A friend and I were talking at work one day about religion and he mentioned this book. The next day, viola, it appeared on my desk. It was a decent read for someone like me who isn’t offended by stuff like this, but it must drive the Sean Hannitys of the world nuts.
This Gospel includes all the missing years of Jesus’ life, when he traveled the world looking for the three wise men who attended his birth, fighting demons in Arabia, learning kung fu in China, and rescuing child sacrifices in India. These experiences, along with the salad bar understanding he gains of Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism, inform and shape his philosophy and eventually lead him back home to bring a new kingdom to the Jews. The story is told by Levi who is known as Biff, who is resurrected 2,000 years later and charged with writing his own Gospel by the angel Raziel. I would have liked to have seen more of the interaction between Biff and Raziel, which was used only as kind of an introduction to some of the early chapters and then pretty much forgotten about until the end. The part of Jesus’ ministry among the Jews also seemed rushed when compared with the pacing in the rest of the book. One thing that is rare, however, is that the book actually made me laugh out loud a few times. Most of the fiction they call funny never really seems that way to me, but this one scored a few times on my laugh meter.
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