A very Bad book.

Couple weeks ago I was teaching Sunday School, that lesson on phylacteries, you remember it? The lesson manual (which I generally loathe anyway) wanted us to ask people what kind of stuff they had on the walls of their houses, and to, like, put post-it notes on all of it, labeling it 'leads me to God,' or 'leads me away from God.' I wasn't going to do that, obviously, nor recommend it, but thought a general lesson on iconography might be of some interest, and, as a sort of ice breaker, mentioned that if you walked into my house the first thing you'd see would be all the book cases crammed with books. And a sister in the ward (who I really like, actually) said, "but you only have good books, right? You don't have any bad books."

Well, I was stunned/shocked/baffled/mystefied. It just congenitally doesn't occur to me to think of books that way, as 'good' or 'bad.' Books are all good, always; that's the way my knee jerks. I mean, okay, logically, I do think some books are qualitatively better than others, and by constructing that sort of continuum it must logically follow that some would end up on the 'bad' end of the scale. But I don't respond to books viscerally that way, as 'good' books or 'bad' books morally. Fundamentally, I don't think bad books exist. (Uninteresting, poorly written books, sure. Like, say, Sunday School manuals.)

Which brings us to a book I just have to tell y'all about, Christopher Moore's novel Lamb. Subtitled, "the Gospel according to Biff, Christ's childhood pal." I don't think there's much doubt that this is exactly the sort of book that my dear ward sister had in mind as a 'bad' book. My wife kinda thinks so too. I thought it was terrifically interesting and amusing, but I'm also wary of recommending it too highly.

Here goes. It's a purported fifth gospel, written by one Levi ben Alphaeus, otherwise known as Biff. Basically, it focuses on AD 6-30 (well, actually 0-24, since Jesus was probably born 6 BC), the years not covered by Matthew Mark Luke and John. The story is told first person, from Biff's perspective. The basic premise is this; the angel Raziel has come to earth to resurrect Biff, bring him to a Hyatt Regency outside St. Louis, and keeps tabs on him while he writes a fifth gospel. Angels, in the world of this book, are exceeding powerful and exceptionally dense, and Raziel is no exception; while Biff writes, Raziel spends his time watching pro wrestling and soap operas on TV, both of which he thinks are real. Biff, meanwhile, keeps sneaking off to the bathroom, ostensibly to masturbate, but actually to read the Gideon New Testament he found in the room. The passages in the novel in which Biff describes his interactions with Raziel are very short, but also really funny little sketches in-between the main narrative.

The main narrative, then. Well, it's about Jesus' childhood, adolescence and early adult years. It helps that Biff consistently calls him Joshua; that distances us a bit. And, well, how can I describe this book? It's a demented funhouse of a book, clever and witty and profane. And it's also a serious examination of the basic ideas of Christianity. Moore never met a punch line he didn't like, and 'inappropriate' is really not a word in his vocabulary. But his research is detailed and convincing, and his ideas are fascinating.

Biff himself is an interesting character. He's profane, sex obsessed and something of a buffoon. He's a smart aleck, a wiseacre, whose proudest achievement is teaching the Son of God the concept of sarcasm. He's also fiercely loyal to his friend, and has a great capacity for love, and even for spirituality. He is, in other words, and intensely human character, and we can see why Joshua loves him.

Joshua loves everyone. He is incapable of lying. He is incapable of violence, or hatred, or malice. He is a generous and tender hearted child and a generous and kindhearted adult. What's remarkable about Moore's achievement with this book is that Joshua does not seem remotely . . . remote. He's also human. He knows he's the Son of God. He knows he's supposed to be the Messiah. And he doesn't know how. Which quest drives the book; Joshua and Biff searching the world for answers to the question: how does one behave as Messiah.

So how to find out? Well, through the three wise men. Joshua looks them each up in turn. From Balthazar (who he finds in Afghanistan), he learns the writings of Confucius and Lao Tzu and Sun Tzu. (He's also taught by Balthazar's eight Chinese concubines, about which more later). After he's learned what he can, he travels to Tibet, where he meets Gaspar, who has become a Buddhist monk. There, he learns the fundamental precepts of Buddhism, and learns that his role as Messiah will, in part, encompass the role of bodhisattva, one who has achieved enlightenment, but who refuses nirvana until all others preceed him there. Joshua and Biff also learn judo and kung fu. (This, Moore admits in an endnote, is an anachronism; Buddhism did not arrive in Tibet until 500 AD, and kung fu was invented two hundred years after that. But Buddhism, of course, preceeded Christianity, and if the historical Jesus traveled to India, he would certainly have learned of it). Finally, Joshua travels to India, where he meets Melchior, a Hindu adept, from whom he is introduced to the Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads. Biff, meanwhile, is far more interested in learning all he can from the Kama Sutra.

What clearly interests Moore is the connection between Christ's teachings in the New Testament and Eastern religion. In a very revealing afterward, Moore admits that Jesus could have, and probably did formulate his teachings based on nothing more than his own spiritual insight, the teachings of rabbis, and the Torah. He just thinks that the idea of Jesus traveling all around the East makes for a better story. I still found it all most provocative.

But then there's all the sex. Now, Biff's interest in matters sexual is certainly no more than that of any adolescent boy. And while Biff does get to know (in all senses of the word) Balthazar's eight Chinese concubines, Joshua does not. There's also a love triangle in the story, between Biff, Mary Magdalene and Joshua. Mary (known as Maggie in the book), desperately loves Joshua. Biff loves Maggie. Maggie is also married to a Pharisee (who she eventually leaves). Joshua, meanwhile, is celibate throughout. But he's very interested in sex, and makes Biff tell him all about it. He 'needs to know about sin.' (For what it's worth, Maggie also gets resurrected, and she and Biff end up together).

All this is very uncomfortable, yet not altogether implausible. What was adolescence like for Jesus? How did he deal with the inevitable changes that come from maturation? And did he have a best friend, and if so, what was he like? For the nice lady in my ward, long discussions of sexuality in a novel about Christ would, I suspect, automatically vault it onto the 'bad book' list. Biff is, shall we say, sexually active in this novel, although there aren't really any graphic or pornographic descriptions of any untoward activity. Well, apart from quite comic parodies of the Kama Sutra.

Moore's Joshua never marries, and remains faithfully celibate. Jewish boys, in that era, normally married at fourteen. Well, what are the implications of all that, theologically, historically? As a Mormon, I'm untroubled with the notion that Jesus was married. But I'm equally untroubled by Moore's fictitious notion that he traveled broadly in search of enlightenment, or that a study of Buddhism may have been part of his education.

Final note: there's a ton of bad language in this novel, especially the F word. Really, it's not used to offend; it's just a word people use, including Joshua. If you think, as I do, that words are morally neutral and that offensiveness is a matter of context, then the language in this novel is fine. But if you get offended by harsh language, I'd avoid this book.

Anyway, it's really funny, and very well written, and thought provoking, and could easily be seen as amazingly blasphemous though I didn't find it so at all. Frankly, my main reaction to it was to want to be nicer to people, and to look for genuine opportunities to practice charity. I loved this book. But to the lady in my ward, it's probably a great example of a very very bad book.

Eric Samuelsen