Skeleton 03 - The Constantine Codex (36 page)

The week that followed presented no meaningful clues. Background checks on all business-class passengers showed nothing unusual, nor for the other main cabin passengers and flight crew. Quite a few of the passengers had Turkish, Middle Eastern, or Arab names and were therefore most likely Islamic, but this proved nothing. CIA labs showed only that the paper used in the fake codex was common throughout the Middle East, with most of it manufactured in Egypt. But the page size was foolscap, or sixteen by thirteen inches, a now-rare dimension that nicely approximated the size of the pages in the codex.

At dinner a week after Jon had returned from Washington, Shannon asked him, “Do you think we might be making too much of this?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, we already have
every last word
of the text of the Constantine Codex, including the true ending of Mark and Second Acts. We have all anybody needs for the authoritative edition of the codex. In fact, scholars will be using our enhanced copies, not the codex itself, so why are we falling all over ourselves at the loss of the codex? It would have been a disaster if the material hadn’t been copied, but it has. Sure, it would have been nice to have the codex on display, but at the end of the day, we really don’t need it all that much, do we? Certainly not because of the testing.”

“On that last point, sweetheart, sure,
we
don’t need it for testing, but the rest of the world does. I can just hear critics of our discovery complain: ‘Hey, these may be nice pictures of what’s
supposed to be
in that old book, but
where’s the real thing
?
’ Scholars wouldn’t have a problem working from our copies, but we’re talking
acceptance
here. Is the Constantine Codex just going to be a scholarly footnote in history, or will it be universally welcomed as the magnificent addendum to Scripture that it is?”

Shannon smiled wistfully at him. “You’d really like it if the last of Mark and Second Acts were added to the Canon, wouldn’t you?”

Jon thought for a moment, was preparing something evasive, but then blurted it out. “Yes. With every fiber of my being, in view of how it fills two major gaps in the biblical record. I have no idea if the new material will land inside the Canon even
if
the codex were returned, but I do know this: it will
never
happen without the codex.”

Shannon thought for a moment, then replied, “I hate to bring this up—and you may think I’m some sort of traitor—but isn’t our discovery of the Constantine Codex enough in its own right? Why is it so important that the new material be added to the Canon? As a Christian, I don’t really need it.”

“I don’t either. Not at all. But the non-Christian
world
does, Shannon. You know how heavily the Bible is being attacked today, and not just by atheists and agnostics. It seems to be a target for any half-baked pseudo-scholar with a new pet theory with which he hopes to pry Scripture apart and raise a sensation. Christ shows up as caricature in their put-downs, and the Resurrection is denied—for one reason, by the way Mark’s Gospel ends. The new material is
strong
support for the reliability of the New Testament.”

Shannon had started nodding halfway through his statement. “I’m hoisting a white flag on that one, Jon. Most anything is better if its two missing parts are found.”

Jon’s near mania to recover the codex led him down an extraordinary parallel track. Early the next morning, he put in a call to Kevin Sullivan at the Vatican. When he heard Sullivan’s
“Pronto”
on the line, he said, “Sorry to interrupt your siesta, Kevin, but we have to talk.”

“I don’t do siestas, Jon. Wastes time. But what’s so urgent?”

“For openers, how has Benedict XVI responded to the Constantine Codex?”

“Didn’t you get my letter yet? I put it into hard copy since I also wanted a permanent record. The Holy Father greeted the news as if it were some sort of beatific revelation. And after he had read the new material, he seemed to be on cloud ten.”

“Isn’t that supposed to be cloud nine?”

“No, papal privilege. I’ve never seen him so enthused, never seen him happier. Don’t forget, he’s also a biblical scholar, and he saw at once how magnificently it all fit. He sends you his warmest greetings and, above all, his profound gratitude.”

“Wow! Coming from the pope himself, that’s . . . quite humbling.”

“But he does have an urgent question for you, and here it is: ‘
When
may I share this glad news?’”

“In response to that, I have some . . . some very bad news.” Jon went on to report the theft of the codex and the status of its attempted recovery. Sullivan asked questions parallel to the queue of queries Jon had raised with Patriarch Bartholomew. Summing up the unhappy situation, Jon said, “So we’ve lost our main material link to one of the greatest manuscript discoveries ever. But I do have an idea for another route, Kevin. Before I suggest it, what’s the security arrangement on your phone lines at the Vatican?”

“No problem there at all. They’re fully secure.”

“Still . . . can you get back to me this evening, using the private line at your apartment?”

“All right, Jon. If you insist.”

“Have to. Thanks, Kev. Ciao!”

That evening, were an earwitness present in Sullivan’s Rome apartment, he would have heard one side of a dialogue that included comments like:

“You really
must
be kidding, Jon.”

“Are you really playing with a full deck?”

“You know, of course, that what you’re asking is impossible.”

“
Obviously
the Holy Father can’t be involved in this. . . .”

“Do you really want to commit professional suicide?”

“Well, I’ll help you as much as I can, even though I think it’s absolute lunacy.”

A week later, Kevin picked Jon up at Leonardo da Vinci Airport, and they drove into Rome over the same route as the ancient Ostian Way, the final road that the much-traveled apostle Paul had used on his way to execution. About a mile before they reached the Ostian Gate, Kevin pulled his car off to the right side of the road and parked in front of the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls.

“Well, there it is, Jon, the Basilica di San Paolo fuori le Mura,” Kevin said with a grin. “The scene of the crime.”

“Oh, thanks for that vote of confidence, Kevin.”

“I assumed you’d want to get the lay of the land—even before getting settled in.”

“You’ve got it.”

They walked into the colonnaded forecourt of the basilica. There, in the midst of a well-clipped lawn guarded by two sentinel palm trees, stood a great stone statue of the apostle Paul, the sword of the Spirit in his right hand.

“Much too old and much too bearded,” Jon commented. “Why do so many artists and sculptors get Paul wrong? He couldn’t have been more than around fifty-five or sixty at the time of his death—not this aged geezer. And he had only a pointed, trimmed gray beard, not those cascades of hair hanging down from his chin.”

“You’re sure of all that? You knew him well?”

“I did. We studied together in Jerusalem.” Jon smiled, then added, “
All
the earliest images of Paul in Eastern and Western art—even the catacombs here—show the fellow I described, not this one.”

“And of course, you Lutherans know more about Paul than us Catholics, who are fixated on Peter, right?”

“Guilty as charged!” Jon was glad that they could continue their banter despite Sullivan’s obvious concerns about Jon’s mission.

When they’d met at Johns Hopkins years ago, Kevin Sullivan had been a brilliant but bigoted student who was quite sure all Protestants were destined for hell and that salvation was impossible outside of the Roman Catholic church. For his part, Jon, the son of a Lutheran pastor in Hannibal, Missouri, was equally sure that Martin Luther had saved Christianity from the clutches of an apostate papacy. They’d spent many an evening in Baltimore hauling out theological ammunition and firing at each other, Jon ticking off all the points where he thought Catholicism had veered away from biblical doctrine while Kevin countered that Protestants wouldn’t have the Bible in the first place were it not for Catholics.

As they matured, however, each had moved from a right-wing conservatism to a centrist, more ecumenical stance. They quickly buried the religious hatchet, knowing that the
true
struggle was not Catholicism versus Protestantism, but Christianity versus a non-Christian world. In fact, for many years now, Jon and Kevin had been the closest of friends.

As they walked the perimeter of the forecourt and sauntered into the great sanctuary, Kevin gave a running commentary. “Okay, Jon, you know the background here. The site goes back all the way to Constantine and even earlier. But why, do you suppose, the emperor built the original basilica specifically
here
?”

“Eusebius might have told him. His
Church History
tells of an elder in the early Roman church in the 200s, a fellow named Gaius, who could point out the very spot on the Ostian Way where Paul was beheaded and buried—here!”

Sullivan nodded. “It still gives me a thrill. We’re standing at the very place where Second Acts ends. But now, fast-forward twenty centuries to the year 2000—Rome’s Jubilee year. Pilgrims came here from all over the world, but when they visited this basilica, they raised a howl of protests because they couldn’t get any access to Paul’s tomb under the high altar. And so Vatican archaeologists started digging here from 2002 to 2006, exposing what we’ll see in a moment under glass at the eastern end of this long sanctuary.”

“Right. I remember the international sensation when that Vatican archaeologist—what was his name?”

“Giorgio Filippi.”

“Right. I remember when Filippi announced that they had probably discovered the very tomb of St. Paul in a crypt under the high altar. Many of my Protestant colleagues were skeptical, of course, but Filippi’s claim had a lot going for it, including that marble slab over the crypt with the Latin inscription—
PAULO APOSTOLO MARTYRO
.”