What if Jesus of Nazareth had grown up with a wisecracking buddy named Biff? And what if Biff were commissioned to write his own Gospel story and bring some levity to the Jesus story?

Christopher Moore writes very, very funny stuff. Many times over, laugh-out-loud funny stuff. It's madcap, goofy, and both respectful and well-researched as well as being a fun speculation that sticks-in-the-mud will find sacrilegious. Yet underneath the story, the reader is invited to consider, perhaps for the first time, the humanity of Jesus, the truly normal portion of who Jesus was, as a pre-teen, a teenager, a young adult who was on a mission that was extremely difficult and confusing.

The first third and last third are the strongest parts of the book. The middle is more slapstick and contain more stories that the author carefully and blatantly describes as speculation for the sake of a fun story.

As a novel, I loved this book and haven't laughed harder reading anything in a long, long time.