Lamb

By Christopher Moore

The story of Jesus, starting from his boyhood days and covering all the territory not mentioned in the Bible, all of it total fiction, of course. Another title for the book could have been The Lighter Side of Jesus.
So in this book Jesus is a strange little kid with strange abilities and powers and his best friend is Biff, who sticks by him through thick and thin, traveling with Jesus, or as he is called in the story, Joshua, to Kabul, China, and India, eventually ending up back in the Holy Land to study under John the Baptist and then start his own ministry. In the book, the author has Jesus studying Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism. He also has him studying kung fu and judo, which the author puns is Jew-do, or the way of the Jew. It was invented just for Jesus because he didn't want to study self defense using weapons. There is lots of silly stuff like that as when Jesus, after studying with a yogi in India, climbs inside a large clay wine jar but then can't get back out and Biff has to break the jar to set him free. One of the silliest is Biff and Jesus using the mild profanity jeez, which of course is really just a way of saying Jesus. Oh, and we are told that wuss is the same word back then as it is now. There's lots of goofy stuff like that.
On the other hand, even though this Jesus is able to take and make a joke and is not above a mild obscenity like "fuckstick" (whatever that is), this novel has a more serious side. Jesus searches for the truth, persevering even though God doesn't answer his prayers, except on one occasion and the only response Jesus gets from God is a terse, "fuck em." This Jesus is a little more vulgar than perhaps Christians would like to think, but the author doesn't trample on or deny his divine nature and doesn't portray him as a nutcase of a faker. Throughout the novel, it is clear that he really is the Son of God and he really is the Messiah.
So, even though the story is a bit irreverent, I must say I like this version of Jesus better than the deadly serious Jesus who goes about blighting fig trees just because they don't have any figs on them, which they wouldn't since it wasn't fig season (Mark 11: 12-14). That Jesus is just plain scary. But Moore's Jesus likes to have fun and laugh and joke around and simply is more lovable. I enjoyed the story a lot but have to say it is probably not for everyone.