Christopher Moore - Lamb - The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal

“It means that I haven’t had a woman in two millennia, aren’t you picking up any of the vocabulary from the television?”

He glanced at the TV, which, of course, was on. “I don’t have your gift of tongues. What does that have to do with choking me?”

“I was choking you because you, once again, are as dense as dirt. I haven’t had sex in two thousand years. Men have needs. What the hell do you think I’m doing in the bathroom all of that time?”

“Oh,” the angel said, releasing my hair. “So you are…You have been…There is a…”

“Get me a woman and maybe I won’t spend so much time in the bathroom, if you get my meaning.” Brilliant misdirection, I thought.

“A woman? No, I cannot do that. Not yet.”

“Yet? Does that mean…”

“Oh look,” the angel said, turning from me as if I was no more than vapor, “General Hospital is starting.”

And with that, my secret Bible was safe. What did he mean by “yet”?

At least this Matthew mentions the Magi. One sentence, but that’s one more than I’ve gotten in his Gospel so far.

Our second day in Jerusalem we went to see the great Rabbi Hillel. (Rabbi means teacher in Hebrew—you knew that, right?) Hillel looked to be a hundred years old, his beard and hair were long and white, and his eyes were clouded over, his irises milk white. His skin was leathery-brown from sitting in the sun and his nose was long and hooked, giving him the aspect of a great, blind eagle. He held class all morning in the outer courtyard of the Temple. We sat quietly, listening to him recite from the Torah and interpret the verses, taking questions and engaging in arguments with the Pharisees, who tried to infuse the Law into every minute detail of life.

Toward the end of Hillel’s morning lectures, Jakan, the camel-sucking husband-to-be of my beloved Maggie, asked Hillel if it would be a sin to eat an egg that had been laid on the Sabbath.

“What are you, stupid? The Lord doesn’t give a damn what a chicken does on the Sabbath, you nimrod! It’s a chicken. If a Jew lays an egg on the Sabbath, that’s probably a sin, come see me then. Otherwise don’t waste my friggin’ time with that nonsense. Now go away, I’m hungry and I need a nap. All of you, scram.”

Joshua looked at me and grinned. “He’s not what I expected,” he whispered.

“Knows a nimrod when he sees—uh—hears one, though,” I said. (Nimrod was an ancient king who died of suffocation after he wondered aloud in front of his guards what it would be like to have your own head stuck up your ass.)

A boy younger than us helped the old man to his feet and began to lead him away toward the Temple gate. I ran up and took the priest’s other arm.

“Rabbi, my friend has come from far away to talk to you. Can you help him?”

The old man stopped. “Where is your friend?”

“Right here.”

“Then why isn’t he talking for himself? Where do you come from, kid?”

“Nazareth,” Joshua said, “but I was born in Bethlehem. I am Joshua bar Joseph.”

“Oh yeah, I’ve talked to your mother.”

“You have?”

“Sure, almost every time she and your father come to Jerusalem for a feast she tries to see me. She thinks you’re the Messiah.”

Joshua swallowed hard. “Am I?”

Hillel snorted. “Do you want to be the Messiah?”

Joshua looked at me as if I might have the answer. I shrugged. “I don’t know,” Josh finally said. “I thought I was just supposed to do it.”

“Do you think you’re the Messiah?”

“I’m not sure I should say.”

“That’s smart,” Hillel said. “You shouldn’t say. You can think you’re the Messiah all that you want, just don’t tell anyone.”

“But if I don’t tell them, they won’t know.”

“Exactly. You can think you’re a palm tree if you want, just don’t tell anyone. You can think you’re a flock of seagulls, just don’t tell anyone. You get my meaning? Now I have to go eat. I’m old and I’m hungry and I want to go eat now, so just in case I die before supper I won’t go hungry.”

“But he really is the Messiah,” I said.

“Oh yeah,” Hillel said, grabbing my shoulder, then feeling for my head so he could scream into my ear. “What do you know? You’re an ignorant kid. How old are you? Twelve? Thirteen?”

“Thirteen.”

“How could you, at thirteen, know anything? I’m eighty-four and I don’t know shit.”

“But you’re wise,” I said.

“I’m wise enough to know that I don’t know shit. Now go away.”

“Should I ask the Holy of Holies?” Joshua said.

Hillel swung at the air, as if to slap Joshua, but missed by a foot. “It’s a box. I saw it when I could still see, and I can tell you that it’s a box. And you know what else, if there were tablets in it, they aren’t there now. So if you want to talk to a box, and probably be executed for trying to get into the chamber where it’s kept, you go right ahead.”

The breath seemed to be knocked out of Joshua’s body and I thought he would faint on the spot. How could the greatest teacher in all of Israel speak of the Ark of the Covenant in such a way? How could a man who obviously knew every word of the Torah, and all the teachings written since, how could he claim not to know anything?

Hillel seemed to sense Joshua’s distress. “Look, kid, your mother says that some very wise men came to Bethlehem to see you when you were born. They obviously knew something that no one else knew. Why don’t you go see them? Ask them about being the Messiah.”

“So you aren’t going to tell him how to be the Messiah?” I asked.

Again Hillel reached out for Joshua, but this time without any anger. He found Joshua’s cheek, and stroked it with his palsied hand. “I don’t believe there will be a Messiah, and at this point, I’m not sure it would make a difference to me. Our people have spent more time in slavery or under the heels of foreign kings than we have spent free, so who is to say that it is God’s will that we be free at all? Who is to say that God concerns himself with us in any way, beyond allowing us to be? I don’t think that he does. So know this, little one. Whether you are the Messiah, or you become a rabbi, or even if you are nothing more than a farmer, here is the sum of all I can teach you, and all that I know: treat others as you would like to be treated. Can you remember that?”

Joshua nodded and the old man smiled. “Go find your wise men, Joshua bar Joseph.”

What we did was stay in the Temple while Joshua grilled every priest, guard, even Pharisee about the Magi who had come to Jerusalem thirteen years before. Evidently it wasn’t as big an event for others as it was for Josh’s family, because no one had any idea what he was talking about.

By the time he’d been at it for a couple of hours he was literally screaming into the faces of a group of Pharisees. “Three of them. Magicians. They came because they saw a star over Bethlehem. They were carrying gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Come on, you’re all old. You’re supposed to be wise. Think!”

Needless to say, they weren’t pleased. “Who is this boy who would question our knowledge? He knows nothing of the Torah and the prophets and yet berates us for not remembering three insignificant travelers.”

It was the wrong thing to say to Joshua. No one had studied the Torah harder. No one knew scripture better. “Ask me any question, Pharisee,” Joshua said. “Ask anything.”

In retrospect, after having grown up, somewhat, and having lived, died, and been resurrected from the dust, I realize that there may be nothing more obnoxious than a teenager who knows everything. Certainly, it is a symptom of the age that they think they know everything, but now I have some sympathy for those poor men who challenged Joshua that day at the Temple. Of course, at the time, I shouted, “Smite the sons-a-bitches, Josh.”