by Paul L Maier
Wearily, Jon closed the report and set it on the table. He took another long sip of sherry, and Jennings refilled his glass. “Well, there it is,” Jon sighed. “This missing piece fits after all. Or, let me put it another way: the last nail in the coffin of traditional Christianity is nicely in place, and the purely ‘spiritual resurrection’ of our liberal theologians nicely vindicated.”
“But isn’t 35 to 45 still a little too old for Jesus, Jonathan?”
“Tut, tut, Austin. I thought you read my book. The chapter on chronology puts Jesus at 321.2 to 33 at the start of his ministry, and 361.2 at his death.”
“Oh, that’s right.”
Neither said anything more, both staring vacantly out at the last roseate glimmer of daylight fading on the hills. Jon was waiting for another jackal’s howl, but the local canine soloist was not performing that evening.
Suddenly Jennings stood up and started pacing the room. “You know, Jonathan, this thing is getting absolutely out of hand. I wonder if we shouldn’t simply destroy the papyrus, the juglet, and all the photographs and negatives to avoid maiming the faith of countless millions—perhaps civilization itself. Let the world think we discovered Joseph—isn’t that a find enough? Christianity would remain intact, and we could always—”
“Are you serious?”
“I . . . well, I . . .” He paused, faltered, and then slammed his hand down on the table, rattling the wine bottle. “No, I suppose I’m not serious. After all, how could an archaeologist destroy anything? And yet I . . . I tremble now, Jonathan. I tremble—”
“So do I, Austin. And even if we wanted to destroy the latest items, we could hardly bring it off now. Shannon, Clive, Dick, Montaigne, and Cross all know . . . or will know. Nikos half knows—”
“Yes, scientific objectivity and dispassionate scholarship have to rule from here on.” Jennings seemed to regain his composure. “We’re getting too much personal involvement here—by the very nature of the find, of course. But we must keep open minds.”
Jon nodded emphatically and said, “What we’ve discovered is either authentic or the most diabolically elaborate hoax ever contrived. We have to determine which. I know, I know, we feel in our very bones that this is all genuine—we were there, after all, and how could anyone, however warped, ‘salt’ this much? But verification is now the name of the game.”
An Arab concierge knocked at the door and told Jon he had an international call from Rome on the hotel’s telephone. Jon hurried downstairs, assuming it was Sullivan. It was. Jon apologized for not responding to his latest lines, and said, “Kevin, I can’t explain now, but something exponentially more important than the Markan conclusion has just come up here, and I simply have to sidetrack your project for some weeks, maybe months, to come. Can you please put everything on hold? I’ll tell you more as soon as I can.”
Sullivan sounded surprised and mystified, but finally agreed. After Jon hung up, it suddenly occurred to him that the deleted line in Mark corresponded exactly with the papyrus. In both cases, Jesus’ body had been taken. Two widely separated sources of evidence agreed perfectly.
Was this the start of a new era? Were they turning the corner on planet earth? For better? Or for worse?
TWELVE
Claude Montaigne’s version of the papyrus so closely matched his own that the problem of translation was nearly surmounted. That of authentication was not. Jon debated the testing strategy with Jennings.
“The biggest mistake in the Shroud of Turin affair,” said Jon, “was their spending years doing every possible test on it except the right one: carbon 14.”
“True,” Jennings agreed. “Think of the forests that were lost to paper pulp for the hundreds of worthless articles and books ‘proving’ the Shroud genuine, when in fact it turned out to be a medieval forgery, thanks—finally—to your efforts and radio-carbon.”
“Well, not just mine,” said Jon. “But let’s not make the same mistake. What I propose is this: we’ll have to test our papyrus and parchment with C-14 at some point, so I suggest we bite that bullet now. It would save us endless grief if they turned out to be forgeries.”
“Fine, Jonathan, though we have precious little of the papyrus to spare.”
“Granted. But we’ll use the same tandem accelerator mass spectrometer method we used on the Shroud. TAMS requires samples only one-thousandth of the sizes we brought to the Weizmann. Now, remember that large papyrus fragment that broke off during the unscrolling at the Rockefeller? It’s just large enough for TAMS, and we could also take one of the larger scraps of unlettered parchment from the titulus. ”
“Where would you take them? Arizona?”
“Yes, but first I’d stop off at the Smithsonian and have Sandy McHugh give them a complete analysis. He’s the scientific advisor to the ICO. He was a great help in the Shroud tests.”
“Fine!” Jennings nodded. “Let’s do it, then. That’s really the best plan.”
“Want to come with me?”
“Love to! But no, someone has to ride herd on the dig here.”
Jon flew to Paris—the fragments inside two small lead-lined envelopes in his attaché case—and thence to Dulles Airport at Washington, DC. He was inside the Smithsonian almost before jet lag could set in.
“Sure ’n it’s good to see ye again, Jonnie, me boy,” said Sandy McHugh, dressed in his laboratory whites and looking nothing like the leprechaun he sounded. He generally conversed with Jon either in proper English or the worst Irish brogue this side of Dublin. Today it was the latter. Ample girth, round face, and reddish-blond hair marked the man, while twinkling turquoise eyes reflected the personality.
“Hello, old top!” said Jon, giving him a cheerful cuff on the shoulder. “Been keeping busy?”
“An’ I’ll be thankin’ ye fer that!” he nodded. “’Twas quite the riddle ye sent us with that erased-line business. So tell me now, did the Holy Faaather agree to our little testin’ scheme?” McHugh knew only that a papal document was involved, not that it was the conclusion to Mark’s gospel.
“That he did, Sandy.”
“And what might be these scraps of paaarchment and papyrus yer bringin’ me now? Some proof that the Holy Shroud is genuine after all?”
“No,” Jon laughed, “nothing like that. But they are from some incredibly important documents. When you handle them, just imagine that these flakes came from the Declaration of Independence itself. Or a letter from Saint Patrick.”
“I get the picture,” said McHugh, switching to proper English. “No foul-ups.”
Inside the laboratory, Jon opened the envelopes and gingerly extracted the pieces of parchment and papyrus. Sandy studied the fragments for some time under various lamps, filters, and scopes. “They certainly look medieval, if not ancient,” he finally commented.
“I do hope that you can narrow that down some-what!”
“Obviously,” he grinned. “All right, then, here’s what I propose. First we’ll do the nondestructive analysis in the laboratories here—mainly microscopy and electronmicroscopy—with a photographic record throughout. That’ll take the rest of the day. You spend the night at my place in Georgetown—yes, I insist!—and tomorrow we’ll take your precious samples and catch a flight to Tucson. I’ve already phoned Duncan Fraser at the University of Arizona to drop everything and fine-tune his mighty TAMS apparatus for those two bits of paper of yours.”
“Superb, Sandy! Arizona’s still the best for our purposes? Not Oxford or Zurich?”
“Put it this way, Jon—it’s the only place on earth with a machine like that and also a collection of bristlecone pine samples as testing controls. If God Himself handed me the first page of Matthew’s original gospel and said, ‘Date it,’ that’s where I’d take it!”
They landed at the sprawling Spanish hacienda that was Tucson International Airport and drove a rent-a-car to the University of Arizona, a vast collection of structures in red brick. While walking inside the Physics Building, Sandy commented, “
This is holy ground for the world’s archaeologists, Jon. These are the boys who recalibrated the radiocarbon clock via tree-ring datings from the bristlecone pine.”
A midsized man with dark hair and genial smile approached them, hand outstretched. “Hello, Sandy!” he said. “Good to see you back in Tucson!”
“Greetings, Duncan! You know Jon Weber here from his letters the time we tested the Shroud.”
“Indeed!”
“Delighted finally to meet you, Professor Fraser,” said Jon. “Sorry I was too tied up in Cambridge to get out here when you were working on the Shroud samples.”
“Honored to have you aboard! Sandy said your fragments were extraordinarily important. But he didn’t say why.”
“That’s because I don’t know why!” Sandy inter-jected.
“After the tests I’ll explain, gentlemen,” said Jon. “A matter of objectivity, you understand.”
“Quite right,” said Fraser. “Well, gentlemen, let’s go over to the accelerator laboratory.”
He led them to an underground annex where the TAMS apparatus was housed in a vast, lofty chamber. Jon looked at the massive T-shaped accelerator and its conduits bending around the room and said, “This looks nothing like the glass beaker array I saw at the Weizmann Institute in Israel!”
“No,” said Fraser. “Their conventional method counts the blips of carbon-14 decay, whereas our TAMS measures the C-14 directly. Here, let me explain it to you.”
As Fraser hauled out a chart, Jon cautioned, “Better keep it elementary, friend! My physics is pure Newtonian!”
He handed the chart to Jon and said, “First we burn each of your samples into carbon-dioxide, which we then convert to graphite. Next we load that carbon onto a plug and insert it into the ion source—Number 1 on the sketch.” He pointed his pencil to the left side of the chart.
“Then we bombard that plug with a beam of cesium ions, which transforms neutral carbon into negative carbon ions. Now these ions make a mad rush toward our transformer—Number 2—finding its two million volts very attractive—if you’ll pardon the pun! However, en route, our slits and mag-net—Number 3—separate our regular carbon 12 and 13. Are you with me so far?”
“I actually think so,” said Jon. “Do continue.”
“So now the isolated carbon 14 ions dash into the waiting arms of our stripper—Number 4—which shamelessly removes their electrons, turning them from negative to positive ions. Now, of course, they’re repelled by that sordid affair and fly away from the transformer.”
“See, Jon, that’s the tandem part of the TAMS system,” Sandy broke in, “the double acceleration.”
“Now—at Number 5—we have more slits and magnets to deflect everything but the C-14 we want to measure. And finally, the ion detector—Number 6—counts the number of C-14 ions that survived this journey and feeds the data into our computer. And that’s it! I’ve given you the . . . ah . . . popular version, of course, but basically, it’s that simple.”
Jon laughed. “I do think I caught it!” Then he grew serious. “But how do you know you’re reading all the carbon 14? If you miss some, wouldn’t your samples seem older?”
“This machine can spot one part of C-14 in 100 trillion parts of regular carbon.”
“Incredible!”
“Now let’s have a look at your samples,” said Fraser, offering them seats around a lab table. Jon removed the two lead-lined envelopes from his attaché case, and Fraser studied the fragments of parchment and papyrus.
“Please tell me we have enough material there,” said Jon, anxiously.
“Oh, yes, more than enough. How old do you think they are?”
“Should I really say? Someday, when this is all written up—and it will be written up, mark you—I wouldn’t want anyone to claim I suggested any dates to you.”
“Of course,” Fraser smiled. “But I’m only look-ing for a ‘ballpark’ sort of range—the nearest five thousand years will do.”
Jon laughed in relief. “In that case, our range would be anything from very recent, say ten years ago—if they’re forgeries—to as far back as, say, two thousand years or more if not.”
“Duck soup!” said Fraser. “Here I thought you might be stretching our capacities by bringing in something really old!”
Fraser and his associates now began a meticulous preparation process on both samples, which commanded the rest of the day. Jon was held in thrall by the entire scientific spectacle, wondering what his life would have been like had he elected physics instead of Near Eastern studies.
“We have our graphite,” said Fraser, at day’s end. “It all went well. Very well, in fact. So come back tomorrow and we’ll fire up our monster here.”
Jon pitched and turned and flailed at his bedsheets that night, fighting for a sleep that never came. The titulus and papyrus fragments were everything now—far more significant than old ceramics, linens, or even bones, all of which were available to a really supple Near Eastern forger. It was better that neither McHugh nor Fraser knew that the course of history could bend as much as ions in an accelerator depend-ing on the C-14 present—or absent—in those flakes. That would have stripped cool dispassion from any scientific procedure.
Poised at his control console the next morning, Duncan Fraser flipped his master switches and scanned an array of gauges and dials. Associates reported a checklist of readings, which reminded Jon of Mission Control in Houston:
“Accelerator terminal at 2.0 million volts.”
“Cesium generator at 25,000 volts.”
“All magnet potentials at nominal.”
“Ion detector nominal.”
“Computer nominal.”
A carefully orchestrated chorus of electronic humming filled the laboratory. For Jon, the suspense was almost beyond endurance.
Fraser now switched on the cesium-ion bombardment of one of the plugs from the titulus parchment. Jon and Sandy hovered over his head at the computer console, and saw a grid appear on the screen, which was now overlaid with two green bars showing the relative amounts of carbon 14 and regular carbon.
“The one to watch is the right-hand C-14 bar,” said Fraser. “The lower it is relative to the left-hand normal carbon bar, the older your sample is.”
Jon looked intensely at the screen and saw a considerable difference developing in the two heights. No one said anything. His pulse was throbbing.
“What age is it showing, roughly?” he finally asked.
Fraser quickly looked down at his master reference table and said, “About the 1960s.”
“Good Lord!” Jon exclaimed. “It’s a forgery, then, done some forty or fifty years ago!”
“No, no,” Fraser laughed. “The 1960s BP, before the present. We’re talking, oh, about the 30s or 40s AD.”
Sandy, blissfully unaware, let out a whoop of joy. “It’s bloody authentic, I’d say!”
Jon merely tasted his heart, which was galloping in a mad cadence. Now civilization might indeed shift.
After some minutes of testing and recording his data, Fraser left the console, went to a lead-lined locker at one end of the laboratory, and returned with another tiny graphite plug in hand which he inserted into a carousel of targets at the ion source. Then he turned to his guests and said, “Now I have a little surprise for you. For something as important as this seems to be, we’ll parallel test some bristle-cone pine specimens of known age to match our readouts here. If they agree, we’ll have a guarantee of accuracy. The plug I just put in came from the core of a bristlecone pine known to be exactly two thousand years old from tree-ring analysis.”
The accelerator again hummed to life, as three heads scrutinized the screen. Soon, the array of bars materialized, taking shapes nearly identical to those of the parchment sample.
“Aha!” said Fraser. “That certainly shows we have our machine tuned properly, doesn’t it?”
“Right on,” said Sandy.
“Shall we move on to the papyrus sample?” he asked.
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“Yes, by all means,” Sandy replied, since Jon seemed strangely subdued.
Fraser moved the carousel, returned to the computer screen, and resumed the testing procedure. Again the dark screen came to life with bars of brilliant green.
“This one’s just a tad younger,” he said. “See?” he pointed. “The C-14 bar’s a shade higher.”
“Where do you peg it, roughly?” Jon had finally located his voice.
“Around the 1930s BP, maybe a little more.”
Again Jon cringed internally. The letter of Joseph of Arimathea would certainly have been written later than the titulus, and thus appear “a tad younger.”
Fraser returned to his shielded cabinet, extracted another tiny plug, and explained, “This one’s from a nineteen-hundred-year-old bristlecone.”
The readouts from its test showed only a twenty-five- year deviation from that of the papyrus. “All in all, our little machine was on good behavior today,” said Fraser, giving the console an affectionate pat. “Though we still cushion our test dates with an error range of plus or minus eighty years.”
“Why’s that?” asked Jon. “The readings seem so much closer.”
“Varying cosmic ray bombardment across the centuries.”
“Obviously. I forgot. My mind was on something else.”
“Well, congratulations, Jon!” exclaimed Sandy. “Looks as if you have the real things there, what-ever they are!”