The Testimonium

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The Testimonium Page 8

by Lewis Ben Smith


  CHAPTER SIX

  Josh rose early the next morning, his body still unsure exactly what time it was or when it was supposed to wake up. He had always been unable to sleep once the sun was up, so after rolling over several times in a vain attempt to recapture his slumber, he slowly stirred and stretched. He pulled on his shoes and got a clean khaki shirt out of his duffel bag, then stepped outside. The snores from the tent next to his told him that Dr. Rossini was still asleep, so he walked over to the mobile lab. Dr. Apriceno and Isabella were already there, and the rich smell of coffee brewing filled the trailer.

  “Our American friend is an early riser,” the older woman commented. “The other two men could learn a lesson from him!”

  “Well, Simone,” said Isabella, “I don’t know MacDonald that well, but Giuseppe has been hard at work on this site ever since the earthquake! He’s earned the right to sleep in a little, and it’s not even seven AM yet.”

  “I’m only awake because my body is convinced it is mid-afternoon, or whatever time it is in Oklahoma,” said Josh. “Well, that, and I have never been able to sleep once the sun comes over the horizon. It will take me a couple of days to catch up from my jet lag. Is that coffee ready?”

  “Here you are,” said Dr. Sforza, pouring him a cup. “We like it dark and sweet here in Italy, but I could probably find you some cream if you like.”

  “Honestly, I hate coffee on principle,” said Josh. “Never even been inside a Starbucks. But I figured a cold Dr Pepper was too much to hope for in Italy. A Coke would be all right, too, I suppose. But for the moment, this nasty stuff will wake me up and get me going.” He sipped the coffee and made a wry face.

  Apriceno wrinkled her nose. “Dr Pepper? I had that stuff in the States one time. Tastes like prune juice!”

  Josh raised an eyebrow and waggled his finger at her. “Dear lady,” he said, “you may question my character, belittle my faith, deride my appearance, and record over my favorite DVDs—but don’t ever insult the Elixir of Life!”

  The two women laughed at this jibe, and Isabella said, “I must confess that I love your soft drink choice. It’s hard to get Dr Pepper here in Italy, but perhaps we can order some from Naples before the week is out. In the meantime, I know the store down in Capri village has Coca-Cola and several other American drink brands. We’ll try to have a coffee substitute up here tomorrow for you.”

  Dr. Apriceno walked back to the storage closet in one corner of the lab and pulled out a small metal vacuum cleaner. “I have taken all the dust and pollen samples I need from the chamber,” she said. “Now I will begin clearing out the remainder of the dust, so that you all may begin your work inside. It will take a few hours, but I hope to have the chamber ready for excavation by the end of the day. So if you will excuse me, I will be off to work.” They bid her a good day as she took the vacuum and several spare bags out the door.

  “I’ve had to excavate all manner of ancient overburden, from Roman era privies to volcanic ash to rich Italian farm soil,” said Isabella, “but I have never encountered a site that was coated with so much plain old dust!”

  “I imagine she will save every one of those vacuum bags, too,” Josh said. “That way there will be samples available for study to any archeological lab that wants to verify her findings.”

  Dr. Sforza sat down across from Josh at the small dining table, looking at him with a clear gaze that was piercing and a bit unsettling at the same time. It didn’t help matters that she had the most beautiful green eyes he had ever seen. “So, Dr. Joshua Parker,” she finally said. “Tell me a bit about yourself. How did you become an archeologist?”

  Josh thought about it a moment. “I guess my dad gave me a big push in that direction,” he said. “My father is a pastor, but he has a deep love of history, science, and nature. As a boy he took me all over North Texas collecting arrowheads and fossils, but he always made sure that I understood that they were more than just pretty rocks. He taught me to catalog each and every piece I found, so that their significance would be recorded and preserved. Then when we moved to Spiro, Oklahoma, I heard about and saw what had happened to the famous Indian mounds there. Have you ever heard of the Spiro mounds?”

  “Isn’t that the big ceremonial site that was largely destroyed by looters during the Depression?” she said. “I think I read an article about it once.”

  “That’s the place,” he replied. “When I was a kid I heard a famous Oklahoma archeologist talk about what happened there. It’s hard to blame the looters—there were no antiquity laws in place then, and they were just poor men trying to feed their families in a desperate time. But as Dr. Bell described all the marvelous things that were found there, especially inside the largest mound, I made up my mind that I was going to be an archeologist myself. I dreamed of finding a site like Spiro, completely undisturbed, and being the first to excavate and study it. But as I got older and learned more about American archeology, I realized that science had been completely sold down the river in the name of political correctness. In my country, the Native American populations have the power of life and death over every archeological excavation. In Texas about ten years ago, they found a seventy-five-hundred-year-old cemetery site, the oldest mass burial ever found in the United States. There were artifacts there that had never been found in Texas before, bannerstones and ceremonial artifacts that are normally only found in the Ohio River valley. So what did they do? They excavated, photographed, and then turned everything back over to the Karankawa Indians—a tribe that lived in that region in historic times. And the Indians performed their religious rites and buried everything all over again. Artifacts, remains, the whole shebang, back in the ground! No one will ever be able to study them, or learn from them, or simply look at them and appreciate the artisanship that went into making them. And, worst of all, we have no way of knowing if the tribe we turned them over to are the descendants of those ancient skeletons or not. No DNA test required, no historical or archeological links, nothing. All a tribe has to do is claim an artifact as ‘an object of cultural patrimony,’ and the archeologist’s hands are tied. It is sickening! That’s one thing that led me away from American archeology.”

  Dr. Sforza was astonished—both at the ridiculous restrictions placed on science in the name of respecting aboriginal religious beliefs, and also at Josh’s obvious anger at the policies he described. She nodded in agreement at his assessment, and then said: “You said that was one thing that led you away from American archeology. What is the other?”

  He paused for a while. “It’s a bit more personal,” he said. “It’s a matter of faith and science combined. My father is a Baptist minister, but he is also a serious student of history, as I said. He always told me that good science and solid archeology would never undermine Scripture. His idea is that, if the Scriptures seem to be telling us one thing, and the earth, or the historical record, seems to be telling us another, then we are not reading one or both of them correctly. And I must say, as far as the New Testament era goes, I have yet to find or read anything that proves him wrong. Time and again, skeptical scholars have tried to say that this discovery or that would debunk some aspect of the Biblical narrative—and yet, they haven’t managed to disprove anything yet! And many of the discoveries made over the last century have confirmed the New Testament stories rather than disproved them. So I decided to come over here and do my work, my scholarship, in the land where my faith was born—the ancient Roman Empire. I’ve worked at Qumran, Ephesus, and Capernaum, excavating and studying. It has been an incredible experience, and so far everything I have found has strengthened my convictions that Christianity rests on a foundation of real, historical events. Thomas Huxley said ‘Any doctrine that will not bear investigation is an unworthy tenant in the mind of an honest man.’ I guess I have devoted my life thus far to investigating the doctrines I believe in.”

  Sforza was amazed. Genuine men of faith were almost unheard of in the sciences in general, especially in archeology. Like many
of her colleagues, she had heard stories of the “brain-dead fundamentalists” who wielded so much power in American politics, but this young man seemed anything but the kind of zealot she had heard about. “A true believer,” she said. “I have encountered a few in the Catholic Church—Father MacDonald, I know, is a man of real faith, and a solid scientist. But I will be honest; you don’t look or sound anything like the fundamentalist American Christians I have heard of.”

  “That’s because very little of what you hear is true,” Josh replied. “Don’t get me wrong—I have known some very unimaginative, ignorant, and prejudiced people in the churches my dad pastored over the years. I had one tell me once that he refused to believe dinosaurs existed because they were never mentioned in the Bible. This was right after Dad and I had discovered and excavated a mosasaur skull in the Sulphur River bed too, so what could I say?”

  “So what did you tell him?” she asked.

  “I told him to go read Job 41,” replied Josh. “It’s an ancient description of a huge sea beast called a Leviathan. I have no idea what God was describing to Job, honestly, but the description sure sounds like some sort of giant aquatic reptile. But here is the point I was going to make. Most of the images that people have of American Christianity come from one of three sources. It’s either from Hollywood, which is largely populated by atheists, Buddhists, or lapsed Jews and Catholics who have a pretty hostile view of Protestants in general and evangelicals in particular. Then there is the American and international media, which is also made up largely of skeptics, agnostics, and atheists who have a rather harsh view of all religions. So every time they want to portray the state of religion in America, they go find some ignorant extremist like Fred Phelps or David Duke to interview, and thus affirm the worst stereotypes about people of faith. They never portray the good that is done by the American church because they are almost entirely unaware of it. Finally, sadly, there are the American televangelists. There are some good, doctrinally solid Christians among them, of course, but the ones that get the press are the con men and nut jobs. As a result, most of the world never really gets a good look at the real face of American evangelicalism—men like my dad, who has pastored over a dozen churches, has two master’s degrees, and reads a book or two a week. Guys like him never get any publicity beyond the local newspapers, and so the world thinks that the face of American Christianity is some guy with a pompadour and a thousand-dollar suit who pronounces ‘God’ with about six syllables while bilking little old ladies out of their Social Security checks, or some radical lunatic waving a sign about how ‘God Hates You’!”

  He spoke with strong emotion, and Isabella found herself more and more intrigued by this young man. “So, do you think that these ‘atheists and agnostics’ are bad people?” she asked.

  “Not at all.” said Josh. “I’ve met quite a few of them in person, and dozens more in various online forums and chat groups. The vast majority of them are perfectly nice people. The problem is that many of them have never met an evangelical Christian, and have no clue how we think or what we believe. They just accept the stereotypes that have been created about us without question. It’s very frustrating, because most of them I have met are genuinely surprised to find that I can actually read and that my knuckles don’t drag the ground when I walk. No, they’re not bad people—they’re just, as my dad would say, ‘lost as jaybirds.’ I’m sorry, Dr. Sforza, you’ve got me going on one of my pet peeves.” He paused a moment to calm himself down. Here he had a rare opportunity to have a private conversation with the most fascinating woman he had ever met, and he was ranting like a talk radio host. “Tell you what—I’ve told you about myself now. How about if we talk about you for a while?”

  “Not a lot to say,” she said. “I was born on a small farm near —” But before she could get any further, the trailer doors opened and Father MacDonald came in, followed by Dr. Rossini. “Good morning, gentlemen,” said Isabella.

  “Bon journo, Isabella.” said Rossini. “The coffee smells wonderful! So what is our first order of business today?” he asked as he poured a cup and gave it a small dose of crème de menthe.

  “Last night’s discovery first,” she said. “Father MacDonald, I want you and Josh to see if we can remove the items from the drawer without damaging them.”

  “I don’t think I can do it without damaging meself until I have some coffee, lass,” said the Scottish priest. Josh noticed that MacDonald’s accent was always stronger when he was clowning around, while it became almost unnoticeable when he was serious. The Scottish priest poured himself a large mug of coffee; meanwhile, Rossini went over to a cabinet and opened it, pulling out a large covered tray that was full of pastries when he took the lid off of it.

  “I told Signora Bustamante to send up a tray of breakfast items with our dinner last night,” he said. “These are cold but still quite fresh—she baked them yesterday evening along with our meal.”

  The scientists dug in with gusto, snagging cinnamon rolls and strudels with abandon. Josh allowed himself two of the rolls, and then paused with his mouth full.

  “We need to take some of these to Dr. Apriceno,” he said. “Or at least tell her they are here. She’s already working with nothing but a cup of coffee in her belly.” He grabbed a large butter pecan Danish and laid it on a napkin, walking out of the trailer toward the alcove. The plastic shield that had replaced the makeshift tarp covered the entrance, but had a vertical zippered opening for the team to come and go. He could hear the high-pitched whirr of the vacuum going. The archeobotanist was still working near the entrance to the chamber, busily sucking up centuries of dust while being very careful not to vacuum up anything that wasn’t stone dust. Josh called her name twice and finally tapped her shoulder. She started, then stood upright and shut off the small but powerful appliance. “I thought you might like some breakfast,” Josh said.

  “Grazi,” she replied. “You are very considerate.” She took a large bite of the Danish and gave a small groan of satisfaction. The town’s restaurant was well known for its food, and the breakfast was outstanding.

  “So have you found anything, now that the dust is being removed?” Josh asked.

  “I’ve only uncovered the nearest part of the alcove, where the table and lamp were located,” she said. “There appears to be some graffiti on the wall next to the desk.” Joshua peeked in. Uncovered by the removal of centuries of dust, a crude drawing was revealed in the halogen light, about four feet off the ground—roughly head level for someone seated at the desk, he realized. The drawing had been made by a blade of some sort scratching into the masonry of the wall. There was a crude serpent wrapped around some buildings and people, with an evil grin on its fanged, humanoid face. Beneath it the words “Gaius Caligula serpens Roma” had been hacked in large crude Latin letters.

  “Looks like Suetonius did get something right,” said Josh. “He said in his chronicles that old Tiberius told his friends that he was ‘raising up a viper for Rome’ in the form of Caligula. Let me go tell Dr. Sforza about this—she will want to get some pictures.”

  After the new find in the chamber was photographed and recorded, the four team members met back in the lab, while Apriceno got back to her work. Father MacDonald carefully studied the objects inside the small drawer under the table, and then called Josh over for a quick consultation. After conferring for a few moments, they turned to the others.

  “It appears the papyrus inside the drawer has not adhered to the wood of the drawer’s bottom at all,” said MacDonald. “Probably because the inside of the drawer was not lacquered, like the top of the desk, and also because there was not several centimeters of dust on top of the papyrus, pressing it into the wood. I think we can remove the papyrus and the leather purse on top of it all at the same time. The leather on the drawstring bag is completely stiffened, of course, so we will first X-ray it to see what is inside, and then begin rehydrating the leather so that we can open the bag without destroying it.”

  �
��How do you propose to remove it from the drawer?” asked Isabella.

  “Simple,” said Josh. He held up a small, thin, rigid square of plastic. “We trimmed this from an extra plexiglass container lid. It is very thin, but still quite rigid. We cut it to the exact width of the papyrus sheets inside the drawer, and made it a little longer than the drawer is deep. We are going to carefully slide it underneath the bottommost piece of papyrus all the way to the back of the drawer, then lift the entire stack onto this tray and carry it straight to the X-ray machine. We’ll take a quick picture or two of the bag’s contents, and then slide the tray into the rehydration tank. In twenty-four to forty-eight hours, the leather should be supple enough for us to tease the drawstrings open a bit and remove the contents. We should also be able to separate the purse from the papyrus sheets and see if we have anything other than a stack of blank writing paper here.”

  “Excellent description, Josh,” said Father MacDonald. “You have very steady hands, so I will nominate you to do the actual removal when you are ready.”

 

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