Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal (a novel)

Long title. Not a very long book considering it covers Jesus’s life from when he is 6 years old through to that point in his life when they made that movie The Passion of the Christ. 31, was it? Whilst not crazy about it, I think overall I really liked it (the book I mean), but of course I cannot just simply say “I like it” or “dislike it” because I am just not cut out that way.

I would say this was otherwise a pretty damn funny book. And the reason I would not say no to a book of this caliber is because I listened to it on Audiobook. I have been doing Audiobooks for a while now and they help break up the nasty, grueling drive I make to reach Phoenix every other weekend to see my lady and on other occasions, hockey team. I keep track for my purposes which of these reviews I Audiobook, and the prior review of The Drawing of the Three I was listening to, a gory enough scene to make me not want to drive listening to it anymore, forced me to turn it off and when I looked up BAM! Car accident. So I switched to humorous books instead, like this one. And well, here is the review of that.

Getting to the meat of the book, this was a very blasphemous story about reviving Levi so he could write a gospel about Joshua (a much better translation of Yeshua’s name) as he spent nearly every moment by his side growing up, through adolescence and into adulthood. Levi, who is called Biff, is an extremely loyal yet crude, unsophisticated simpleton with a foul mouth and a temperament for blasphemy. The story primarily involves their quest for the Three Wise Men at Joshua’s birth, which we learn are a Magician, a Buddhist and a Hindu Yogi. Joshua and Biff spend years with each, and each person teaches him more about how to become the Messiah, whilst he more than masters what they have taught him and in much less time than anyone expects.

Biff, during all this, is helping Joshua by continuing to be an example of what he will never be, a true debauchery fanatic and the only one with vice and terrible qualities enough to bail Joshua and him out of trouble. Most of this is really fun, and when not fun, blasphemous (which is as good as fun, most times).

The twists of what Joshua learns from these people and how it applies to his miracles he performed in the Bible are an extension of the humorous-blasphemy I enjoy. The idea that Jesus learned all that we associate with his mystical side from pre-existing sources by consolidating different aspects of Sun-Tzu, the Bahgavad Gita, Tao Te Ching, Diogenes’’ Cynicism and various other philosophies, is just great to me.

Still, not a great book in my opinion. Felt like it was great when Joshua spends time with the last Yeti, and the jokes that Biff has about that creature, but the end came a bit abruptly and was a bit too unbelievable for my liking. Really, the final scene comes out of nowhere and is completely unnecessary. And what is supposed to be the takeaway from it? That if you serve Joshua as a means to his ends you all get second chances? Unless his other friends didn’t like you? Really the bit about Judas and how it ties into the resolution/conclusion left me a bit confused.

Anyway, if you like to laugh and love blasphemy, it is worth reading, but I do not otherwise have too many great things to say about it. Good enough, I suppose. I will leave you with one last bit of religious history that always makes me chuckle, fan art from an African on Jesus.