A Skeleton in God's Closet

by Paul L Maier

  “And such a personality! The man who buried Jesus in Jerusalem!” Jon exclaimed. “This could shape up to be the find of the century, Austin!”

  No one said anything, until Jon added, “But I suppose that’s exactly the sort of speculation we should avoid at this point.”

  Jennings nodded. “We could be building our-selves up for a huge letdown.”

  Cromwell, who was driving, disagreed. “That sarcophagus alone—empty or full—will make history, believe me. Do we spill the news to our staff?”

  “Oh no. Not yet,” Jennings replied, instantly. “First we must open the sarcophagus. Don’t forget to bring along two chain hoists and quadripods tomorrow. Several pry bars and flat irons too.”

  “And my video camera,” said Cromwell. “All this is too historic to shoot only in stills.”

  At Ramallah, the other members of the staff wondered why they were so preoccupied, and several asked questions about what was going on over at the escarpment. But they fended off all inquiries.

  The next morning they straddled the sarcophagus pit with two quadripods. Then they inserted pry bars into the seam under the lid and ever so slowly pried it apart from the ancient clay-mortar seal that had bound it to the sarcophagus. As Cromwell bathed the grotto in light from three more gas pressure lanterns he had brought along for his videos, Jennings and Jon inserted flat irons under both ends of the stone lid, attached chains to the tips of the irons, and joined these to small chain-hoists they had secured to the quadripods.

  “Let’s do this in unison, Jonathan,” Jennings directed. “The world would never forgive us if we broke the lid! Now pull your lift chain in exact cadence with mine.”

  Jon smiled. For all Jennings’s warnings not to inflate their hopes, he was already thinking in “world” terms, evidently. He carefully tugged away to parallel Jennings’s efforts. “Good, Austin,” he said, “we’re keeping it level.”

  “All right, that’s high enough.” The lid was now suspended more than four feet over the sarcophagus, and at least two feet above the cavern floor. Both aimed flashlights down inside the stone coffin, but said nothing for endless moments.

  “What in very blazes do you see?” Cromwell finally cried, racked with suspense.

  “Put down your camera and come look.”

  Cromwell hurried to the edge of the pit and looked down. He saw some yellowed and partially decayed linen grave wrappings enshrouding a human skeleton, the vacant eye sockets of the skull not really a haunting sight. There was almost a smile of welcome in what appeared to be a fine set of teeth.

  “It’s as if he’s saying, ‘So, friends, you’ve finally found me!’” Cromwell commented.

  “Ibrahim,” Jennings finally called outside, “run and get Clive and Shannon for me. And Noel Nottingham.”

  When the three had arrived and crawled inside, Jennings said, solemnly, “Shannon, your entry for this morning’s log will begin as follows: ‘At 10:45 AM, this date, the presumed remains of the first biblical personality ever discovered—on a demonstrable basis—were uncovered inside a cavern at the escarpment northwest of the Hellenistic-Roman excavations at Rama.’”

  “Good Lord!” exclaimed Shannon. “Who?”

  “Joseph of Arimathea.”

  At the hotel, two nights later, Jennings convened a meeting of all dig personnel. After announcing the discovery, he explained why the news was a bit tardy, and then had Dick Cromwell show slides of the cavern, the pit, and the stone coffin. When he had finished, Jennings promised to let all of them see the find in groups of four at a time. “And now,” he continued, “our anthropologist, Professor Nottingham, will dis-cuss his initial findings.”

  Noel Nottingham was a tall, gaunt, quintessential Cambridge don with omnipresent pipe and soiled field-khaki Bermudas. He looked something like David Niven, and tried to ape the devil-may-care insouciance of the British actor. He began with a caveat. “Do, understand, won’t you all, that these observations are extremely preliminary, and subject to change after much additional study. First off, the remains are remarkably well preserved—most of the skeletal structure is articulated and intact—and the bones don’t have that much calcareous accretion. This was an upper middle-aged male, approximately five foot, eight or nine inches in height. His bodily frame seems well proportioned—the shoulder width suggesting a person we’d style as strongly built rather than stocky. Ditto the hip area. His diet was good—all bones seem properly rounded and normal—and his teeth, which are intact, show no cavities. This was in an era before candy bars and junk food, of course!”

  The audience tittered, as Nottingham intended they would. He resumed, “The remains show some-one who was not used to hard physical labor, since no joints show the sort of wear we find in those of slaves and common laborers, such as were discovered in the shoreline excavations at Herculaneum.”

  “Of course not,” Shannon whispered to Jon, who was sitting next to her, “Joseph of Arimathea was one of the fat cats.”

  “Well, the New Testament tells us only that he was a rich man,” Jon whispered back, “quite apart from any bodily girth.”

  “I’m speaking American, Jon. Don’t you recognize your own colloquialisms?” She gave him a playful jab in the ribs.

  Nottingham continued. “No degenerative illnesses show up in the skeletal structure. Hands and feet are normal, though fingers and toes seem on the slender side. And finally, the facial features would suggest a slightly oblong rectangular visage, with high cheek bones, ample mouth, and less than prominent nasal septum. He also had dark hair. We hope to learn more shortly. Are there any questions?”

  “Yes. How do you know he’s a man and not a woman?” asked Eloise Bancroft from Bennington College, whose questionable performance at the dig thus far hinted that her future lay not in the mysteries of archaeology, but in those of heterosexuality.

  “Was a man, Eloise,” replied Nottingham, goodnaturedly. “I do believe the past tense applies! The pelvic structure in women is wider and rounder than in men to permit the birth process. And the general bone structure is smaller too. But our skeleton has larger bones and a smaller pelvic area. Hence, a man. Yes?”

  “You said the remains came from ‘an upper middle-aged’ man,” Dick Cromwell led off. “Would you like to quantify that more specifically? And how do you determine age?”

  “In answer to your first, I’d venture that the man was at least fifty years of age at death. And we determine that by the spurs or knobbing from calcium deposits at the joints, as well as the grinding and wear on the tooth enamel.”

  “How do you know he had dark hair?” Regina Bandicoot wondered.

  “There’s a shock of it still attached to his skull.”

  “Oh. What’ll eventually happen to his bones, Noel?” she persisted.

  “A good and worthy question, Regina. We surely will show due respect for the dead. Eventually the remains will be reinterred, but because we may have a ‘celebrity’ on our hands here, much scientific testing lies ahead.”

  “In any case,” Jennings intruded, “we’ll remove the remains to the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem as soon as possible, because they must quickly be covered with a PVA emulsion as a preservative—polyvinyl acetate. Otherwise they’ll disintegrate in this dry air.”

  Jennings now asked Jon to explain to the students the larger significance of the find. “Some years ago that wouldn’t have been necessary,” he whispered. “But never underestimate the biblical illiteracy of the younger generation today!”

  “Our evidence is still presumptive,” Jon opened, “and we must not jump to conclusions. But our sarcophagus inscribed with the name ‘Joseph of Arimathea, son of Asher, Councilor’ may very well prove to be that of a so-named individual in the New Testament, who arranged the burial of Jesus of Nazareth after his crucifixion. He was a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin, but, along with a friend of his named Nicodemus—who also assisted at Jesus’s burial—he had not voted to condemn Jesus. In fact, he offered his own rock
hewn tomb in Jerusalem for Jesus’ burial. Now if we’ve uncovered the tomb and the remains of this same Joseph, he evidently returned to his hometown after his service in Jerusalem and must have been buried here. In that case, this will be one of the first biblical personalities ever to have been discovered archaeologically. The bones of others may have been uncovered before this—like those of Joseph Caiaphas—but no firm identification has been possible. Are there any questions?”

  A buzzing of ohs and ahs resonated in the room at several points during Jon’s statement. The hand of Scott Ferguson shot up, a Yalie in Near Eastern studies. “The evidence would seem conclusive that this is the one and the same Joseph of Arimathea. Why do you call it ‘presumptive’?”

  “For several reasons. In biblical times, sons often followed their fathers’ professions, so this Joseph might have been the father, son, or another-generation relative of the Joseph mentioned in the Gospels. Or no relative at all. Or he might have been a member of a village ‘council’ here at Rama rather than Jerusalem. And even though the bones inside the sarcophagus appear to be his, they could conceivably belong to another—even though that seems a very remote possibility. Still, I give you the case of Jesus of Nazareth, buried in someone else’s tomb in Jerusalem.”

  “But all things considered,” Ferguson persisted, “what do you see as the probabilities that these are the bones of the Joseph of Arimathea cited in the Gospels? On a scale of one to ten?”

  Jon smiled and then huddled briefly with Jennings. Both nodded. “Seven or eight,” Jon reported. “But in the interests of scientific archaeology, don’t ever say I told you that!”

  After the laughter, Jennings stood up and wore a very tense expression. “You may not realize it,” he warned, “but our dig is now in profound danger. All we need for disaster to strike is any one of you to fail to maintain absolute silence about this find. The Hasidim would be on our necks with an unholy vengeance if they learned! You saw how they demonstrated over empty tombs! And that’s not all. In view of the possibly ‘sensational’ identity of the remains, we’d also be set upon by hordes of reporters out here, and the work would suffer. So I must ask for absolute secrecy. I want each of you to raise your hand in a personal pledge.”

  All hands shot up immediately, and the meeting ended. The senior staff, however, stayed behind to continue the discussion on confidentiality.

  “What about your Arab workmen, Achmed?” asked Clive Brampton.

  “Ah!” Sa’ad commented, “they are no problem. They know what brought ‘the bearded plague’—as they call them—to the dig. I have told the few who know to keep a wise silence, in the name of Allah the All-Compassionate. They will do so.”

  “What about Gideon and the Antiquities Authority, Shannon?” asked Cromwell.

  “No problem. Gideon’s out for scientific archaeology. And even if he does learn that we hit bones here, he’s hardly going to send a wire to our friends, the S.O.B.’s!”

  “The S.O.B.’s?” Jon inquired.

  “The Super Orthodox Brethren.”

  “What else!” Jon chuckled, duly gulled. Then he added, “We should also remember that these are hardly the first human remains to be discovered in Israel. ‘Grave robbers’ we are not!”

  Several days later, Jennings, Brampton, Shannon, and Jon were sifting out materials inside the base of the sarcophagus, now that the remains had been removed by Nottingham with meticulous care. Four people on their knees, hovering over the open stone coffin proved to be a clumsy quartet, since they were constantly jostling each other. “Enough!” Jennings announced. “Clive and I will go outside and process your spoil, Shannon and Jonathan. Pass the material to Ibrahim, and he’ll hand it out to us.”

  Jon and Shannon carefully began removing the grave cloths and fragments of what proved to be matting from the bottom of the sarcophagus. Although they were passing out rotting wrappings and other debris, the men outside seemed delighted with each scrap of ancient textile.

  Just before midmorning break, Shannon exclaimed, “Oh, oh . . . I think I have something!” Turning the gas lamp brighter, she grabbed a brush and gingerly whisked away the debris encasing the object.

  “Shannon’s found a lamp!” Jon called outside. “A ceramic oil lamp—eight or nine centimeters long. Looks Herodian to me.”

  “That would be typical,” Jennings commented. “Tombs often contain lamps.”

  “Yes indeed, symbols to shed light for the journey to the next world, as it were,” Brampton added. “The old Egyptian idea.”

  The moment Ibrahim brought the lamp to him, Jennings exclaimed, “It is Herodian! We’ve seen dozens like it, and it helps fix a first-century BC/firstcentury AD time frame. Come out and sketch it, Shannon.”

  Crawling outside, she took a ruler, pen, and pad, and drew this sketch:

  “There’s lampblack at the burn spout,” she said. “Shows that this one was really used. Can’t wait to show it to Naomi.” Then she returned inside the cavern.

  Just before lunch, she uncovered another funerary lamp on the opposite side of the sarcophagus, similar in size, but with some ornamentation in contrast to the first. Jennings pronounced it Herodian as well.

  If I hadn’t switched sides with Shannon, I would have discovered the second lamp, Jon thought, in a moment of pettiness. Then he reflected on how small humanity’s inner thoughts can be at a time when they ought to be expansive instead. The gong for lunch at the mess tent delivered him from further self-accusation.

  Crawling outside, he saw Shannon busily sketching the second lamp. “That one could be a little earlier than the first,” said Jennings. “Late Hellenistic—early Herodian. Let’s see what Naomi says.”

  Over the lunch table, Naomi fondled the lamps with a ceramicist’s special appreciation, brushing away the last specks of dust on them. “Both these oil lamps were formed from pinkish buff clay, as you can see,” she told the staff table. “No glaze or slip was used prior to firing. And both were actually used at one time, as you’ll note from the soot marks. The plain one’s a bowspouted Herodian lamp. Rather commonplace for the period from Herod the Great to, say, the Roman conquest.”

  “We’re talking circa 40 BC to AD 70?” asked Cromwell.

  “Yes, except I’d make that 40 BCE to 70 CE. I’m Jewish, you’ll recall, and I deal in terms of ‘Common Era’.”

  “Of course. Sorry!” Dick’s face was red.

  “Now, the ornamented lamp is the Delphiniform type, which is a little earlier. Quite a few have been discovered in late Hellenistic strata.”

  Jon had better luck in the afternoon. Just after lunch, he uncovered two narrow vaselike bottles or flasks, lying on their sides. Dusting them off, he showed the creamy buff vessels to Jennings and Brampton.

  “Well, now, you’re finally earning your keep around here, Jonathan,” said Jennings. “What do you think they are, Clive?”

  Brampton studied them and replied, “Perhaps oil flasks for the lamps?”

  “Now it’s your turn to sketch, Jonathan. Mean-while I’ll go get Naomi.”

  Jon sat down and reached for a pen. “Clive,” he said, “I’ve never understood this ‘drawing’ bit in archaeology. I mean, with the precision of photography available, what good is this primitive routine of sketching artifacts?”

  “It brings out the highlights and contrasts you’d never find on a photograph, Jon.”

  “Something like a caricature, then?”

  “Well, let’s say a caricature without the exaggerations. Get it?”

  “I suppose,” he groaned. “An artist I am not, but here goes . . .” He started to sketch. Five minutes into the first effort, he crumpled up the page in disgust and tried again. The next attempt was at least passable, he thought, and he finished the sketch just as Jennings arrived with Naomi.

  She took one look at the vessels and said, “I would’ve expected those.

  They’re unguentaria, mid-Herodian to the Roman conquest. We find many of those in tombs from, say, 20 BCE
to 70 CE.”

  “I thought maybe they were oil flasks for the lamps,” said Brampton.

  “One of them could be—the larger one. But the other would have been used for balsam or other burial ointments.”

  “So,” said Jon. “This is . . . rather typical pottery inside first-century tombs, Naomi?”

  “How do you Americans put it: ‘standard equipment’? Yes, this is very typical. I’d have been surprised to find a grave without ceramics like these.”

  Just before closing, Jon was cleaning out the base of the sarcophagus where the foot bones had rested, when his trowel struck onto something. Prying beneath it, he dislodged an oblong object that promptly broke in two as he tried to extract it. He muttered a quiet curse.

  Shannon trained her flashlight on the item, and together they lifted out the pieces. It was a rotting slab of some kind, several shades lighter than the debris encrusting it. With excruciating care, they brushed off as much dirt as they dared and then passed the pieces out to Jennings.

  Seconds passed. Then a full minute. They heard nothing from outside. Finally Jon knelt down at the threshold and called, “What do you make of it, Austin?”

  “Sweet Jupiter!” he bellowed, abruptly. “Get out here, both of you! It’s an inscription, I think!”

  Jennings was bending over the pieces of slab and dusting them off with a broad camel’s-hair brush. “We have parchment here,” he said, “And it’s bonded onto what seems to be wood that’s rotted. You can just make out faded lettering of some kind. . . .”

  For a time, Jon could see nothing, since he was blinded after the darkness of the cavern. When his eyes had adjusted, he scrutinized the parchment and said, “Incredible! I can make out a delta here, so it’s probably Greek.”

  “There’s the gong. Quitting time,” said Jennings. “We’ll examine this after dinner.”

  The two pieces of slab lay on a worktable in the dig’s small laboratory at the hotel. Jon used a com-pressed- air gun to coax more encrustation off the parchment, the soft clup-clup-clupping of the compressor replacing any conversation among those clustered about the artifact.