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

Moses.
    “That’s it,” Joshua said. “Judah, you’re Lot’s wife. Go stand over there.”
    Sometimes Judah had to play Lot’s wife no matter what story we were doing. “I don’t want to be Lot’s wife.”
    “Be quiet, pillars of salt can’t talk.”
    “I don’t want to be a girl.”
    Our brothers always played the female parts. I had no sisters to torment, and Joshua’s only sister at the time, Elizabeth, was still a baby. That was before we met the Magdalene. The Magdalene changed everything.

    After I overheard my parents talking about Joshua’s mother’s madness, I often watched her, looking for signs, but she seemed to go about her duties like all the other mothers, tending to the little ones, working in the garden, fetching water, and preparing food. There was no sign of going about on all fours or foaming at the mouth as I had expected. She was younger than many of the mothers, and much younger than her husband, Joseph, who was an old man by the standards of our time. Joshua said that Joseph wasn’t his real father, but he wouldn’t say who his father was. When the subject came up, and Mary was in earshot, she would call to Josh, then put her finger to her lips to signal silence.
    “Now is not the time, Joshua. Biff would not understand.”
    Just hearing her say my name made my heart leap. Early on I developed a little-boy love for Joshua’s mother that sent me into fantasies of marriage and family and future.
    “Your father is old, huh, Josh?”
    “Not too old.”
    “When he dies, will your mother marry his brother?”
    “My father has no brothers. Why?”
    “No reason. What would you think if your father was shorter than you?”
    “He isn’t.”
    “But when your father dies, your mother could marry someone shorter than you, and he would be your father. You would have to do what he says.”
    “My father will never die. He is eternal.”
    “So you say. But I think that when I’m a man, and your father dies, I will take your mother as my wife.”
    Joshua made a face now as if he had bitten into an unripe fig. “Don’t say that, Biff.”
    “I don’t mind that she’s mad. I like her blue cloak. And her smile. I’ll be a good father, I’ll teach you how to be a stonemason, and I’ll only beat you when you are a snot.”
    “I would rather play with lepers than listen to this.” Joshua began to walk away.
    “Wait. Be nice to your father, Joshua bar Biff”—my own father used my full name like this when he was trying to make a point—“Is it not the word of Moses that you must honor me?”
    Little Joshua spun on his heel. “My name is not Joshua bar Biff, and it is not Joshua bar Joseph either. It’s Joshua bar Jehovah!”
    I looked around, hoping that no one had heard him. I didn’t want my only son (I planned to sell Judah and James into slavery) to be stoned to death for uttering the name of God in vain. “Don’t say that again, Josh. I won’t marry your mother.”
    “No, you won’t.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “I forgive you.”
    “She will make an excellent concubine.”
    Don’t let anyone tell you that the Prince of Peace never struck anyone. In those early days, before he had become who he would be, Joshua smote me in the nose more than once. That was the first time.
    Mary would stay my one true love until I saw the Magdalene.

    If the people of Nazareth thought Joshua’s mother was mad, there was little said of it out of respect for her husband, Joseph. He was wise in the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms, and there were few wives in Nazareth who didn’t serve supper in one of his smooth olive-wood bowls. He was fair, strong, and wise. People said that he had once been an Essene, one of the dour, ascetic Jews who kept to themselves and never married or cut their hair, but he did not congregate with them, and unlike them, he still had the ability to smile.
    In those early years, I saw him very little, as he was always in Sepphoris, building structures for the Romans and the Greeks and the landed Jews of that city, but every year, as the Feast of Firsts approached, Joseph would stop his work in the fortress city and stay home carving bowls and spoons to give to the Temple. During the Feast of Firsts, it was the tradition to give first lambs, first grain, and first fruits to the priests of the Temple. Even first sons born during the year were dedicated to the Temple, either by promising them for labor when they were older, or by a gift of money. Craftsmen