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

If you have come to these pages for laughter, may you find it.

If you are here to be offended, may your ire rise and your blood boil.

If you seek an adventure, may this story sing you away to blissful escape.

If you need to test or confirm your beliefs, may you reach comfortable conclusions.

All books reveal perfection, by what they are or what they are not.

May you find that which you seek, in these pages or outside them.

May you find perfection, and know it by name.

The angel was cleaning out his closets when the call came. Halos and moonbeams were sorted into piles according to brightness, satchels of wrath and scabbards of lightning hung on hooks waiting to be dusted. A wineskin of glory had leaked in the corner and the angel blotted it with a wad of fabric. Each time he turned the cloth a muted chorus rang from the closet, as if he’d clamped the lid down on a pickle jar full of Hallelujah Chorus.

“Raziel, what in heaven’s name are you doing?”

The archangel Stephan was standing over him, brandishing a scroll like a rolled-up magazine over a piddling puppy.

“Orders?” the angel asked.

“Dirt-side.”

“I was just there.”

“Two millennia ago.”

“Really?” Raziel checked his watch, then tapped the crystal. “Are you sure?”

“What do you think?” Stephan held out the scroll so Raziel could see the Burning Bush seal.

“When do I leave? I was almost finished here.”

“Now. Pack the gift of tongues and some minor miracles. No weapons, it’s not a wrath job. You’ll be undercover. Very low profile, but important. It’s all in the orders.” Stephan handed him the scroll.

“Why me?”

“I asked that too.”

“And?”

“I was reminded why angels are cast out.”

“Whoa! That big?”

Stephan coughed, clearly an affectation, since angels didn’t breathe. “I’m not sure I’m supposed to know, but the rumor is that it’s a new book.”

“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.”

Raziel dropped his rag and stood. “This has to be a mistake.”

“It comes directly from the Son.”

“There’s a reason Biff isn’t mentioned in the other books, you know? He’s a total—”

“Don’t say it.”

“But he’s such an asshole.”

“You talk like that and you wonder why you get dirt-duty.”

“Why now, after so long, the four Gospels have been fine so far, and why him?”

“Because it’s some kind of anniversary in dirt-dweller time of the Son’s birth, and he feels it’s time the whole story is told.”

Raziel hung his head. “I’d better pack.”

“Gift of tongues,” Stephan reminded.

“Of course, so I can take crap in a thousand languages.”

“Go get the good news, Raziel. Bring me back some chocolate.”

“Chocolate?”

“It’s a dirt-dweller snack. You’ll like it. Satan invented it.”

“Devil’s food?”

“You can only eat so much white cake, my friend.”

Midnight. The angel stood on a barren hillside on the outskirts of the holy city of Jerusalem. He raised his arms aloft and a dry wind whipped his white robe around him.

“Arise, Levi who is called Biff.”

A whirlwind formed before him, pulling dust from the hillside into a column that took the shape of a man.

“Arise, Biff. Your time has come.”

The wind whipped into a fury and the angel pulled the sleeve of his robe across his face.

“Arise, Biff, and walk again among the living.”

The whirlwind began to subside, leaving the man-shaped column of dust standing on the hillside. In a moment, the hillside was calm again. The angel pulled a gold vessel from his satchel and poured it over the column. The dust washed away, leaving a muddy, naked man sputtering in the starlight.

“Welcome back to the living,” the angel said.

The man blinked, then held his hand before his eyes as if he expected to see through it.

“I’m alive,” he said in a language he had never heard before.

“Yes,” the angel said.

“What are these sounds, these words?”

“You have been given the gift of tongues.”

“I’ve always had the gift of tongues, ask any girl I’ve known. What are these words?”

“Languages. You’ve been given the gift of languages, as were all the apostles.”

“Then the kingdom has come.”

“Yes.”

“How long?”

“Two thousand years ago.”

“You worthless bag of dog shit,” said Levi who was called Biff, as he punched the angel in the mouth. “You’re late.”

The angel picked himself up and gingerly touched his lip. “Nice talk to a messenger of the Lord.”

“It’s a gift,” Biff said.

You think you know how this story is going to end, but you don’t. Trust me, I was there. I know.

The first time I saw the man who would save the world he was sitting near the central well in Nazareth with a lizard hanging out of his mouth. Just the tail end and the hind legs were visible on the outside; the head and forelegs were halfway down the hatch. He was six, like me, and his beard had not come in fully, so he didn’t look much like the pictures you’ve seen of him. His eyes were like dark honey, and they smiled at me out of a mop of blue-black curls that framed his face. There was a light older than Moses in those eyes.

“Unclean! Unclean!” I screamed, pointing at the boy, so my mother would see that I knew the Law, but she ignored me, as did all the other mothers who were filling their jars at the well.

The boy took the lizard from his mouth and handed it to his younger brother, who sat beside him in the sand. The younger boy played with the lizard for a while, teasing it until it reared its little head as if to bite, then he picked up a rock and mashed the creature’s head. Bewildered, he pushed the dead lizard around in the sand, and once assured that it wasn’t going anywhere on its own, he picked it up and handed it back to his older brother.

Into his mouth went the lizard, and before I could accuse, out it came again, squirming and alive and ready to bite once again. He handed it back to his younger brother, who smote it mightily with the rock, starting or ending the whole process again.

I watched the lizard die three more times before I said, “I want to do that too.”

The Savior removed the lizard from his mouth and said, “Which part?”

By 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.

The angel says I’m supposed to just sit down and write my story, forget about what I’ve seen in this world, but how am I to do that? In the last three days I have seen more people, more images, more wonders, than in all my thirty-three years of living, and the angel asks me to ignore them. Yes, I have been given the gift of tongues, so I see nothing without knowing the word for it, but what good does that do? Did it help in Jerusalem to know that it was a Mercedes that terrified me and sent me diving into a Dumpster? Moreover, after Raziel pulled me out and ripped my fingernails back as I struggled to stay hidden, did it help to know that it was a Boeing 747 that made me cower in a ball trying to rock away my own tears and shut out the noise and fire? Am I a little child, afraid of its own shadow, or did I spend twenty-seven years at the side of the Son of God?