“Show me,” he said gently. “Then we’ll discuss it.”
They entered Anna’s darkened hotel room. Located a stone’s throw from the museum, the colorful building dated to the late seventeenth century and had once housed, in different eras, a sanatorium, a fruit market, and the office of a city official ultimately convicted and executed for arranging the deaths of his political enemies.
She switched on a table lamp. Mercer, having dropped off his very tired wife and his luggage in another room on the same floor, took a seat at the end of the sofa and waited as Anna retrieved the mysterious menace that had brought him more than four thousand miles.
She set her gym bag on the bed and unzipped it.
“I’ve had these in a safe-deposit box since just after I called you,” she said, “but I had to take them out before the bank closed for the day. I left the other artifacts there. These go back as soon as we’ve run our tests.”
He was puzzled. “Why not just place them in the museum’s storeroom? It’s secure.”
“Not secure enough,” she said. “I gave them the stone box the items were in and watched as they locked it up. As far as they know, everything’s still in it. But given the nature of … well, see for yourself.”
She pulled the capped tube from the bag, unscrewed one end, and gently slid the scrolls out. She then brought them into the light and placed them, still heavily curled, on the table before him.
“These were tied with a red silk ribbon,” she said. “All but one, which lay flat under them. It’s here too.”
“Greek, yes,” he noted, adjusting his glasses. “Fine papyrus … amazing condition. Skillful penmanship. Whoever wrote this, wrote often.”
He began to read.
“So that you may walk in truth, worthy of the Father, and increase in the knowledge of God; I, Paul, according to that truth, hereby set forth these words; that our Teacher, Jesus whom we follow as the Christ, having been put to death on a cross by the Romans, following the insistence of the Sanhedrin, was not the Messiah spoken of in the Scriptures—”
He stopped and looked up at her. Her expression spoke of the agonizing struggle she had faced alone since reading the words herself.
“Now I understand,” he said gravely. Then he continued.
“—that we twelve knowingly falsified his emergence from the tomb, so that the hope that lived in the eyes of our brethren, his followers, would not be extinguished, that the love our Teacher spread among us would continue, kindled by faith in the Father—”
He paused, removing his glasses and bowing his head.
“I know,” Anna said, placing her hand on his. “I can’t believe it either. I had to stop reading too. But after a time I forced myself to finish. I looked over all six scrolls in the lab before I called you.”
“Tell me what’s here,” Mercer said, his voice breaking slightly. “I’d really rather not …”
“Okay,” she said, taking up the Pauline leaf. “They all say pretty much the same thing, with minor variations and differences in emphasis. I’ll paraphrase. It says that James, before he became a follower himself, inadvertently told the original twelve apostles that he and his brother Jesus, as young men, had repeatedly stolen bread and wine while working as stone masons in Sepphoris. The apostles had a hard time believing such a story about the man they thought they knew, whom they believed was sinless, so they trusted their own experience with their Teacher and reserved judgment.
“Then, word reached them, through a man who had lived in Sepphoris and had known of Jesus’ work there, that …” She paused, clearly hating her own words. “He said that Jesus, about ten years earlier, had been no stranger to a woman of the evening named Desida, whose favors this witness had also shared. He commented that he had seen Jesus in her company on a few occasions and that the visits were hardly innocent. The woman, he said, had even mentioned just after one such visit that she had a particular fondness for the prowess of youth.
“The apostles wanted to deny the claim completely, but given James’s earlier account about the bread and the specifics of the witness’s story, they found themselves doubting. Judas even paid the man for his silence, out of the apostles’ treasury. They began to realize that they were following the wrong man … that Jesus wasn’t in fact the Messiah they’d been waiting for.”
“Inconceivable,” Mercer said, shaking his head. “What did James have to say about the man’s claim, I wonder?”
“Paul addressed that. He said that James wouldn’t speak of it at all, not even to deny it.”
“I can’t blame him. What an accusation to make.”
“It gets worse.”
“It can’t possibly, Anna.”
“It does.” She continued scanning the leaf as she spoke, her tone one of sorrow. “According to this, on the Sunday morning after the crucifixion, when the women left for the tomb, Philip, Simon, and someone Paul doesn’t name went ahead of them. They found the body of Jesus right where Joseph had laid it. Following a plan a few of the apostles had devised, they hid the body in a second concealed chamber inside the tomb and quickly left, unseen. When the women arrived, they found the tomb open and Jesus apparently gone. In the confusion that followed, the men removed the body, took it to a secluded place, and buried it. Only later, once the wheels had been set in motion and a religion had been born, did the perpetrators tell their brothers the whole story. And at that point, the Twelve swore themselves to secrecy on pain of death.”
“I can’t believe it. I just can’t. I won’t.”
“I know,” Anna said, placing the papyri back on the table before him. “I can’t either. It makes no sense. There are seemingly too many logical flaws I haven’t worked through yet. But these documents were in that vault, Albert. They present themselves as confessions of almost half the apostles, and of Paul, all echoing the same basic story. They say they had dozens of meetings after the crucifixion, at which they planned their strategies. Paul was let in on the secret only after his missionary journeys had begun.”
“But what about his conversion? Why would he suddenly go from persecuting Christians to becoming one of them if he hadn’t seen the risen Christ, as the Bible says he did?”
“This says he didn’t convert any more dramatically than anyone else. There was no vision on the road to Damascus, but somehow the story got started, and Paul just never denied it. The faith had swept like wildfire, and the apostles just couldn’t bring themselves to let the dream die, so they continued this elaborate hoax … and they’ve fooled the world for two thousand years.”
A distressed Mercer compared the leaves. “Wait a minute. The handwriting is identical on all of these.”
“They’re all signed by someone who refers to himself only as ‘the scribe of the apostles,’” she noted. “Whoever that was. I doubt it was Paul himself, given the self-admitted poor quality of his own handwriting. Presumably, if they’re genuine, they were dictated by others and written down by the same man. That wouldn’t be all that unusual.”
“So, we’re to believe there was some clandestine meeting of the Twelve prior to Paul’s going to Rome at which they unburdened themselves as this ‘scribe’ recorded their confessions?”
“Yes. According to these, yes.”
“The smaller leaf,” Mercer wondered aloud. “The one that wasn’t rolled up with the others. What does it say?”
“That these aren’t all the confessions. The other seven are still out there, buried in a separate location to ensure that at least some would survive.”
“You mean there’s another time bomb out there waiting to go off?”
“Yes.”
“Buried where?”
“Pompeii,” Anna said. “The papyrus gives the specific location, inside a specific house. And, if memory serves, that particular location is now easily accessible to anyo
ne who knows where to dig.”
“If they were so dedicated to perpetuating this lie, why in the world would they write this stuff down, then leave the scrolls where they could be found?”
“They unburdened themselves. Ritually, perhaps. Maybe they felt they could find forgiveness for the deception if they confessed, even if the confessions were hidden away. Who knows? I don’t.”
“You’ve always been good at such speculation, Anna. Despite my cautions.”
“Not this time. I can’t begin to get inside these men’s heads.”
“So they died for this massive lie?”
“Maybe. Guilt has driven many to suicide. Perhaps after years had passed and the guilt had compounded to a lethal point, they wanted to be captured and put to death. I don’t know.”
Mercer buried his face in his hands.
“This is a nightmare,” he said.
Anna sat beside him on the sofa, visibly fighting tears. “So much of the world defines itself by its Christian faith, including me. It isn’t just what we believe, it’s who we are. If these confessions are true, then … who are we? Who am I?”
“Perhaps they’re not true,” Mercer said, drawing a deep breath, gathering his wits. “It’s most reasonable that they not be. We mustn’t panic. If these are forgeries, as they must be, then we reveal them as such, based on scientific data. They’ll do no more damage than any of the Gnostic gospels ever did.”
“I pray they’re lies,” she said with fearful determination. “I’ve been on my knees since I found them, begging God to prove these false. I pray they’re just pieces of worthless, artificially aged ink and paper, or even ancient forgeries placed in that vault two thousand years ago. I don’t know how such phony documents could have been planted there, but I pray they did.”
“So do I, Anna. Even if they’re old, they’re just old. That doesn’t make them true.”
Staring across the room, she wrapped her arms around herself. “I feel cold,” she said.
She leaned against him, and he placed his arm around her. He remembered another time, on another sofa, when he had comforted her in just such a manner, a time when her life had been wrenched from its foundation by falling rock.
“Have faith, my dear,” he said. “We’ll come to understand.”
“It makes no sense,” she said, her tone both miserable and angry. “You can’t just yank a few threads out of a tapestry this way, not when there are so many proven elements in the whole. Christianity is the most intricate and tightly woven faith in the history of man. From the hundreds of fulfilled prophesies and ramifications, to the matching eyewitness accounts, to the sudden conversion of a dozen craven cowards into men willing to die horrible deaths for their faith … This just can’t be.”
She covered her face, took a deep breath, and went on. “I don’t know why this has shaken me so much. Maybe it’s that room … being there. I could feel Paul. Feel his presence, as if I’d only missed him by moments, not millennia. And for these to have been there, where no one but he and his most trusted should have known about them … I’m trying to press my feelings down, to look at all this scientifically and with reason, but …”
Mercer nodded. “A very powerful thing, such a presence. I can understand your struggle, my dear. But perhaps the documents indeed are fabrications. Their content suggests as much, despite the location where they were found. We can run initial tests at the museum and have some concrete facts before us fairly quickly. But one thing is sure … No one gets wind of any of this until we know for certain whether the apostles authored these. Only then do we tell the world.”
“If they prove authentic,” Anna worried, “should we? Why should we tell anyone? What would it accomplish? Hundreds of millions of lives worldwide would be destroyed, Albert.”
“If it’s the truth,” he replied softly, “the truth must live.”
“And two days ago, I’d have agreed with you. All my professional life I’ve been dedicated to the truth. I’ve fought those who try to twist history to suit their own purposes. But this is personal. Jesus isn’t just some long-dead historical figure. He’s alive. Now. And he’s more dear to us than any husband or wife or child. If you found evidence that your own mother had walked the streets and had picked up sailors on liberty nights, would you tell the world, just for the sake of truth?”
Mercer nodded, appreciating her point. “An ethical challenge, yes. But if these confessions are verified … if we prove to our own satisfaction that they are true, then we’ll worry about whether to release them. We must trust God and remember that he is in control, even through such trials.”
“Is he?” she wondered. “If these confessions are true, it will change everything. If we can’t trust the Bible, how do we know God’s even up there?”
“Holy Scripture far predates the New Testament, Anna,” Mercer reminded her. “Archaeological evidence has confirmed so much of the Old Testament that very little of its history remains in doubt, however extraordinary. You know that. You unearthed some of it. So did Samuel.”
“History is so much easier,” she said in soft breaths. “It’s done. It’s over. You pick up a book long after the fact and learn from the mistakes of others. You don’t go out with a shovel and risk exposing the world to something better left buried.”
“Would you really have preferred never to have picked up that shovel?” he asked.
She remembered her husband and the passion he had, the passion for a living, tangible past that had drawn her to him and to his vocation, irresistibly and forever.
“No.”
“There is purpose in all things. We’re too close to see it, but with distance comes clarity.”
“So, God is in control … even if it doesn’t seem that way.”
“He is indeed,” Mercer said. “One need only look as far as the modern rebirth of Israel to see proof of that. It was nothing short of miraculous. The entire history of her people, even through their periods of exile, speaks loudly of his dominion, and his love.”
He felt the sheer exhaustion in her.
“Have you slept since you got to Italy?”
A single burst of quiet laughter escaped her lips.
“Not enough,” she confessed. “Between the find and the adrenaline …”
“No wonder you’re overwrought,” the man comforted her. “It’s well after two, my dear. Get some sleep. Trust that all will be well. Mary and I will be right down the hall. The documents aren’t going anywhere … We can begin the tests tomorrow afternoon, after you’ve had time to rest and get your legs back under you.”
“I’m so glad you came.”
“You are so very like my daughter,” the elderly man said, smiling. “And just as I am of her, I’m so very proud of you.” He kissed her on the forehead.
Anna sat up, took a cleansing breath, and looked over at the scrolls.
“I wish I’d never found them.”
“All things happen for a purpose,” Mercer said. “Where these writings are concerned, we just have to sort out what that purpose is.”
Anna awoke to find the sunlight streaming through the curtains and into her face. The sun was high, much higher than her groggy mind thought it should be.
What? How late did I sleep?
She looked over at the clock, forcing her eyes into focus. Slowly, stubbornly, the red, glowing blur took form. Eleven fifteen.
Mercer hadn’t called. No one had called.
She fought to shake off her confusion, to awaken.
Didn’t I set the alarm? I was sure I did!
She sat up and ran her fingers through her sleep-mussed chestnut mane, letting life and consciousness take hold once more.
The confessions.
It all came flooding back in a rush.
Please let me have dreamed t
hat.
But no, she knew. It was real.
She glanced over at the closet, where the scrolls rested inside her purple bag.
The door was open.
I thought I closed that!
She flipped the covers away and swung her legs over the side of the bed. The wood plank floor was cold against her bare feet. She hurried to the closet, her long nightgown flowing behind her, and looked down at the inside floor.
Her shoes were there, untouched.
Her bag was not.
No!
With no thought of her intimate attire, Anna rushed barefoot from the room and down the hall to the Mercers’ room. She pounded on the door, trying very hard not to panic.
“Albert!” she cried.
The door opened. Mrs. Mercer stood before her, a puzzled expression on her face.
“What is it, dear?” she asked. “Is something wrong?”
Anna pushed into the room. “Where’s the dean? Is he—?”
Dean Mercer emerged from the bathroom, his face half covered in shaving cream.
“I’m here, Anna,” he said, concern on his face.
“The scrolls,” she said breathlessly. “My bag … They’re gone!”
“Oh,” Mercer said, his demeanor relaxing. “I’m sorry. It’s here, my dear.”
“Why? How? My door was locked.”
“This morning, very early, I became concerned about the safety of the artifacts. If anyone had learned of them, I was afraid they might easily track them to your room. Since our friend Raphael had already made an appearance at the dig site, I feared he might be keeping tabs on you. So, when I went out for the morning paper, I saw the maid had opened your door and was exchanging the toiletries in your bathroom. I began to wake you, but you were sleeping so soundly, you didn’t stir. I checked to make sure the scrolls were still there, then I thought it might be wise to put a little distance between you and them. I took your bag and brought it here, where it’s more securely hidden.”
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