Lamb by Christopher Moore

The birth of Jesus has been well chronicled, as have his glorious teachings, acts, and divine sacrifice after his thirtieth birthday. But no one knows about the early life of the Son of God, the missing years — except Biff, the Messiah's best bud, who has been resurrected to tell the story in the divinely hilarious yet heartfelt work "reminiscent of Vonnegut and Douglas Adams" (Philadelphia Inquirer).

Verily, the story Biff has to tell is a miraculous one, filled with remarkable journeys, magic, healings, kung fu, corpse reanimations, demons, and hot babes. Even the considerable wiles and devotion of the Savior's pal may not be enough to divert Joshua from his tragic destiny. But there's no one who loves Josh more — except maybe "Maggie," Mary of Magdala — and Biff isn't about to let his extraordinary pal suffer and ascend without a fight. (from Barnes and Noble )


I love listening to Jonathan Goldstein's Bible stories for adults on NPR's This American Life. I thought about getting his book Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bible! but it didn't get very good reviews. Several reviewers mentioned Chris Moore's Lamb and how much better it is compared to Goldstein's. So I checked out the reviews for Lamb and wow. After 259 ratings it has an average of 5 stars. So I downloaded it to my kindle and it became my December read.


It was cute. Entertaining. It has it's funny moments. The sophomoric sexual humor seems overdone--Biff is a frat-boy at heart, I get it. I didn't love it though. I wanted it to have more dry wit than slapstick, I wanted Biff's death to be more poignant but it wasn't, I wanted to be moved to tears when he was unable to save Joshua (Jesus) on the cross but I didn't. I give it 3 stars.

It did provide the best message of Christianity ever though.

"You should be nice to people, even creeps.
And if you:
a) believed that Joshua was the Son of God (and)
b) he had come to save you from sin (and)
c) acknowledged the Holy Spirit within you (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) f$#cked"

(That's an excerpt from chapter 28 of Christopher Moore's Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal. I didn't write it. I'm not claiming to have written it. All credit goes to Mr. Moore.)