A Skeleton in God's Closet

by Paul L Maier

  With excruciating deliberation, Nikos now took rubber spatulas and ever so slowly started prizing the coil open. Several pieces of papyrus flaked off at the edges, but, happily, the central trunk remained intact. Not a sound was heard, other than the clicking of Cromwell’s cameras. With microscopic movements, Nikos pried further. “Nothing so far,” he said, in a soft voice.

  The silence was sepulchral. Now he leaned over very close to the scroll to peer into its open end. “O Thee mou!” he erupted. “There’s writing! I can see it just beginning to show!”

  Cheers filled the room. “Smashing!” cried Clive. “Absolutely smashing!” Jennings tossed his orange cap into the air, while Jon grabbed Shannon around the waist and squeezed her hard as she squealed with delight. Nor did he miss the opportunity of planting a warm kiss on her cheek.

  There was a rapping at the door, and it flew open. Gideon Ben-Yaakov looked first shocked and then pleased as he stepped into the laboratory. “What are we having here, my friends, a party? We hear you all over the museum! . . . Shannawn! Why didn’t you tell me you were coming to Jerusalem!”

  “I was just about to drop in on you, dear.”

  As Gideon walked over to embrace her, his back turned briefly, Jon grabbed the lid of a huge amphora awaiting inspection on Nikos’s table and placed it squarely over the scroll.

  “So what was the celebration about?” Gideon turned and asked.

  No one said a word.

  Therefore Jon had to. “Well, it’s really not that much to cheer about,” he drawled. “I . . . just got a call from my publisher, and he said that 200,000 copies of my new book have been sold.”

  “Well, well . . . that is something to cheer about! Congratulations, Jonathan! But why are you all here rather than digging at Rama?”

  “Cromwell here is taking photos of laboratory procedures to show our students on the dig,” fibbed Jennings. “Some of the museum pieces too.”

  “Well, don’t miss this . . . what is it . . . this amphora lid, then,” Gideon responded. “Where did they find it, Nikos?”

  “Caesarea.”

  “Oh yes . . . Holum’s dig.” Then, to everyone’s horror, he picked up the lid. “Why, it must weight six or seven kilos.” He set it down again and said, “Well, I must be going, friends. Lunch, Shannawn?”

  “Fine, Gideon. In about an hour?”

  “Good. Just come down to my office.”

  Nikos followed him to the door, this time bolting it after him.

  “Blast!” said Jon, as he raised the lid. “He caught the end of the scroll and knocked off another flake of papyrus. No real damage, though.”

  Gently Nikos resumed the uncoiling procedure, stopping from time to time to let the papyrus adjust to its dramatic new environment. Eight lines became visible. Then there were twelve.

  Jon peered closely at the writing. “We have Aramaic square script here,” he said, “a hand that wrote very small but careful lettering. Looks Herodian, pre- or post-, more or less our first century BC/AD horizon. Though these are just first impressions.”

  Nikos now reached for a strange-looking device that looked like a giant C with felt-covered tabs along the sides. “This is a scroll-holder I designed for shorter documents like this one,” he explained. With endless, almost loving care, he slowly insinuated the half-opened scroll onto the holder, and ever so gradually opened the remaining coil over the last quarter of the document. Now they could see the whole text without waiting for it to be stretched flat, which would require additional hours. Several cracks had developed, despite Nikos’s care.

  “Look!” said Jennings. “A tiny worm must have been sealed inside the juglet. It chewed a couple of worm highways into the scroll here and here.” He pointed. “But that worm was intelligent, let me tell you: it dieted on the papyrus between the lines of ink!”

  “Worms probably don’t like the taste of ink,” Shannon offered.

  “Good heavens! The text seems almost intact!” said Jon, as he scanned the document. Then some-thing brought him up short. “There—down there at the bottom. Don’t you all see it?” He pointed.

  “Looks like a different hand, doesn’t it?” said Jennings.

  “Different everything! Different hand, different ink, larger size, broader margins. A postscript of some kind? A codicil?”

  “Well, what does the text say, gentlemen?” Shannon wondered. “You might then learn what that trailer is. Or am I being too obvious?”

  “You know your Aramaic, Austin.” Jon smiled. “Be our guest.”

  “Not nearly as well as you do. Now start translating this thing, Jonathan, and finally earn your keep on this dig. Be a good chap . . .”

  “I’ll have a go at it.”

  Jon took a magnifying glass and studied the text for several minutes in order to familiarize himself with the script. He nodded from time to time, mumbling and mouthing several of the consonants. Then he started chuckling, shaking his head in wonderment.

  “What is it, Jon?” Shannon demanded. “The suspense is just intolerable!”

  “You just won’t believe it, my friends!” he exulted. “It seems to be a letter . . . a letter from ‘Joseph, son of Asher’ to ‘Nicodemus, son of Simeon.’ Here, listen to the opening line: ‘Yosef Bar-Asher le-Naqdeymon Bar-Shimeon shalom! ’”

  “True, Jon?” Jennings asked, then put on his reading glasses and looked for himself. “Oh, it is. It is indeed!” he whispered in awe. “How . . . how glorious! Please, God—Let it be the Nicodemus of the Gospels!”

  “He was the other man involved in Jesus’s burial,” Brampton reminded Cromwell, who was not famed for his biblical knowledge.

  “Read on,” Jennings crooned. “Read on!”

  “‘I hope . . . you are in health, friend . . . Not ever did I . . . or . . . I was never sorry . . . to leave Jerusalem when you . . . or . . . even though you . . . wanted me to stay.’” Jon threw up his hands and said, “It’s a little difficult to give a command performance like this. I’ll do much better with a pen and pad of paper.”

  “We have to break for lunch anyway,” said Jennings. “Will you join us, Nikos?”

  “My pleasure.”

  They returned from lunch minus Shannon, who had been assigned the task of distracting Gideon Ben-Yaakov. Nikos unlocked the door of his laboratory and then gasped. The papyrus and its supporting apparatus were gone! In its place on the work table was the large amphora lid.

  “Oh . . . Lord of Heaven and Earth!” Jennings cried. “This cannot be!” He turned to Cromwell and asked, “Did you get any photos of the text this morning?”

  “Only a few lines . . . over Jon’s shoulder.”

  Nikos darted from his office and presently returned with a younger associate, who sheepishly confessed that he had put the papyrus holder on another work table at the end of the laboratory in order to take scrapings of the amphora lid. Nikos quickly retrieved the papyrus, looking approximately as sheepish. “That’s fine, Vasilios,” he said. “You may go and continue your clay analysis later.”

  “No more chance!” said Jennings, swimming in relief. “Dick, take some photographs of the text immediately. You can do the formal ones later on when the papyrus is flat.”

  “Yes,” Jon agreed, his heart finally resuming its normal cadence. “Photograph the very devil out of that text!”

  “Piece of cake,” said Cromwell. “That ink’s darker than most of the titu—” He caught himself just in time, realizing that Papadimitriou was present and had no membership as yet in The Quintet. Loading high-speed pan film into one of his cameras with a macro lens, he photographed the papyrus from four different vertical angles, to compensate for the curvature of the scroll. “Okay,” he finally said. “I have enough overlap. It’s all yours, Jon.”

  Jon sat down at the table, scrutinized the Aramaic, and began translating onto a yellow pad of legal-sized paper. Cromwell tried to read Jon’s writing, but Brampton stopped him, whispering, “Let’s not distract him, Dick. It’s hard enou
gh to urinate while someone’s watching, isn’t it? Same goes for translation.”

  Jon put down his pen and laughed. Then he returned to the text, writing down phrase after phrase, line after line, though not without a good deal of backtracking and crossing out words. Meanwhile Brampton invited Cromwell out for a coffee, Nikos went into the museum, and only Jennings shared his vigil, pacing from one end of the laboratory to the other, doing his best to contain his excitement.

  From time to time Jennings glanced at Jon, and noticed a gradual change in his mien. Jon had begun with a look of intense interest, but then a slight frown had developed, along with a wrinkled brow. Later his eyes constricted, and his breathing sounded somewhat labored. His writing became more intense, while the line-outs became veritable slashes from his pen. Then he dropped it entirely, staring boggle-eyed at the papyrus.

  “What is it, Jon?” asked Jennings. “Anything wrong?”

  Jon said nothing. He only stared blankly over the top of the papyrus at a case of books along the wall.

  “What’s the matter, Jon?” Jennings demanded. “Are you all right?”

  “Fine,” he responded at last. “Get Nikos and see if he has Koehler-Baumgartner’s Aramaic-English dictionary.”

  He had left blanks in his translation when he encountered words or phrases unfamiliar to him. Several were crucial verbs, on which the whole thrust of the document might depend, and he was grateful that Jennings had not demanded any translation thus far. He now returned, dictionary in hand.

  Jon thumbed through it quickly, filling in some of the blanks in his translation. Then he returned to the text. Jennings quickened his stride as he walked from one end of the laboratory to the other, reminding himself of putative Simian cousins in the ape cages of the London Zoo—a rather inane comparison, he thought, but only such humoring would contain the volcanic suspense building inside him. He engaged every shred of self-restraint, for other-wise he would have dashed to the yellow pad and read off the translation for himself.

  But nothing could stop him from reading Jon’s mood, which grew alarming. All color had drained from the younger man’s face, perspiration drenched his forehead, and his hands seemed to tremble as he flipped another page on his pad and continued writing, looking up words, crossing out, and writing again.

  Finally Jennings could stand it no longer. “What in very blazes is wrong, Jon?” he exclaimed. “What does that document say? You look like Scrooge facing the Ghost of Christmas Future!”

  “And you look like a bloody caged tiger! Can’t you leave me alone for just a bit?”

  “All right.”

  Instantly Jon shook his head with a wan, forlorn smile. He rubbed his eyes wearily. “Sorry, Austin,” he said. “Do forgive me?”

  “Of course, Jonathan. Of course.” Jennings patted him on the shoulder and left the laboratory.

  An hour later Jon emerged, the legal pad and dictionary clutched tightly at his side. He had regained his composure but not his color. “Nikos,” he said, “could I borrow the dictionary for a short time?”

  “No need to,” Jennings interposed. “We have one at Ramallah.”

  Jon then turned to Cromwell. “Do you have enough photos, Dick?”

  “About three times as many as we need.”

  “Can you give me several prints of your sharpest negatives this evening on high-contrast paper?”

  “No problem.”

  “Fine. Why don’t we go back to Ramallah, then?” Jon suggested. “Nikos, you do have a humidity-controlled safe here, don’t you?”

  “Of course. When the papyrus is ready, I plan to put it under glass and inside the safe. Is that acceptable?”

  “Excellent,” said Jennings.

  “And thank you for your strategic help, friend,” added Jon. “Soon I’ll be in a better position to give you—all of you—the translation,” he said with a strange detachment. “This document is too important for any errors, even in a preliminary version. You’ll understand why soon.” He faltered, and there was a catch in his voice. “Very soon.”

  As they walked out to the Land Rover, Jon beckoned Jennings to one side and said, “It’s your dig, Austin, so you have the right to know what I have so far. I destroyed the first draft with all the cross-outs and recopied it. Here, if you can read my writing.” He handed the pad to Jennings. “The blanks are words and phrases I still can’t decipher.”

  Jennings walked over to the shade of a pine at the edge of the parking lot and sat down to read. Jon watched as his hands tensed slowly, his eyes glared, and he jerked the legal pad closer. A muscle twitched in his cheek as his lips tautened. His features locked on to each paragraph, which he seemed to read and then reread intensely. When he finished, his head slumped down to his chest, and he remained motionless for what seemed to the others like a small eon.

  Finally he raised his head and called, “Jonathan.”

  Jon walked over.

  “What . . . what time was it when the meaning of this letter first dawned on you?”

  “About an hour and a half ago. Why do you ask?”

  “Mark the time well. That was the moment our world began to change.”

  Under any other circumstances, Brampton and Cromwell would have demanded to know at least the main thrust of what Jon had deciphered. But both he and Jennings seemed so shaken that the drive back to Ramallah passed in total silence, bro-ken only when they reached the hotel and Jon promised to read them his translation the next day.

  Dick Cromwell delivered several razor-sharp prints to Jon’s room an hour after dinner. The high-contrast paper made the document easier to read in photograph than the original text, and that night Jon worked till 2:30 AM. Several key phrases eluded him, and half a dozen all-important verbs.

  Sleep proved impossible. At 4 AM, he startled the hotel operator by putting in an overseas call to Massachusetts, knowing that his colleague, Frank Moore Cross, Jr., would certainly still be up at 9 PM Cambridge time. Professor Cross was the one man in America who knew more Aramaic than he did, Jon cheerfully conceded. The call went through in surprisingly quick time.

  “Frank?” Jon called into the phone. “This is Jon Weber, in Israel.”

  “Hello, Jon! You don’t have to shout. We have a good connection. What are you doing up so early over there?”

  “Checking out an extraordinary document here, Frank. I’ll explain later. Right now I need some help in Aramaic. We don’t have Marcus Jastrow’s Hebrew-Aramaic lexicon over here, so can you help me out on several vocables?”

  “Of course.”

  Jon listed the words and phrases that were giving him problems, spelling out the Aramaic. Cross, that linguistic genius, was able to answer some of Jon’s queries on the spot. He promised to phone him the rest after checking.

  The next morning, The Quintet closeted themselves in Jennings’s office. Jon, bags under his eyes, asked their pardon for not reading them the translation as promised, and told them about his call to Cross. “You see, we’re dealing with a rural dialect here, it seems, whereas the postscript, which turns out to be Nicodemus’s response, looks like standard Judean Aramaic.”

  “Can you at least tell us if this Nicodemus is the same one mentioned in the New Testament?” Brampton inquired.

  Jon looked to Jennings, who nodded. Then he said, “It is the same Nicodemus.”

  A low whistle was Brampton’s only response.

  “Now, Professor Jennings will be staying at the hotel today to get Cross’s call, while I go to Jerusalem to see Claude Montaigne at the École Biblique. I hope he can shed some light on this dialect.”

  “When will you let us in on this, Jon?” Shannon demanded, a distinct bite in her tone.

  “Tonight, I promise. I really do. Just after supper, Okay?”

  “Is he being fair, Papa?”

  “Yes, dear. He really is.”

  “Shannon,” Jon asked, “when you had lunch with Gideon yesterday, did he say anything about our scene in the laboratory?”
/>   “No. He knows nothing.”

  “Fine. Please keep it that way for now, no matter how much you love him.”

  “Who said . . . oh, forget it. Okay.”

  Jon had a 3 PM appointment with Father Claude Montaigne at the École Biblique et Archéologique Française, just north of the walls of the Old City. The scholarly Dominican was doyen of the Aramaic linguists in the world, and the library and archives at the École were among the finest in the Near East.

  Montaigne met him just inside the walls of the institution—everything was walled in Jerusalem, Jon noticed. The celebrated scholar was diminutive in size, though gigantic in reputation. Everything about the man was silvery—his hair, his close-cut beard, his habit, and even his metal-rimmed glasses.

  “Bonjour, Monsieur Weber,” he said, extending his hand. “Monsieur Kevin Sullivan in Rome wrote me that you’d be calling and that I must extend every courtesy!”

  “Bonjour, mon Professeur . . . notre Professeur, for you have taught us all.” Jon cheerfully ignored the French conceit that mandated a Monsieur rather than titles in face-to-face dialogue, a probable carryover from the French Revolution.

  “But now you teach me with your Vie de Jésu. I find many fine insights in your book.”

  “Merci, Père Montaigne. But the footnotes in that book demonstrate my indebtedness to your scholarship.”

  “De rien. It is nothing.”

  “You are gloriously mistaken. But I come on a very urgent errand. I beg you to keep it confidential for the moment.”

  “But of course. What is it?”

  So that Montaigne could work objectively, Jon did not show him photographs of the entire document. He rather presented him the problematical words or phrases within the context of separate sentences, which he had written out ahead of time.