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Is Biff a proxy for you?

No, not at all. Biff is the quintessential smartass, and he's much simpler than I am. He's also braver, stronger, more dedicated, and more depraved. Biff is an extraordinary character (and wouldn't you have to be, to be the best friend of the Son of God?). I, on the other hand, am just an American guy who writes funny books.

Faith might be sacred to you, but Lamb seems to view some kinds of faith as better or truer than others. Your portrait of Hinduism, for instance, goes beyond unflattering.

What one might interpret as unflattering about Hinduism is the portrayal of the feast of Kali, the goddess of destruction, which I didn't really interpret at all. That's the way it happened. It was a barbaric religious rite, as was the sacrifice of Lambs in the Temple in Jerusalem, as was the stoning of adulteresses and those who used the name of Jehovah.

The portrayal of the "faith" of Hinduism is the description of the Divine Spark, which is the god that is in us all—what I believe to be another way of saying the Holy Ghost. When Joshua and Biff witness the bloody sacrifices to Kali, Joshua sees yet another thing that must change about the way people worship. He comes away from that experience saying, "No more sacrifices, no more blood." He's not just talking about Hinduism, he's talking about Judaism as well. He's talking about his Father. He's talking about becoming the Lamb of God—the last sacrifice—to show that this should not be done anymore. So yes, I believe faith to be a sacred thing, but I don't believe all "practices" of faith to be sacrosanct. Faith and religion are different things.

At the book signing I attended, something you said offended an old man sitting next to me so much that he clumsily climbed over his chair, nearly falling, and left in a huff. I thought it was a good joke and that Lamb was a good book but was his reaction legitimate? By making the life of Jesus and the Apostles funny, do you thereby trivialize it?

That's not my intention, but I certainly understand if people don't want to listen to my jokes or read the book.

Where did you get the name Biff?

The first Jewish kid I ever met in grammar school was named Biff, so when I envisioned a little Jewish kid, Biff came to mind.

You were recently "orphaned," as you put it on your website. What would your parents have thought of Lamb?

My father was a cop, so he necessarily developed a sense of macabre humor and irony to deal with the human carnage of his job. He died 20 years ago, before I was writing professionally, but I'm sure he would have loved Lamb.

My mother, on the other hand, Southern Belle that she was, would probably have been torn between pride and mortification. I was working on Lamb while she was dying (I had gone to Ohio to be her primary caregiver for her last five months), so we had talked about it. I assured her that I wasn't writing an attack book and she seemed to relax—but that might have been the morphine too.

At the end of the book, when you are talking in your own voice, you call Jesus "the most influential human being ever to walk the face of the earth." Two final questions. Explain what you mean by that, and how did researching and writing Lamb affect your view of Jesus of Nazareth?

I think that the teachings of Jesus have fundamentally changed the worldview of more people than anyone else's teachings have. It's that simple. His influence on Western culture is ubiquitous. What I gained in researching the life and times of Jesus was an increased respect for his courage as well as his compassion. When you learn about the world of first-century Israel, the acts of Jesus and the things he said are, within his own time, incredibly radical, revolutionary, and dangerous.

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April (Web-only) 2002, Vol. 46