The Gospel According To Biff

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore is a sick book, seriously sick… but my kind of sick.

Through the eyes of Biff - a sarcastic, sex-loving, crude, and deeply loyal friend – we get a very humorous, fictitious, and yet insightful look at Jesus. Moore uses the device of the three wise men, representing Eastern spiritual traditions, to send Jesus and Biff on a spiritual odyssey before returning to Nazareth to begin his public ministry.

From the first meeting with the 6 year old Jesus - he was bringing to life lizards whose heads his younger brother had quashed – to the righteous young teenager who secretly in the dark of night went with Biff to circumcise a statue of Apollo (yes, the chisel slipped!) the reader knows this is no ordinary book.

Here’s an example of its warped humour:

“I’m going to be gone soon,” [Jesus states]. “In the spring we’ll go to Jerusalem for the Passover, and there I will judged by the scribes and the priests, and there I will be tortured and put to death. But three days from the day of my death, I shall rise, and be with you again.”

… A shadow of grief seemed to pass over the faces of the disciples. We looked not at each other, and neither at the ground, but at a place in space a few feet from our faces, where I suppose one looks for a clear answer to appear out of undefined shock.

“Well, that sucks,” someone said.” [P.391]

Humour, like beauty, art and music, is a very subjective thing. Within my family, for example, there are at least two different streams of humour. What will have two or three of us rolling on the floor laughing watery-eyed will have the rest of us looking bemused. So, if you don’t find this funny don’t worry. You’re normal. But others of us aren’t.

Here’s another Biff beauty:

“[Jesus] ministry was three years of preaching… here’s the gist:

You should be nice to people, even creeps.
And if you:
A] believed that [Jesus] 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.” [p.366]

Biff is akin to Monty Python [with an American accent] going to Nazareth. Yet it also has a serious message. The author summarizes that on p.443: “the preferable way to treat one another is with love and kindness; [the] pursuit of material gain is ultimately empty …; and that somehow, as human beings, we are all connected.” Moore’s unspoken message is that sick humour is also tonic for the soul.