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Genesis
When I began writing the comic version of the gospels, I took a sort of
Hippocratic oath to myself- that is: First, do no harm. I wanted to do
this book without attacking anyone's faith, and without questioning the
spiritual precepts of Christ's identity as set down in the New Testament. As far
as Lamb would be concerned, Jesus was who the Bible says he was, so I had
to color within those lines. To do otherwise would have been mean-spirited,
which is the only thing I feel is off limits for humorous exploration. But all
that came later. First I had to decide to tell this story, and it came to me
this way…
I'm reading a novel called The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov.
I come across this section which is the trial of Jesus as told from the point of
view of Pontius Pilate, and I find that I'm completely sucked in by the humanity
of the characters. And I'm wondering why, after hearing this story all my life,
I'm suddenly affected by it, and I realize that it is, indeed, the point of
view.
So a couple of months pass, and I'm thinking about the story of Jesus, and PBS
Frontline does this series called From Jesus to Christ, by which I am
informed that except for one incident in the gospel of Luke, the Bible basically
ignores nearly thirty years of Christ's life. And I say, "Hey, someone
should write that part." So I set out trying to learn what I can about
Israel in the first century, and all the time I'm thinking, "I need a
witness. I need a point of view." I needed a guy who witnessed the missing
years. I needed a guy who didn't view Jesus so much as a savior, but as a
person. A guy who was so obnoxious that he was purposely edited out of the New
Testament. I needed Christ's best friend -- Biff.
Imagine that you're a very average kid, but your best friend happens to be the
best athlete in town, the captain of all the teams, the best looking, the most
popular, the smartest, and you are basically trying to find your own identity
while being eclipsed by your friend's presence. Pretty tough, huh? You'd have to
be resilient, you'd have to have a sense of humility, in fact, you really
couldn't be a good friend to this guy if you were impressed by his talents. This
was the process I went through in creating Levi who is called Biff, the narrator
of Lamb.
Biff is a good guy, he's fiercely loyal to his best pal Joshua bar Joseph
(Jesus), he's just not all that impressed. The way he deals with the ego-crush
of hanging out with the Son of God is by developing a wicked sense of humor
(even to the point of inventing sarcasm). He's the perfect guy to give an ironic
spin to the greatest story ever told.
Once I had my narrator, it was all about research, about creating the world of
first century Israel as accurately as I could, while exploiting the holes in
history so I could tell the tale. The first part of the book takes place in
Galilee, putting Biff and Josh in the midst of a very Tom Sawyer-style mystery
(and I did model the mystery on that august Twain tome more than a little). The
middle section takes the boys to the Orient in search of the three wise men who
were present at Joshua's birth. This becomes, essentially, a log of Joshua's
search for how to become the man who would save the world. He learns the
spiritual disciplines of Taoism, Confucianism, Buddhism, and Hinduism, while his
best pal Biff concentrates on chasing girls and learning the finer points of the
Kama Sutra from a string of harlots. (I like to think of this section as Josh
and Biff's Excellent Adventure) Lamb finishes up with a behind-the-scenes
view of Joshua's ministry and the events that transformed a poor kid from
Galilee into the most influential human being ever to walk the Earth. (Think
Butch and Sundance do Jerusalem.)
For me, Lamb started out as a further exploration of the phenomenon of
faith and the responsibility of a messiah that I touched on in Coyote Blue
and Island of the Sequined Love Nun, but it ended up being an exploration
of the true meaning of sacrifice, loyalty, and friendship.
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