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

wavered from his Soap Opera Digest. I pushed the magazine down so the angel had to look me in the face.
“Raziel, do you remember the time before mankind, the time when there were only the heavenly host and the Lord?”
“Yes, those were the best of times. Except for the war, of course. But other than that, yes, wonderful times.”
“And you angels were as strong and beautiful as divine imagination, your voices sang praise for the Lord and his glory to the ends of the universe, and yet the Lord saw fit to create us, mankind, weak, twisted, and profane, right?”
“That’s when it all started to go downhill, if you ask me,” Raziel said.
“Well, do you know why the Lord decided to create us?”
“No. Ours is not to question the Will.”
“Because you are all dumbfucks, that’s why. You’re as mindless as the machinery of the stars. Angels are just pretty insects. Days of Our Lives is a show, Raziel, a play. It’s not real, get it?”
“No.”
And he didn’t. I’ve learned that there’s a tradition in this time of telling funny stories about the stupidity of people with yellow hair. Guess where that started.
    I think that we all expected everything to go back to normal after the killer was found, but it seemed that the Romans were much more concerned with the extermination of the Sicarii then they were with a single resurrection. To be fair, I have to say that resurrections weren’t that uncommon in those days. As I mentioned, we Jews were quick to get our dead into the ground, and with speed, there’s bound to be errors. Occasionally some poor soul would fall unconscious during a fever and wake to find himself being wrapped in linen and prepared for the grave. But funerals were a nice way to get the family together, and there was always a fine meal afterward, so no one really complained, except perhaps those people who didn’t wake before they were buried, and if they complained—well, I’m sure God heard them. (It paid to be a light sleeper, in my time.) So, impressed as they might have been with the walking dead, the next day the Romans began to round up suspected conspirators. The men in Maggie’s family were hauled off to Sepphoris at dawn.
    No miracles would come to bring about the release of the prisoners, but neither were there any crucifixions announced in the days that followed. After two weeks had passed with no word of the fate or condition of the men, Maggie, her mother, her aunts, and her sisters went to the synagogue on the Sabbath and appealed to the Pharisees for help.
    The next day, the Pharisees from Nazareth, Japhia, and Sepphoris appeared at the Roman garrison to appeal to Justus for the release of the prisoners. I don’t know what they said, or what sort of leverage they could possibly have used to move the Romans, but the following day, just after dawn, the men of Maggie’s family staggered back into our village, beaten, starving, and covered with filth, but very much alive.
    There was no feast, no celebration for the return of the prisoners—we Jews walked softly for a few months to allow the Romans to settle down. Maggie seemed distant in the weeks that followed, and Josh and I never saw the smile that could make the breath catch in our throats. She seemed to be avoiding us, rushing out of the square whenever we saw her there, or on the Sabbath, staying so close to the women of her family that we couldn’t talk to her. Finally, after a month had passed, with absolutely no regard for custom or common courtesy, Joshua insisted that we skip work and dragged me by the sleeve to Maggie’s house. She was kneeling on the ground outside the door, grinding some barley with a millstone. We could see her mother moving around in the house and hear the sound of her father and older brother Simon (who was called Lazarus) working the forge next door. Maggie seemed to be lost in the rhythm of grinding the grain, so she didn’t see us approach. Joshua put his hand on her shoulder, and without looking up, she smiled.
    “You are supposed to be building a house in Sepphoris,” she said.
    “We thought it more important to visit a sick friend.”
    “And who would that be?”
    “Who do you think?”
    “I’m not sick. In fact, I’ve been healed by the touch of the Messiah.”
    “I think not,” said Joshua.
    She finally looked up at him and her smile evaporated. “I can’t be friends with you two anymore,” she said. “Things have changed.”
    “What, because your uncle was a