Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal (2002)

The Bible tells little of Jesus after being born and turning thirty. What was he doing then? The angels want the story to be written so they resurrect his childhood best friend, Biff, to tell the story.

I read this book picturing this like a Simpson show. Bart Simpson and Milhouse starring as Biff and Joshua (aka Jesus). Lisa I guess would be Maggie/Mary magdalene They would visit the three wisemen, Carl, Lenny, and Apu? And Nelson Mudd will ironically be Bartholomew. Perfect!

Biff is a great best friend to Joshua. He's crass, has a dirty mouth and dirtier sense of humor. I really enjoyed his present day thoughts rooming with the angel Raphael. I really missed those parts because the last parts of the book unraveled for me. ( )

I know that fans of Christopher Moore (and I am one of them) think this is wonderful, but I can't agree. It's ok and has it's moments, but I like Moore's other books better. You *will* find out what Jesus' middle name is. ( )

I haven’t been a practising Christian in well over 20 years (and was I ever, tbh), but Christopher Moore’s irreverent (but thought provoking) novel about the missing 30-odd years of Jesus’ life between birth and rise to fame is nothing less than a stellar read. The characters (except for our narrator Biff) are familiar if you’ve grown up in Western culture, but Moore takes a confident leap at weaving a relatively believable (but expectedly ridiculous) story that follows Biff and Joshua on a quest for knowledge and enlightenment. On their adventures the pair encounter the three Magi who were present at Jesus’ birth, each of whom plays a role in educating the young Christ on his way to being the Messiah. What makes the story believable is that Moore plays artfully with the tenants of the Jewish faith, and brings the teachings of other contemporaneous belief systems into play in a way that logically shows their influence on what will become Christianity. Whether a man of this era would have actually been able to travel to India, China, or elsewhere in the timeframes posited by Moore is questionable, but not entirely unbelievable, and makes for an exciting tale that is part morality story and part adventure quest. ( )

I quit about a third of the way through because I was bored stupid. Comedies that are self-aware frequently bug the hell out of me. Of course, I'm also the only person I know who hates Terry Pratchett novels... ( )

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