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

I had to stop reading this one. It was recommended to me by a friend, but I was pretty uncomfortable with it.

It’s a modern, snarky novel that purports to be an alternate version of the Gospels, written by Jesus Christ’s best friend, Biff.

…yeah.

There was the obvious sacrilegious angle that I didn’t love. While the author doesn’t have Jesus doing anything “against canon” (?), there are lots of questionable situations. For example, Jesus wanted to understand was sex was like, so he hid behind a curtain while Biff slept with a prostitute.

And all this is beyond the fact that the author has essentially added to the Bible …or did he? I can’t quite figure out if he was attempted to append to the Bible, or just writing a parallel novel in Biblical times? If it didn’t have Jesus as a character, it would just a random story set in that era. But with Jesus as a character, there are suddenly lots of theological questions.

But, honestly, the biggest sin committed by the book might be that it’s just boring. It wasn’t going anywhere. Biff and Jesus went to Africa (I think?) at one point, and got stuck in a castle with a demon, and… I only half-remember. There was no narrative other than random episodes, and the author was clearly very impressed with himself – everything seemed to be a joke. The writing style was annoying.

I was getting nothing out of it, and, again, there was a major ick factor with the subject matter. I bailed out about halfway through.