The Bible according to Biff

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The Biff Bible - The Wild Youth of Jesus, Told by His Best Friend ( Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal ) is a novel by Christopher Moore .

Key data

The novel was first published in the USA in 2002 under the original title Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal by William Morrow and Co. On December 1 of the same year, Goldmann Verlag published a German translation by Jörn Ingversen. For several months it was placed in Buchreport's bestseller list for fiction paperbacks and reached rank 12 in May 2004. Hugo Egon Balder read in an abbreviated audio book version .

action

After more than 2000 years, the archangel Raziel is commissioned to add a missing gospel in the Bible in order to bring people closer to the life of Jesus and especially his childhood and youth. To do this, the angel brings the dead Levi bar Alphaeus, called Biff, back to life, because he was Jesus' best friend in his time and has seen almost his entire life personally. Biff is now supposed to put the missing gospel on paper in the present, which is why the angel grants him the gift of speaking in tongues . So Biff gets to work and looks back over his time with Jesus, known as Josh. He tells of Josh's first healings and resurrections, as well as Biff's true love for Mary Magdalene , called Maggie. After Josh and Biff leave Nazareth, their hometown, to find out how Josh can become a good messiah , they visit the three wise men from the Orient , Kaspar, Melchior and Balthasar, with whom they also apprentice for several years. There they get to know eight concubines , a demon and a yeti , among others . After their long journey, Josh and Biff return to Judea to rescue Maggie from her husband and add her to their group. Then the twelve disciples join them one by one to carry the good news , the gospel, into the world. They learn about the death of John the Baptist , who was a great role model for Josh. After that Josh was also persecuted by the Romans and Pharisees and finally crucified. Biff wanted to prevent all of this, but couldn't. After the death of Josh, he was furious and killed Judas , his traitor, and himself in despair. This ends the Gospel according to Biff and he finds himself in the present with Maggie, who was also resurrected by the angel to write her version of the story. Both are released into the modern world and an uncertain future by Raziel .

reception

  • Ulrich Kretzler writes on www.literaturzeitschrift.de that the novel is quite humorous, but the author never gives up the (too) great respect for his protagonist.
  • The Ostthüringer Zeitung rates the book as "an intelligent and youthfully cheeky variant of the New Testament."
  • In the review by the American bookseller Powell’s it is pointed out that the book is not for people for whom the “life of Jesus” is “ sacrosanct ”. Moore's humor is seen as less "quirky" than that of Douglas Adams, for whom nothing is "sacred".
  • The Netzeitung classifies the novel as a " satirical book".

background

For the book, the author researched the locations of the Bible on site.

Christianity Today conducted an interview with the book's author, Christopher Moore, in April 2002, in which he stated that he did not intend to use the book to judge the beliefs of its readers.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bibliographical information from Random House Publishing Group , accessed on June 12, 2018
  2. ^ The Biff Bible at buchreport.de, accessed on June 12, 2018.
  3. ↑ Review of the audio book edition on literaturwelt.de (accessed on May 31, 2013).
  4. ↑ Review on www.literaturzeitschrift.de
  5. ↑ Press comments according to amazon.de.
  6. ↑ Review of the novel ( Memento of September 16, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) by Doug Brown on the website of the online bookseller Powell's.
  7. ^ Review of the novel ( Memento from May 27, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) on netzeitung.de (accessed May 31, 2013).
  8. ^ Review of the novel on shakespeare-and-more.com (accessed May 31, 2013).
  9. ↑ Christopher Moore in an interview with Jeremy Lott: The Gospel According to Biff. A conversation with novelist Christopher Moore on christianitytoday.com, April 1, 2002 (accessed May 31, 2013).