Our families made camp outside the northern wall of the city, below the battlements of Antonia, the fortress Herod had built in tribute to his benefactor, Marc Antony. Two cohorts of Roman soldiers, some twelve hundred strong, watched the Temple courtyard from the fortress walls. The women fed and washed the children while Joshua and I carried lambs with our fathers to the Temple.

There was something unsettling about carrying an animal to its death. It wasn’t that I hadn’t seen the sacrifices before, nor even eaten the Passover lamb, but this was the first time I’d actually participated. I could feel the animal’s breathing on my neck as I carried it slung over my shoulders, and amid all the noise and the smells and the movement around the Temple, there was, for a moment, silence, just the breath and heartbeat of the lamb. I guess I fell behind the others, because my father turned and said something to me, but I couldn’t hear the words.

We went through the gates and into the outer courtyard of the Temple where merchants sold birds for the sacrifice and moneychangers traded shekels for a hundred different coins from around the world. As we passed through the enormous courtyard, where thousands of men stood with lambs on their shoulders waiting to get into the inner temple, to the altar, to the slaughter, I could see no man’s face. I saw only the faces of the lambs, some calm and oblivious, others with their eyes rolled back, bleating in terror, still others seeming to be stunned. I swung the lamb from my own shoulders and cradled it in my arms like a child as I backed out toward the gate. I know my father and Joseph must have come after me, but I couldn’t see their faces, just emptiness where their eyes should have been, just the eyes of the lambs they carried. I couldn’t breathe, and I couldn’t get out of the Temple fast enough. I didn’t know where I was going, but I wasn’t going inside to the altar. I turned to run, but a hand caught my shirt and pulled me back. I spun around and looked into Joshua’s eyes.

“It’s God’s will,” he said. He laid his hands on my head and I was able to breathe again. “It’s all right, Biff. God’s will.” He smiled.

Joshua had put the lamb he’d been carrying on the ground, but it didn’t run away. I suppose I should have known right then.

I didn’t eat any of the lamb for that Passover feast. In fact, I’ve never eaten lamb since that day.

I’ve managed to sneak into the bathroom long enough to read a few chapters of this New Testament that they’ve added to the Bible. This Matthew fellow, who is obviously not the Matthew that we knew, seems to have left out quite a little bit. Like everything from the time Joshua was born to the time he was thirty!!! No wonder the angel brought me back to write this book. This Matthew fellow hasn’t mentioned me yet, but I’m still in the early chapters. I have to ration myself to keep the angel from getting suspicious. Today he confronted me when I came out of the bathroom.

“You are spending a lot of time in there. You don’t need to spend so much time in there.”

“I told you, cleanliness is very important to my people.”

“You weren’t bathing. I would have heard the water running.”

I decided that I needed to go on the offensive if I was going to keep the angel from finding the Bible. I ran across the room, leapt onto his bed, and fastened my hands around his throat—choking him as I chanted: “I haven’t been laid in two thousand years. I haven’t been laid in two thousand years. I haven’t been laid in two thousand years.” It felt good, there was a rhythm to it, I sort of squoze his throat a bit with every syllable.

I paused for a moment in choking the heavenly host to backhand him across his alabaster cheek. It was a mistake. He caught my hand. Then grabbed me by the hair with his other hand and calmly climbed to his feet, lifting me into the air by my hair.

“Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow,” I said.

“So, you have not been laid in two thousand years? What does that mean?”

“Ow, ow, ow, ow,” I replied.

The angel set me on my feet, but kept his grasp on my hair. “So?”

“It means that I haven’t had a woman in two millennia, aren’t you picking up any of the vocabulary from the television?”

He glanced at the TV, which, of course, was on. “I don’t have your gift of tongues. What does that have to do with choking me?”

“I was choking you because you, once again, are as dense as dirt. I haven’t had sex in two thousand years. Men have needs. What the hell do you think I’m doing in the bathroom all of that time?”

“Oh,” the angel said, releasing my hair. “So you are…You have been…There is a…”

“Get me a woman and maybe I won’t spend so much time in the bathroom, if you get my meaning.” Brilliant misdirection, I thought.

“A woman? No, I cannot do that. Not yet.”

“Yet? Does that mean…”

“Oh look,” the angel said, turning from me as if I was no more than vapor, “General Hospital is starting.”

And with that, my secret Bible was safe. What did he mean by “yet”?

At least this Matthew mentions the Magi. One sentence, but that’s one more than I’ve gotten in his Gospel so far.

Our second day in Jerusalem we went to see the great Rabbi Hillel. (Rabbi means teacher in Hebrew—you knew that, right?) Hillel looked to be a hundred years old, his beard and hair were long and white, and his eyes were clouded over, his irises milk white. His skin was leathery-brown from sitting in the sun and his nose was long and hooked, giving him the aspect of a great, blind eagle. He held class all morning in the outer courtyard of the Temple. We sat quietly, listening to him recite from the Torah and interpret the verses, taking questions and engaging in arguments with the Pharisees, who tried to infuse the Law into every minute detail of life.

Toward the end of Hillel’s morning lectures, Jakan, the camel-sucking husband-to-be of my beloved Maggie, asked Hillel if it would be a sin to eat an egg that had been laid on the Sabbath.

“What are you, stupid? The Lord doesn’t give a damn what a chicken does on the Sabbath, you nimrod! It’s a chicken. If a Jew lays an egg on the Sabbath, that’s probably a sin, come see me then. Otherwise don’t waste my friggin’ time with that nonsense. Now go away, I’m hungry and I need a nap. All of you, scram.”

Joshua looked at me and grinned. “He’s not what I expected,” he whispered.

“Knows a nimrod when he sees—uh—hears one, though,” I said. (Nimrod was an ancient king who died of suffocation after he wondered aloud in front of his guards what it would be like to have your own head stuck up your ass.)

A boy younger than us helped the old man to his feet and began to lead him away toward the Temple gate. I ran up and took the priest’s other arm.

“Rabbi, my friend has come from far away to talk to you. Can you help him?”

The old man stopped. “Where is your friend?”

“Right here.”

“Then why isn’t he talking for himself? Where do you come from, kid?”

“Nazareth,” Joshua said, “but I was born in Bethlehem. I am Joshua bar Joseph.”

“Oh yeah, I’ve talked to your mother.”

“You have?”

“Sure, almost every time she and your father come to Jerusalem for a feast she tries to see me. She thinks you’re the Messiah.”

Joshua swallowed hard. “Am I?”

Hillel snorted. “Do you want to be the Messiah?”

Joshua looked at me as if I might have the answer. I shrugged. “I don’t know,” Josh finally said. “I thought I was just supposed to do it.”

“Do you think you’re the Messiah?”

“I’m not sure I should say.”

“That’s smart,” Hillel said. “You shouldn’t say. You can think you’re the Messiah all that you want, just don’t tell anyone.”

“But if I don’t tell them, they won’t know.”

“Exactly. You can think you’re a palm tree if you want, just don’t tell anyone. You can think you’re a flock of seagulls, just don’t tell anyone. You get my meaning? Now I have to go eat. I’m old and I’m hungry and I want to go eat now, so just in case I die before supper I won’t go hungry.”