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

this boy who would question our knowledge? He knows nothing of the Torah and the prophets and yet berates us for not remembering three insignificant travelers.”
    It was the wrong thing to say to Joshua. No one had studied the Torah harder. No one knew scripture better. “Ask me any question, Pharisee,” Joshua said. “Ask anything.”
    In retrospect, after having grown up, somewhat, and having lived, died, and been resurrected from the dust, I realize that there may be nothing more obnoxious than a teenager who knows everything. Certainly, it is a symptom of the age that they think they know everything, but now I have some sympathy for those poor men who challenged Joshua that day at the Temple. Of course, at the time, I shouted, “Smite the sons-a-bitches, Josh.”
    He was there for days. Joshua wouldn’t even leave to eat, and I went out into the city to bring him back food. First the Pharisees, but later even some of the priests came to quiz Joshua, to try to throw him some question about some obscure Hebrew king or general. They made him recite the lineages from all the books of the Bible, yet he did not waver. Myself, I left him there to argue while I wandered through the holy city looking for Maggie, then, when I couldn’t find her, for girls in general. I slept at the camp of my parents, assuming all the time that Joshua was returning each night to his own family, but I was wrong. When the Passover feast was over and we were packing up to leave, Mary, Joshua’s mother, came to me in a panic.
    “Biff. Have you seen Joshua?”
    The poor woman was distraught. I wanted to comfort her so I held my arms out to give her a comforting embrace. “Poor Mary, calm down. Joshua is fine. Come, let me give you a comforting embrace.”
    “Biff!” I thought she might slap me.
    “He’s at the Temple. Jeez, a guy tries to be compassionate and what does he get?”
    She had already taken off. I caught up to her as she was dragging Joshua out of the Temple by the arm. “You worried us half to death.”
    “You should have known you would find me in my father’s house,” Joshua said.
    “Don’t you pull that ‘my father’ stuff on me, Joshua bar Joseph. The commandment says honor thy father and thy mother . I’m not feeling honored right now, young man. You could have sent a message, you could have stopped by the camp.”
    Joshua looked at me, his eyes pleading for me to help him out.
    “I tried to comfort her, Josh, but she wouldn’t have it.”
    Later I found the two of them on the road to Nazareth and Joshua motioned for me to walk with them.
    “Mother thinks we may be able to find at least one of the Magi, and if we find that one, he may know where the others are.”
    Mary nodded, “The one named Balthasar, the black one, he said he came from a village north of Antioch. He was the only one of the three that spoke any Hebrew.”
    I didn’t feel confident. Although I’d never seen a map, “north of Antioch” sounded like a large, unspecific, and scary place. “Is there more?”
    “Yes, the other two had come from the East by the Silk Road. Their names were Melchior and Gaspar.”
    “So it’s off to Antioch,” Joshua said. He seemed completely satisfied with the information his mother had given him, as if all he needed were the three Magi’s names and he’d as much as found them.
    I said, “You’re going to go to Antioch assuming that someone there will remember a man who may have lived north of there thirteen years ago?”
    “A magician,” Mary said. “A rich, Ethiopian magician. How many can there be?”
    “Well, there might not be any, did you think of that? He might have died. He might have moved to another city.”
    “In that case, I will be in Antioch,” Joshua said. “From there I can travel the Silk Road until I find the other two.”
    I couldn’t believe my ears. “You’re not going alone.”
    “Of course.”
    “But Josh, you’re helpless out in the world. You only know Nazareth, where people are stupid and poor. No offense, Mary. You’ll be like—uh—like a lamb among wolves. You need me along to watch out for you.”
    “And what do you know that I don’t? Your Latin is horrible, your Greek is barely passable, and your Hebrew is atrocious.”
    “Yeah. If a stranger comes up to you on the road to Antioch and asks you how much money you are carrying, what do you tell him?”
    “That will depend on how much I am carrying.”
    “No it won’t. You haven’t enough