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

makes breakfast.”
    Joshua nodded, satisfied, I guess, that madness could pass. “We used to live in Egypt,” he said.
    “No, you didn’t, that’s too far. Farther than the temple, even.” The Temple in Jerusalem was the farthest place I had been as a child. Every spring my family took the five-day walk to Jerusalem for the feast of Passover. It seemed to take forever.
    “We lived here, then we lived in Egypt, now we live here again,” Joshua said. “It was a long way.”
    “You lie, it takes forty years to get to Egypt.”
    “Not anymore, it’s closer now.”
    “It says in the Torah. My abba read it to me. ‘The Israelites traveled in the desert for forty years.’”
    “The Israelites were lost.”
    “For forty years?” I laughed. “The Israelites must be stupid.”
    “We are the Israelites.”
    “We are?”
    “Yes.”
    “I have to go find my mother,” I said.
    “When you come back, let’s play Moses and Pharaoh.”
The angel has confided in me that he is going to ask the Lord if he can become Spider-Man. He watches the television constantly, even when I sleep, and he has become obsessed with the story of the hero who fights demons from the rooftops. The angel says that evil looms larger now than it did in my time, and that calls for greater heroes. The children need heroes, he says. I think he just wants to swing from buildings in tight red jammies.
What hero could touch these children anyway, with their machines and medicine and distances made invisible? (Raziel: not here a week and he would trade the Sword of God to be a web slinger.) In my time, our heroes were few, but they were real—some of us could even trace our kinship to them. Joshua always played the heroes—David, Joshua, Moses—while I played the evil ones: Pharaoh, Ahab, and Nebuchadnezzar. If I had a shekel for every time I was slain as a Philistine, well, I’d not be riding a camel through the eye of a needle anytime soon, I’ll tell you that. As I think back, I see that Joshua was practicing for what he would become.
    “Let my people go,” said Joshua, as Moses.
    “Okay.”
    “You can’t just say, ‘Okay.’”
    “I can’t?”
    “No, the Lord has hardened your heart against my demands.”
    “Why’d he do that?”
    “I don’t know, he just did. Now, let my people go.”
    “Nope.” I crossed my arms and turned away like someone whose heart is hardened.
    “Behold as I turn this stick into a snake. Now, let my people go!”
    “Okay.”
    “You can’t just say ‘okay’!”
    “Why? That was a pretty good trick with the stick.”
    “But that’s not how it goes.”
    “Okay. No way, Moses, your people have to stay.”
    Joshua waved his staff in my face. “Behold, I will plague you with frogs. They will fill your house and your bedchamber and get on your stuff.”
    “So?”
    “So that’s bad. Let my people go, Pharaoh.”
    “I sorta like frogs.”
    “Dead frogs,” Moses threatened. “Piles of steaming, stinking dead frogs.”
    “Oh, in that case, you’d better take your people and go. I have some sphinxes and stuff to build anyway.”
    “Dammit, Biff, that’s not how it goes! I have more plagues for you.”
    “I want to be Moses.”
    “You can’t.”
    “Why not?”
    “I have the stick.”
    “Oh.”

    And so it went. I’m not sure I took to playing the villains as easily as Joshua took to being the heroes. Sometimes we recruited our little brothers to play the more loathsome parts. Joshua’s little brothers Judah and James played whole populations, like the Sodomites outside of Lot’s door.
    “Send out those two angels so that we can know them.”
    “I won’t do that,” I said, playing Lot (a good guy only because Joshua wanted to play the angels), “but I have two daughters who don’t know anyone, you can meet them.”
    “Okay,” said Judah.
    I threw open the door and led my imaginary daughters outside so they could know the Sodomites…
    “Pleased to meet you.”
    “Charmed, I’m sure.”
    “Nice to meet you.”
    “THAT’S NOT HOW IT GOES!” Joshua shouted. “You’re supposed to try to break the door down, then I will smite you blind.”
    “Then you destroy our city?” James said.
    “Yes.”
    “We’d rather meet Lot’s daughters.”
    “Let my people go,” said Judah, who was only four and often got his stories confused. He particularly liked the Exodus because he and James got to throw jars of water on me as I led my soldiers across the Red Sea after