. “I don’t know. It doesn’t hurt that badly, but I can’t tell.” “Inside,” I said, helping him to his feet and through the door of the inn. “Shut the door,” the innkeeper shouted as the wind whipped through the room. “Were you born in a barn?” “Yeah,” said Joshua. “He was,” I said. “Angels on the roof, though.” “Shut the damn door,” said the innkeeper.

“Hey, look at this,” one of the travelers who had helped Joshua said, holding up the piece of linen Joshua had used to wipe his face. The dust and blood from Josh’s face had left a perfect likeness on the linen, even handprints where he’d gotten blood from his head wound. “Can I keep this?” the fellow said. He was speaking Latin, but with a strange accent. “Sure,” I said. “Where are you fellahs from?” “We’re from the Ligurian tribe, from the territories north of Rome. A city on the Po river called Turin. Have you heard of it?”

not ready to be the Messiah, Biff. If I’m being called home to lead our people I don’t even know where to start. I understand the things I want to teach, but I don’t have the words yet. Melchior was right about that. Before anything you have to have the word.” “Well it’s not just going to come to you in a flash here on the Damascus road, Josh. That sort of thing doesn’t happen. You’re obviously supposed to learn what you need to know in its own time. To everything a season, yada, yada, yada…”

At the river, John preached to a small gathering as he lowered Joshua into the water. As soon as Joshua went under the water a rift opened across the desert sky, which was still pink with the dawn, and out of the rift came a bird that looked to be fashioned from pure light. And everyone on the riverbank said “ooh” and “ahh,” and a big voice boomed out of the heavens, saying, “This is my son, with whom I am well pleased.” And as quickly as it had come, the spirit was gone. But the gatherers at the riverbank stood with their mouths open in amazement, staring yet into the sky. And John came to his senses then, and remembered what he was doing, and lifted Joshua out of the water. And Joshua wiped the water out of his eyes, looked at the crowd who stood stunned with mouths hanging open, and he said unto them: “What?”

“Biff, this is my youngest brother’s wedding. He couldn’t even afford wine. He didn’t hire any camel-parking boys.” Bartholomew stood and rallied his troops. “I’ll find them.” He lumbered off.

You can travel the whole world, but there are always new things to learn. For instance, on the way to Capernaum I learned that if you hang a drunk guy over a camel and slosh him around for about four hours, then pretty much all the poisons will come out one end of him or the other.

“Just a suggestion,” Peter said to Joshua. “Don’t say the fisher-of-men thing. It’s going to be dark soon; you won’t have time for the explanation if we want to make it home in time for supper.” “Yeah,” I said, “just tell them about the miracles, the kingdom, a little about your Holy Ghost thing, but stay easy on that until they agree to join up.” “I still don’t get the Holy Ghost thing,” said Peter. “It’s okay, we’ll go over it tomorrow,” I said.

“Nice phylacteries,” I said. The disciples laughed. Nathaniel made an excellent donkey braying noise. “You broke the Sabbath,” said the Pharisee. “I’m allowed,” said Josh. “I’m the Son of God.” “Oh fuck,” Philip said. “Way to ease them into the idea, Josh,” I said.

Jakan leaned forward. “Some have said that you banish these demons by the power of Beelzebub.” “And how could I do that?” Joshua said, getting a little angry. “How could I turn Beelzebub against himself? How can I battle Satan with Satan? A house divided can’t stand.” “Boy, I’m starving,” I said. “Bring on the eats.” “With the spirit of God I cast out demons, that’s how you know

“Your disciples do not wash their hands before they eat!” said one of the Pharisees, a fat man with a scar over his eye. Bart, I thought. “It’s not what goes into a man that defiles him,” Joshua said, “it’s what comes out.” He broke off some of the flatbread and dipped it into a bowl of oil. “He means lies,” I said. “I know,” said the old Pharisee. “You were thinking something disgusting, don’t lie.”

“I’ve got to think that that was unethical,” Joshua said. “Josh, faking demonic possession is like a mustard seed.” “How is it like a mustard seed?” “You don’t know, do you? Doesn’t seem at all like a mustard seed, does it? Now you see how we all feel when you liken things unto a mustard seed? Huh?”

Chapter Twenty-Eight Joshua’s ministry was three years of preaching, sometimes three times a day, and although there were some high and low points, I could never remember the sermons word for word, but here’s the gist of almost every sermon I ever heard Joshua give. You should be nice to people, even creeps. And if you: a) believed that Joshua was the Son of God (and) b) he had come to save you from sin (and) c) acknowledged the Holy Spirit within you (became as a little child, he would say)(and) d) didn’t blaspheme the Holy Ghost (see c), then you would: e) live forever f) someplace nice g) probably heaven. However, if you: h) sinned (and/or) i) were a hypocrite (and/or) j) valued things over people (and) k) didn’t do a, b, c, and d, then you were: l) fucked