I promise, at some point, I’ll review something that’s come out within the last year. In the meantime, I just finished Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore which was published back in 2002. It’s been on my to-read list for a while and I just got to it.

The book itself seems pretty great, but the audiobook . . . well, it wasn’t my favorite. Let’s get into it!

What did happen to Jesus during those 18 years?

If you haven’t heard about the lost years of Jesus, it might be worth reading up on it before you start Lamb. Basically, there are about 18 years of Jesus’s life entirely missing from the modern Bible. Some assume he was just doing the carpentry thing during that time, but there are other stories out there (with some evidence to back them) that say he travelled the world and spent time in places like India.

The reason I picked it up was really nostalgia for the movie Dogma (man, they really need a re-release) because the main plot point in the film was that Jesus went and started a family during those 18 years. I’d heard good things about Christopher Moore, in general, so it was bound to get read by me at some point. I also really like learning about actual, recorded history in Biblical times because, in modern society, it’s all surrounded with a lot of mysticism and awe, which makes it hard to actually learn what life was like back then.

Moore does some awesome work here, and it’s plainly evident that he researched the hell out of the time period, and of Jesus’s life in general. I learned quite a bit about biblical times, Jesus, and the people that were around him. Example: Jesus’s name wasn’t originally Jesus, it was Yeshua, which more directly translates to Joshua. To be clear, this isn’t exactly canonical Bible, but it’s good fun, and written in a way that cleverly uses what is in the Bible to tell a wholly unique story about Moore’s version of Jesus.

But the audiobook? Yeah, I didn’t like the narrator at all, and I think, as a result, that I didn’t enjoy the book nearly as much as I should have.

Levi, who is called Biff, is Josh’s practical friend

I’m going to start calling Jesus “Josh” for this review because that’s what Moore does in the book and, well, it’s probably a better translation anyway. Biff (real name Levi) is Josh’s best friend, and his (mostly) practical advice is something Josh leans on throughout the book. Think of him as the (somewhat) streetwise guy who keep his naive friends from getting into too much trouble.

Biff is our narrator, brought back to modern times from the dead by the angel Raziel, to write his new gospel aimed at telling the world what Josh was up to during those “lost” years. Raziel locks Biff up in a hotel room and forces him to write his story without any input from the outside world, or access to the modern Bible. Their interactions are pretty hilarious as Raziel is not the brightest star in the sky and Biff is something of a smartass.

Biff and Josh go on a quest to meet and talk to the three wise men that originally visited at the time of Josh’s birth. The goal is to help Josh understand how to be the Messiah–the Chosen One that will bring the Kingdom of Heaven to his people (yes, that’s a lot of capital letters). In short, the premise of this book is that Josh doesn’t know how to be the messiah and wants to figure it out. He’s just kind of a friendly, somewhat naive kid to start, trying to figure out what he wants to be when he grows up.

Interweaving history, Josh and Biff’s journey, and the Gospel

Exploring Josh’s lost years, we see him do everything from gather followers, to figuring out what to call “the Holy Ghost,” to why there’s an Easter Bunny. It’s the journey Josh and Biff take and the people they meet and learn from that make me love this book.

If you know anything about history, you know that some of the rituals and even stories of Christianity are drawn from or inspired by religions that came before. Even the Christmas tree and Easter egg were borrowed from pagan symbolism. I don’t care how hardcore a Christian you are, there’s no denying that early Christianity was pragmatic about holidays. There’s a reason we celebrate Christmas in December, and it’s not because it’s on Christ’s actual birthday.

Josh traveling the world with Biff and seeing how other people from different backgrounds and beliefs reach spiritual enlightenment shapes who Josh becomes as well as what he preaches. He learns from monks, yogis, and even a wizard. This all helps him to shape what would become Christianity–a way to guide his people to salvation. It’s really cool, and it actually explains, in an organic way, how other religions influenced Christianity while also making it clear that Jesus is the one who put it all together, tweaked it, and preached the Word.

I’m sure a lot of people would be offended by this book, but, in my opinion, it doesn’t exactly stink of blasphemy. It humanizes Josh and his apostles, and explores how the son of God could become the prophet that lays the blueprint of a global religion. He’s still the guy who does it, and it feels less like “borrowing” from other religions, and more like Josh better understanding the path to enlightenment based on the combined knowledge of every wise, spiritual person he could find.

But that narrator . . .

I can’t pin down any one thing about the narrator (Fisher Stevens) that I didn’t like, but listen to the sample before you decide to go audio on this one. If I had to pick the biggest problem it’d be, when not speaking dialogue, his delivery of each line of prose was the same, and it got monotonous. He also didn’t have a lot of differentiation between different characters’ voices, so back-and-forth conversations were sometimes hard to follow.

It’s weird, because Fisher Stevens is an actor who has been in a bunch of things that are generally well received (though I had no idea he did brown face for Short Circuit until just now when I Googled him). It’s not all bad, and he does do some solid accents throughout . . . but now that I know about Short Circuit, I cringe a bit remembering the chapters where he was doing an Indian accent.

I think maybe he was trying too hard to make the prose sound biblical, and it comes across kind of flat. It’s not so bad I’d say to avoid the audiobook altogether, but I think it’s bad enough to one, dedicate a section of the review to writing about it and two, detract from what was a really good book.

The good, the meh, and the sins of Lamb

The good: It’s an extremely clever and funny look at Josh’s missing years. It’s not done in a way that feels like it’s mocking Christianity, Jesus, or the Bible itself, but instead explains how Josh learned to be the Messiah and, thus, how Christianity was born. It humanizes the people from the Bible. It doesn’t shy away from the fact that the Bible itself was written many, many years after the events in it took place, and that it has been translated and re-translated (sometimes badly) over and over again.

In short, it manages to be a funny book where Josh (again, he’s Jesus) is a main character and best friends with a dude that goes by the name “Biff” while not mocking Christianity itself (though your level of offense may vary based on your own beliefs). It’s got a 4.23 on Goodreads as of this writing for a reason. It’s good!

The meh: Biff really wants to get laid throughout most of the book (and sometimes Josh does too). I don’t have a problem with that as it’s part of the humanizing of the characters (young men going through puberty or who have recently gone through it often want sex more than just about anything). However, I do think Moore leans on it a little too heavily here and there. At one point, I remember thinking, “OK, I get it already. Let’s move on.”

I’m mentioning it here in the review because I think it’ll go too far for some. I don’t think it harms the book, and I honestly think it might have bothered me less had I been reading it rather than listening to a narrator I didn’t like describe it to me.

The sins: The only thing I can think of is me not really liking the narrator. I think I’m going to give this a re-read as an ebook and maybe revisit the review some time later.

The verdict

Highlights:

• Really clever use of Biblical references and historical setting
• Ingenious way of laying out the story of the birth of Christianity and where the devil Jesus went during those 18 “lost” years
• Biff, and the decision to call him “Biff” made for an interesting companion for Josh (a.k.a. Jesus)
• The narrator wasn’t my favorite, and hurt my enjoyment of the book a bit

Score (out of 5)

My personal score: 4
Wider audience score: 4 (but might offend some)
Audiobook performance: 2