Lamb The Gospel According to Biff Christs Childho - By Christopher Moore Page 0,25

caught a Zealot, they didn't just crucify the leader of the band, they crucified the whole band, their families, and anyone suspected of helping them. More than once we saw the road out of Sepphoris lined with crosses and corpses. My people.

We ran through the sleeping city, stopping only after we had passed through the Venus Gate, where we fell in a heap on the ground, gasping.

"We have to take Maggie home and get back here for work," Joshua said.

"You can stay here," Maggie said. "I can go by myself."

"No, we have to go." Joshua held his arms out to his sides and we saw the bloody handprints the killer had left on his shirt. "I have to clean this before someone sees it."

"Can't you just make it go away?" Maggie asked. "It's just a stain. I'd think the Messiah could get a stain out."

"Be nice," I said. "He's not that good at Messiah stuff yet. It was your uncle, after all..."

Maggie jumped to her feet. "You were the one who wanted to do this stupid thing..."

"Stop!" Joshua said, holding his hand up as if he were sprinkling us with silence. "If Maggie hadn't been with us, we might be dead now. We may still not be safe when the Sicarii realize that three witnesses live."

An hour later Maggie was home safe and Joshua emerged from the ritual bath outside the synagogue, his clothes soaked and rivulets running out of his hair. (Many of us had these mikvehs outside of our homes - and there were hundreds outside the Temple in Jerusalem - stone pits with steps leading down both sides into the water so one might walk in over one's head on one side, then out on the other after the ritual cleansing was done. According to the Law, any contact with blood called for a cleansing. Joshua thought it would be a good opportunity to scrub the stain out of his shirt as well.)

"Cold." Joshua was shivering and hopping from foot to foot as if on hot coals. "Very cold."

(There was a small stone hut built over the baths so they never got the direct light of the sun, consequently they never warmed up. Evaporation in the dry Galilee air chilled the water even more.)

"Maybe you should come to my house. My mother will have a breakfast fire going by now, you can warm yourself."

He wrung out the tail of his shirt and water cascaded down his legs. "And how would I explain this?"

"Uh, you sinned, had an emergency cleansing to do."

"Sinned? At dawn? What sin could I have done before dawn?"

"Sin of Onan?" I said.

Joshua's eyes went wide. "Have you committed the sin of Onan?"

"No, but I'm looking forward to it."

"I can't tell your mother that I've committed the sin of Onan. I haven't."

"You could if you're fast."

"I'll suffer the cold," Joshua said.

The good old sin of Onan. That brings back memories.

The sin of Onan. Spilling the old seed on the ground. Cuffing the camel. Dusting the donkey. Flogging the Pharisee. Onanism, a sin that requires hundreds of hours of practice to get right, or at least that's what I told myself. God slew Onan for spilling his seed on the ground (Onan's seed, not God's. God's seed turned out to be my best pal. Imagine the trouble you'd be in if you actually spilled God's seed. Try explaining that). According to the Law, if you had any contact with "nocturnal emissions" (which are not what come out of your tailpipe at night - we didn't have cars then), you had to purify yourself by baptism and you weren't allowed to be around people until the next day. Around the age of thirteen I spent a lot of time in and out of our mikveh, but I fudged on the solitary part of penance. I mean, it's not like that was going to help the problem.

Many a morning I was still dripping and shivering from the bath when I met Joshua to go to work.

"Spilled your seed upon the ground again?" he'd ask.

"Yep."

"You're unclean, you know?"

"Yeah, I'm getting all wrinkly from purifying myself."

"You could stop."

"I tried. I think I'm being vexed by a demon."

"I could try to heal you."

"No way, Josh, I'm having enough trouble with laying on of my own hands."

"You don't want me to cast out your demon?"

"I thought I'd try to exhaust him first."

"I could tell the scribes and they would have you stoned." (Always trying to be helpful, Josh was.)

"That would probably work,