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

Two days later, Biff returns to the monastery. Gaspar informs him of the offenses that will result in his permanent expulsion, which include theft, sexual intercourse, and killing a human or “one like a human” (216). The wise man tasks Biff with shaving a yak, and the animal breaks several of Biff’s bones. That night, Joshua heals him without the other monks knowing.

According to legend, Gaspar was an Indian prince who reached enlightenment by spending nine years meditating in a mountain cave. The nearby villagers helped him to construct a monastery on the mountain, and Gaspar developed kung fu to help the villagers to defend themselves from bandits. Biff and Joshua spend six years at the monastery studying kung fu and Buddhism, which teaches people to let go of ego and live fully in the present. Nine months into their training, Joshua is so free of “all constructions of self and vanity” that he becomes invisible (223).

The narrative jumps 2,000 years into the future. After confining Biff to the hotel room for weeks, Raziel suddenly takes him on a walk through the city and encourages him to learn about modern life.

The narrative returns to Gaspar’s monastery. The wise man is alarmed by Joshua’s invisibility and his fading connection to human existence. The following night, Joshua comes to Biff with the intention of saying goodbye. Now that he has achieved complete freedom and can become one with all things, Joshua believes that the Israelites must find freedom within their own hearts rather than waiting for a Messiah to liberate them from the Romans. Biff persuades Joshua to stay and listen to Gaspar. The wise man convinces Joshua to remain in the world by asking him to become a bodhisattva, “one [who] reaches enlightenment, but makes a decision that he will not evolve to nirvana until all sentient beings have preceded him there” (230).

Two months later, Gaspar decides that Joshua and Biff are ready for a special meditation. The three of them climb down the mountain to gather alms and are warmly welcomed and fed by the villagers. An old woman allows the monks to sleep in her stable. That night, Biff slips into her house and takes some turnips, and the woman catches him. In exchange for the pilfered vegetables, Biff has intercourse with her. In the morning, Joshua finds his best friend and the woman in a compromising position and gratefully informs Biff that he has “ruined sex for [him] for all time” (235).

The narrative moves 2,000 years into the future. Biff feels desolately alone, a condition with which Joshua was all too familiar. In his dreams, Biff sees a woman in his hotel room and hears Raziel asking if he should kill Biff once he completes his Gospel.

The narrative returns to the past. Gaspar, Biff, and Joshua briefly return to the monastery to prepare a large quantity of food and tea and then set out into the mountains. The monks regularly leave provisions in the mountains for a yeti, a creature so gentle and without malice that Gaspar considers him a near-perfect being. The monks are astounded when the yeti embraces Joshua because they have never seen it approach anyone. The yeti is the last of his kind, and humans killed many of the others. As the monks begin their journey back to the monastery, the yeti sings so forlornly that Joshua turns around and spends a week with him.

As the years pass, Joshua often visits the yeti. He and Biff study Sanskrit so that they can read the Buddha’s teachings. Biff’s kung fu training expands to include weapons. When Joshua refuses to train with weapons, Gaspar develops a martial art called Jew-dô that requires no attacks and instead redirects an opponent’s energy. Joshua often laughs with contagious joy as he practices this new form of self-defense and effortlessly unarms his opponents. One day, Joshua discovers the yeti’s body under a collapsed piece of ice, and he’s devastated that he couldn’t revive his friend or comfort him in his final moments. Biff tries to console Joshua, who then goes to give his divine father a stern talking-to.

Gaspar tells Joshua and Biff that it is time for them to leave the monastery and seek his brother, Melchior, in Tamil, India. Joshua accuses Gaspar of pretending to have reached enlightenment, and the abbot confesses that he built the monastery to study and care for the last yeti. Joshua teaches Gaspar the lesson he learned from the yeti: “Love is not something you think about, it is a state in which you dwell. That was his gift” (253). The monks return the clothing and possessions that the young men brought with them when they arrived at the monastery six years ago. As the 24-year-olds begin their journey to India, Joshua tells Biff that God spoke to him after the yeti’s death. According to Joshua, the heavenly father said that “all men are evil” and that God “thinks it’s [Joshua’s] problem now” (256).

After a month’s journey, Biff and Joshua reach Kalighat, now known as Calcutta. An armed band chases them, and a man named Rumi helps them to escape. Rumi explains that the armed men are looking for people to sacrifice during the feast of the goddess Kali. His daughter, Vitra, was taken for this purpose because Rumi’s family are Untouchables who are regarded as “the lowest of the low” in Hindu society (264). Although the Buddhist-trained Jewish people and Rumi consider one another heretics, Joshua and Biff promise to rescue his daughter. Joshua wants to march into the Brahmans’ temple and demand the captives’ release “in the name of what was good and right” (266), but Biff persuades him that the situation calls for stealth, not righteous indignation.

Joshua surreptitiously heals 100 Untouchables while Biff explains to them the materials that he needs to enact his plan, which include “eight oxtails, a basket of wool, and a bucket of rendered fat” (271). At first, the Untouchables are afraid to help Biff because they do not want to anger the goddess Kali. To persuade the Untouchables, he makes it look as though he’s killed one of them. In actuality, he struck the man’s pressure point to render him unconscious.

Biff disguises himself as Kali and Joshua disguises himself as one of the goddess’s demonic minions. While Joshua stealthily frees the captive children whom the priests intend to sacrifice, Biff draws the crowd’s attention by storming onto the goddess’s altar and detonating explosives. Joshua and Biff lead the children to the safety of a cliff overlooking the Ganges. As the children sleep, Joshua and Biff discuss religion. Biff sees the Hindus’ faith as brutal and unjust in practice, and Joshua argues that the Jewish religion is as well because Jewish people make blood sacrifices and don’t believe that gentiles can enter into salvation. When they return the children to their families, most of the parents are angry at the young men because they fear Kali’s divine wrath, but Rumi is grateful to have Vitra back.

After six months of searching the region of Tamil, Joshua and Biff find Melchior meditating on a seaside cliff. While Melchior teaches Joshua yoga and how to see the Divine Spark in all things, Biff futilely searches for work in the nearby town. A beautiful woman named Kashmir offers to teach Biff the Kama Sutra for 20 rupees a page, but he has no money. Melchior shows Joshua how to manipulate matter, allowing the young man to multiply grains of rice. Biff sells the multiplied rice in the market and soon earns enough money to visit Kashmir regularly. Biff tells Joshua what he learns from the Kama Sutra, and Joshua explains what he’s studying in the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita.

Two years later, an image of Mary appears on a wall, and Melchior tells Joshua and Biff that it is time for them to return home. Joshua still doesn’t know how to explain the Divine Spark to his people, but the wise man assures him that he “must only find the right word. The Divine Spark is infinite, the path to find it is not” (300).