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

squeeze some understanding out of his mind if he applied enough pressure. “So you don’t want anyone to know that you have the power to heal because you don’t know if you can lie with a woman?”
    “Well, that and I have no idea how to go about being the Messiah,” Josh said.
    “Yeah, and that,” I said.
    “You should ask Hillel,” John said. “My father says he’s the wisest of all of the priests.”
    “I’m going to ask the Holy of Holies,” Joshua said. (The Holy of Holies was the Ark of the Covenant—the box containing the tablets handed down from God to Moses. No one I knew had ever seen it, as it was housed in the inner room at the Temple.)
    “But it’s forbidden. Only a priest may enter the chamber of the Ark.”
    “Yes, that’s going to be a problem,” I said.

    The city was like a huge cup that had been filled to its brim with pilgrims, then spilled into a seething pool of humanity around it. When we arrived men were already lined up as far as the Damascus gate, waiting with their lambs to get to the Temple. A greasy black smoke was on the wind, coming from the Temple, where as many as ten thousand priests would be slaughtering the lambs and burning the blood and fatty parts on the altar. Cooking fires were burning all around the city as women prepared the lambs. A haze hung in the air, the steam and funk of a million people and as many animals. Stale breath and sweat and the smell of piss rose in the heat of the day, mixing with the bleating of lambs, the bellowing of camels, the crying of children, the ululations of women, and the low buzz of too many voices, until the air was thick with sounds and smells and God and history. Here Abraham received the word of God that his people would be the Chosen, here were the Hebrews delivered out of Egypt, here Solomon built the first Temple, here walked the prophets and the kings of the Hebrews, and here resided the Ark of the Covenant. Jerusalem. Here did I, the Christ, and John the Baptist come to find out the will of God and, if we were lucky, spot some really delicious girls. (What, you thought it was all religion and philosophy?)
    Our families made camp outside the northern wall of the city, below the battlements of Antonia, the fortress Herod had built in tribute to his benefactor, Marc Antony. Two cohorts of Roman soldiers, some twelve hundred strong, watched the Temple courtyard from the fortress walls. The women fed and washed the children while Joshua and I carried lambs with our fathers to the Temple.
    There was something unsettling about carrying an animal to its death. It wasn’t that I hadn’t seen the sacrifices before, nor even eaten the Passover lamb, but this was the first time I’d actually participated. I could feel the animal’s breathing on my neck as I carried it slung over my shoulders, and amid all the noise and the smells and the movement around the Temple, there was, for a moment, silence, just the breath and heartbeat of the lamb. I guess I fell behind the others, because my father turned and said something to me, but I couldn’t hear the words.
    We went through the gates and into the outer courtyard of the Temple where merchants sold birds for the sacrifice and moneychangers traded shekels for a hundred different coins from around the world. As we passed through the enormous courtyard, where thousands of men stood with lambs on their shoulders waiting to get into the inner temple, to the altar, to the slaughter, I could see no man’s face. I saw only the faces of the lambs, some calm and oblivious, others with their eyes rolled back, bleating in terror, still others seeming to be stunned. I swung the lamb from my own shoulders and cradled it in my arms like a child as I backed out toward the gate. I know my father and Joseph must have come after me, but I couldn’t see their faces, just emptiness where their eyes should have been, just the eyes of the lambs they carried. I couldn’t breathe, and I couldn’t get out of the Temple fast enough. I didn’t know where I was going, but I wasn’t going inside to the altar. I turned to run, but a hand caught my shirt and pulled me back. I spun around and looked into Joshua’s eyes.
    “It’s God’s will,” he said. He laid his hands on my head and I was able to breathe again. “It’s all right, Biff. God’s will.” He smiled.
    Joshua had put the lamb he’d been carrying on the ground, but it didn’t run away. I suppose I should have known right then.
    I