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

word I had back in my time, but enough television and I’ll have a whole new vocabulary. It applies. I believe, for instance, that “psycho” was the perfect term for John the Baptist. More about him later.) Raziel took me to a place where you wash clothes today. A Laundromat. We were there all day. He wanted to make sure I knew how to wash clothes. I may not be the sharpest arrow in the quiver, but it’s laundry, for Christ’s sake. He quizzed me for an hour about sorting whites and colors. I may never get this story told if the angel keeps deciding to teach me life lessons. Tomorrow, miniature golf. I can only guess that Raziel is trying to prepare me to be an international spy.
    Bartholomew and his stench rode one camel while Joshua and I shared the other. We rode south to Jerusalem, then east over the Mount of Olives into Bethany, where we saw a yellow-haired man sitting under a fig tree. I had never seen a yellow-haired person in Israel, other than the angel. I pointed him out to Joshua and we watched the blond man long enough to convince ourselves that he wasn’t one of the heavenly host in disguise. Actually, we pretended to watch him. We were watching each other.
    Bartholomew said, “Is there something wrong? You two seem nervous.”
    “It’s just that blond kid,” I said, trying to look in the courtyards of the large houses as we passed.
    “Maggie lives here with her husband,” Joshua said, looking at me, relieving no tension whatsoever.
    “I knew that,” said Bart. “He’s a member of the Sanhedrin. High up, they say.”
    The Sanhedrin was a council of priests and Pharisees who made most of the decisions for the Jewish community, as far as the Romans would allow them, anyway. Aside from the Herods and Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, they were the most powerful men in Israel.
    “I was really hoping Jakan would die young.”
    “They have no children,” Joshua said. What Josh was saying was that it was strange that Jakan hadn’t divorced Maggie for being barren.
    “My brother told me,” I said.
    “We can’t go see her.”
    “I know,” I said, although I wasn’t sure why not.
    We finally found John in the desert north of Jericho, preaching on the bank of the Jordan River. His hair was as wild as ever and now he had a beard that was just as out of control. He wore a rough tunic that was belted with a sash of unscraped camel skin. There was a crowd of perhaps five hundred people there, standing in sun so hot that you had to check road signs to make sure you hadn’t accidentally taken the turnoff to hell.
    We couldn’t tell what John was talking about from a distance, but as we got closer we heard him say, “No, I’m not the one. I’m just getting things ready. There’s one that’s coming after me, and I’m not qualified to carry his jockstrap.”
    “What’s a jockstrap?” Joshua asked.
    “It’s an Essene thing,” Bartholomew answered. “They wear them on their manhood, very tightly, to control their sinful urges.”
    Then John spotted us over the crowd (we were on camelback). “There!” said John, pointing. “You remember me telling you that one would come. Well, there he is, right there. I’m not kidding, that’s him on the camel. On the left. Behold the Lamb of God!”
    The crowd looked back at Josh and me, then laughed politely as if to say, Oh right, he just happened along right when you were talking about him. What, we don’t know from a shill when we see one?
    Joshua glanced nervously at me, then at Bart, then at me, then he grinned sheepishly (as one might expect from a lamb) at the crowd. Between gritted teeth he asked, “So am I supposed to give John my jockstrap, or something?”
    “Just wave, and say, ‘Go with God,’” Bart said.
    “Waving here—waving there,” Josh mumbled through a grin. “Go with God. Thank you very much. Go with God. Nice to see you. Waving—waving.”
    “Louder, Josh. We’re the only ones who can hear you.”
    Josh turned to us so the crowd couldn’t see his face. “I didn’t know I was going to need a jockstrap! Nobody told me. Jeez, you guys.”
    Thus did begin the ministry of Joshua bar Joseph, ish Nazareth, the Lamb of God.

    “So, who’s the big guy?” John asked, as we sat around the fire that evening. Night crawled across the desert sky like a black cat with phosphorus dandruff. Bartholomew rolled with his dogs down by the riverbank.
    “That’s Bartholomew,” Joshua said. “He’s a Cynic.”
    “And