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Lamb The Gospel According To Biff
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An Affectionate Parody of The Bible by absurdist & humorist Christopher Moore.
As suggested by its title ( Lamb: The Gospel According To Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal), the main character and Sympathetic POV is a fellow named "Levi bar Alphaeus who is called Biff." The reason he doesn't show up in the actual Bible is because he was kind of a jerk and the other apostles conspired to keep him out of it (or so he figures). In the modern day, Biff is resurrected by an angel to give his accounts of what it was like to have known Joshua bar Joseph since both of you were six years old, and you stumbled upon him having his kid brother smash a lizard with a rock, sticking the dead lizard in his mouth, and taking it back out alive again.
Biff: I wanna do that.
Josh: Which part?
In between epistolary moments where he marvels about modern life, Biff pens his gospel, filling in a lot of the blanks. Ever notice how The Bible goes straight from Jesus as a kid (about 12 years old) to the beginning of his ministry when he was 30? Biff explains that the two of them went east so that Josh could learn, from the Three Wise Men, how to become the Messiah; along the way, they absorbed many Buddhist, Taoist and Hindu attitudes which informed Joshua's later preaching. Biff looks out for his best friend, tempering Joshua's Innocence Virgin On Stupidity with his own brand of ruthless, practical Magnificent Bastardry; the only thing that gets him off-balance is the presence of his childhood crush, Mary the Magdalene ("Maggie"), who is depicted as having a thing for Josh. And, because it's a humor novel, all sorts of silly things happen, be it the names of Balthazar's concubines, the explanation of how the martial art "judo" came about, or the start of the Jewish tradition of having Chinese food on Joshua's birthday.
Tropes that appear in this work include:
- Alternate Character Interpretation (by its very nature. Some of it is pure Artistic License though: Maggie, a Palestinian, with red hair??)
- Traditionally, King David also had red hair, and Mary has usually been depicted with red hair; though that may have been because of the traditionally, faulty, interpretation of her as a prostitute.
- Just as Jesus is traditionally portrayed as a white man from Oxford?
- Red hair exists in the Middle East, just not as much as in the British Isles or Europe more generally. It's most common (or rather least uncommon) in the Levant...which includes Palestine.
- Attractive Bent Gender (Biff has to disguise himself as a Hindu widower's daughter at one point. The widower hits on him.)
- Beethoven Was An Alien Spy: according to Raziel, the angel Gabriel once decided to hang around on Earth for sixty years under the guise of Miles Davis
 .
- Bible Times
- Bishonen: Raziel, the angel who resurrects Biff. Supposedly Even The Guys Want Him is a standard feature on angels. However, this is derailed by his...
- ...Brainless Beauty, leading Biff to theorize that Raziel might have been the Ur Example Dumb Blonde.
- Bishie Sparkle:
- —>Biff: And this golden stuff around you, this light, what is this?
Raziel: The glory of the Lord
Biff: You're sure it's not stupidity leaking out of you?
- But You Screw One Goat! : Played with, a LOT.
" A sea turtle? Really?!"
- Came Back Wrong: Lazarus, who has, err, somewhat fragmented in the meanwhile. (This is a Shout Out to The Bible: Maggie protests that they should not open the tomb because Lazarus has been dead for four days and the stench will be dreadful.)
- Celibate Hero: Josh is commanded by an angel (Raziel) not to "know women." What exactly does that mean? They mean to ask Raziel the next time he appears... But, as a Running Gag, they never get around to it.
- Biff finds a loophole: he goes to know some women and then tells Josh about it.
- Chick Magnet: Josh. Biff had a pretty interesting way of utilizing this for apostle recruits, as he demonstrates with Matthew:
Biff: Sad. You're probably heartbroken. That's sad. You see those women? There's women like that all the time around Joshua. And here's the best part, he's celibate. He doesn't want any of them. He's just interested in saving mankind and bringing the kingdom of God to earth - which we all are, of course. But the women, well, I think you can see...
- Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Biff suggests that Joshua's mom (you know, the Virgin Mary) has a touch of this quality about her, which doesn't help the family much. (Of course, Biff finds it charming...)
- Also Raziel. To quote Biff: "The angel confided in me that he is going to ask the Lord if he can become Spider-Man..."
- Continuity Nod: Raziel is later an important character in The Stupidest Angel, and Catch is the main villian in Christopher Moore's first book, Practical Demon Keeping.
- Cute Shotaro Boy: Jesus himself. (The scary thing is, in context, it actually makes a lot of sense.)
- Deconstructor Fleet on The Bible (played more for laughs than anything else)
- Deadpan Snarker, First Person Smartass: Biff, who invents the concept of sarcasm.
- Demonic Possession: Played straight first, then subverted when Maggie fakes this to make her horrible husband want to leave her.
- The Ditz: Raziel
- Dragon Lady: Biff claims that Joy, who uses dragons in her symbology after striking out on her own, is the Ur Example
- Epigraph: each chapter is headed by one
- Happily Ever After: Biff, after finding out that Maggie has also been resurrected to add her Gospel to canon.
- Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today?: No, John, you're not.
- It Was His Sled: Jesus dies. But Biff didn't know he was gonna get better, and killed himself in despair. Having missed out on all the cool stuff that happened afterwards is the real reason why he didn't get into The Bible.
- It Will Never Catch On: Joshua's opinion of this "sarcasm" thing Biff invented (of course, Josh gets it wrong every time he tries to use it). Other noteworthy ones include matches and gravity.
- Likewise, Biff's name for a big barrier used to keep some barbarians out: The Ugly And Ostentatious Wall Of China
- Heterosexual Life Partners: Biff and Josh
- Hot Shounen Mom: this is how Biff sees Mary, whom he plans to marry in case something should happen to her current husband Joseph.
- Ho Yay: a certain amount between Heterosexual Life Partners Josh and Biff. (Not to mention Stupid Sexy Raziel...)
- Hurricane Of Puns: A lot of them, but one stand-out is the martial art that Jesus develops: "Jew Do".
- Jerkass: Biff. In a good way.
- Kung Fu Jesus: basically the whole point of the book. (What Do You Mean Its Not Awesome?)
- Love Triangle
- Martial Pacifist (Biff and Josh are taught kung fu during their travels, but Joshua refuses to learn the bits which involve weapons, and indeed any direct violence at all. Instead he pioneers a totally reactive martial art which would forever be known as "the way of the Jew," or "Jew do".)
- The Messiah
- Names The Same: "You would have liked pizza. The servant who brings it is named Jesus, and he's not even a Jew. You always liked irony"
- Noodle Implements: this novel provides one of the page quotes
- Odd Name Out: all of Balthasar's concubines have long and elaborate names, often regarding their occupation (for instance, "Tiny Feet of the Divine Dance of Joyous Orgasm," who for obvious reasons just goes by "Joy")... Except for the last one: "Sue (short for Susannah)". A subversion, too, since Joy, not Susannah, lives through the following disaster.
- Offstage Waiting Room: most of the novel takes place during the "lost years" of Ieshua of Nazareth; his actual ministry only takes up the last third of quarter of the book
- Pals With Jesus
- Refuge In Audacity: basically the whole vibe of the novel, along with...
- ...Rule Of Cool and Rule Of Funny. The author even invokes it - history will just have to suffer a bit to answer the age-old question of "What if Jesus knew Kung Fu?"
- Shamgri La: one of the three Wise Men lives here, complete with Yeti, who is the Last Of His Kind. Which in itself is brutally deconstructed when Josh, Friend To All Living Things that he is, befriends said yeti...
- Shaming The Mob: "Let he who is without sin..." (Josh himself is played completely straight in this scene, and in fact in most of the book; it's Biff who provides most of the silliness. ...Mostly. Josh gets some good ones in too.)
- Stupid Sexy Flanders: Biff, tackling Raziel, shouting, "I have not been laid in two thousand years!!!" There's also that time that Biff asked to see Raziel's, err, equipment...
- There's also that bit where John the Apostle makes a rather flirty comment in regards to Josh. He spends the rest of the scene loudly proclaiming his interest in random woman before his brother James tells him to stop embarassing himself.
- The Legions Of Hell: Catch, anyone? And then Legion himselves show up later.
- Values Dissonance: an in-book example - Josh's "drive the demon Legion into the pigs and drown them" miracle doesn't go over so well when the onlookers are a)gentiles and b)the owners of said pigs. As it was, torches and pitchforks were involved.
Joshua: What? If they were Jews, it would have gone over great. I'm new at gentiles.
- Walk On Water: another good example of how Moore both pokes fun at the Bible and plays it straight. Josh teases Peter for being dumb as a rock, but also praises him for the strength of his faith, claiming, "On this rock..."
- Youre Not My Father: used by Josh against Joseph in an early scene, with Meaningful Echo in reverse later.
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