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

This is a bestseller by author Christopher Moore.

I must say, when I picked it up, I expected something that would be making fun of the Gospels, probably would get a lot of things wrong, and basically sacrifice a lot for the sake of a good joke.

I was wrong.

The author did some very extensive research into the Gospels, talked with researchers, even traveled to Jerusalem. There are some historical inaccuracies, which are discussed in the afterword, but in terms of contradicting the Gospel, there are no such occurrences; admittedly not everything that is in the Gospels is mentioned, but that is really just to keep the book from being too long. All in all, I actually learned a lot from reading this book.

Anyway, to the story. As you can tell by the title, it is about the life of Jesus Christ and told by the Levi called Biff. Biff meets up with Jesus when they are about 7 years old, and the story continues from there until Jesus's crucifixion. The many years of Christ's life that are not mentioned in the Gospels are thus filled in with the author's guess at what happened.

Obviously, if the readers of this book were as detached as they are from the Gospels, it would have never made a bestseller list. (It probably wouldn't have even been published.) But the humor (this book is hilarious,) the sadness, and everything comes from the perspective of Biff. What I have come to understand from reading this book is that the Gospels were not written by friends of Jesus, people who Loved him, but rather people who believed in him and loved his word. Biff, however, is someone who doesn't necessarily understand anything Jesus preaches, but Loves him as a friend. I think, even if this book is inaccurate, understanding that limitation in terms of the Bible can really bring a better understanding to a christian's faith.

I really recommend this book to any non-hillbilly-half-retarded-semi-open-minded christian, anybody who wants to learn a little about christianity, but doesn't want to ask some insane creep who will take it as a sign from God that they need to convert this person, or anyone who just wants to read a good and funny book.