by Vincent Czyz
“All well and good. Now listen. Jesus’ given name would have been Yeshua—Joshua in English. Do you know its meaning?”
“No.” Directly across from Drew was Kaffeehaus, a German café with an enormous front window. Through it, he watched a woman with a cigarette between her fingers lean toward the man across from her.
“Yeshua translates to savior. Now, in the Gospel of Thomas, the 114 sayings are attributed to Jesus, and throughout the gospel various apostles—often identified by name—ask him questions. But in Kadir’s scroll there are no names. There is only what is essentially the passive tense … ‘when asked’ or ‘he was asked’.”
“When who was asked?
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. It’s simply the savior. Paul was the first to mention Jesus, but Paul may have meant the savior, the anointed one as general terms—Jesus Christ, or as he sometimes wrote, Christ Jesus. Don’t you see? They were interchangeable. They were not proper names.”
Drew wanted to be in Kaffeehaus with that woman who was smoking across from her boyfriend, who probably had nothing more pressing on her mind than a witty reply to whatever he was saying.
“Drew, when the Gospels originally circulated, they were anonymous—no signatures. Everything was written in capital letters, and there was virtually no punctuation.”
Drew was beginning to understand. “So the Savior, the Anointed One could have been translated into Greek as Iesous Christos. And later scribes, assuming it was a proper name, wrote Jesus Christ.”
“Exactly. This scroll uses the same style as Mark.”
“What do you mean?”
“Throughout his Gospel he writes not Jesus but the Jesus.”
“What?”
“The savior, obviously. I told you, it was a title. You never bothered to read the Gospels in the original Greek?”
“I never learned Koine Greek.” Drew glanced at the dark sky above the Golden Horn, at the cafés and restaurants, at the passersby on their way to other parts of the city. Nothing had changed, and yet, because of the voice on the other end of the phone, everything had changed.
“Never mind that. Just remember, Drew, history repeats. And it does so on every scale, in a fractal sort of fashion.”
“Fractal?”
“I’ve no longer any doubt that Jesus is never mentioned outside the New Testament.”
“Oh really?” Drew couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of his voice. “Let me quote Tacitus for you: Christus, the founder of the Christians, had undergone the death penalty in the reign of Tiberius, by sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilate …”
“I’m quite sure that’s a late addition to Tacitus’s text, but let’s say it’s not. Tacitus was writing some eighty years after Christ was supposedly crucified. He was not a contemporary. More importantly, he never records the name Jesus but merely Latinizes Christos slightly. A title, not a name.”
Drew pressed the phone harder up against his ear. “You’re saying no one … no one recorded a proper name?”
“No one. If anything, Tacitus recorded a rumor. Had he taken the name from official documents, you can be sure that Pontius Pilate would not have recorded crucifying the Messiah of the Jews! It would not have been the general Christos but the specific Jesus or Yeshua. The name Jesus, however, is nowhere to be found outside of the New Testament and Josephus, and the passage in Josephus is clearly a forgery.”
“Sounds kinda flimsy to me, Stephen.” Drew’s tone bordered on rude.
“Does it? Tacitus refers to Pilate as procurator of Judea, but that’s incorrect. He was prefect of Judea. If Tacitus had gotten his information from Roman records, he would have known that. In fact, there isn’t a single historian writing in the first century AD who mentions Jesus or the Christ. Nor do Pliny the Elder, Philo of Alexandria, Justus of Tiberias, Seneca, Lucan, Plutarch, or Pausanias—some of whom were contemporaries of Jesus. And these are only the better-known authors of the period.”
“Stephen, I might be able to accept that there was no resurrection—”
“You have something harder to accept, Drew. If you really want to follow where this leads, you’ll discover that virtually everything you were taught about Jesus is a lie. He was not born in Bethlehem. He was not raised in Nazareth. There was no Sermon on the Mount. There were no miracles. He was not crucified under Pontius Pilate, he was not the Savior, and he did not rise from the dead—”
“I’m sorry, Stephen, I just can’t.” Drew was almost too angry to listen anymore.
“Do you want to side with the truth or a comfortable illusion?”
“Christ is not an illusion!”
A woman walking past glanced at him.
“Christ existed,” Drew asserted in a muted voice. “Maybe he didn’t start out divine, but God raised Him up, and God works through Him now. He brought a message of peace and compassion, of non-violence—”
“The message, Drew! The message is what’s important! Why are you clinging to the messenger? That was Paul’s mistake. Didn’t I say earlier tonight that the Essenes expected two messiahs, one a king and one a priest? Look at the name that has come down to us through history: Christ is Greek for messiah, a king descended of David; Jesus is Latinized Hebrew for savior, a priest descended from Aaron and Zadok.”
There was a ringing in Drew’s ears that he thought came from his cell phone. Until he realized that it was in both ears.
“There was a Savior, Drew, but it was not Jesus. Look again at Paul’s letters. In 2 Corinthians 11:3, he accuses the apostles of preaching another Jesus. Doesn’t that seem strange? Now read it—”
There was a pause.
“Drew, there’s someone here.”
“What?”
“Someone’s in the house.”
The phone either fell or was dropped, and Drew heard a door slam. He recalled the aged lumber barring the way to the study.
“Drew … they’re here.”
“Who?”
“The men who killed Tariq I imagine. Listen—”
There was pounding on a door. “Stephen, you have to get out of there.”
“Drew, I’m on the fourth floor. There’s nowhere to go. Now listen … try substituting savior for Jesus in Paul’s letter. He’s accusing the apostles of preaching another savior. Now it makes sense! They couldn’t agree on who the Savior was! Paul must have been The Liar in the Qumran scrolls—he must have been!”
The pounding grew louder.
“Stephen. Tell them you know where the scroll is. That’s what they want. Tell them you can lead them to it—anything! I’ll get Kadir and Zafer—”
Drew heard the sound of old, solid wood cracking.
“Listen, Drew. I can’t explain it now, it’s too complicated, but the scroll has a signature. None of the Gospels is signed, but this document most definitively is.”
“Who? Who signed it?”
“The name would mean nothing to you. What you must remember is that Jesus was not the Savior, not the one recognized by the Essenes or the early Christians, but there was a Savior.”
“Who was he?”
The line went dead.
3: 9
HISTORY REPEATS
KADIR’S PHONE RANG for the sixth time … the seventh….
“Come on, answer.”
Drew was already trotting up Istiklal, dodging pedestrians and trying not to collide with couples who seemed to dawdle specifically to get in his way. His pony-tail slapped against his back as cobblestones bruised his feet through his sneakers. Sweat filmed his forehead.
“Pick up, Kadir!” Why was he just letting it ring?
“What is it, American infidel?” His voice was almost drowned out by music and loud conversations.
“Where are you?”
“At whorehouse.”
“What?”
“We drink raki. Where you are thinking?”
“The men who killed Tariq … I think they found the professor.”
“Gerchekten?”
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br /> “Yes, really! You and Zafer have to get back there—now!”
“Don’t call police!” he shouted. “Anliyormusun? We are closer than police. In two minutes, we are there!”
“Call me when you—”
Kadir had already hung up.
Drew bumped into a man who had started suddenly across Istiklal. Sweat shook free from his face. “Pardon.” He held up a hand apologetically but didn’t stop. The tram, which was nowhere to be seen, never moved much faster than Drew was going now, and there were no taxis up the avenue. Turning off Istiklal, Drew took the sloping backstreets down through Jukurjuma and came up back, slowing to a stop in front of the building he’d left less than an hour ago. The night air felt like a damp cloth pressed against his sweaty face.
The phone in his hand came noisily to life. “Kadir?”
“Drew, you must come. You must see.”
“Is he all right?”
“You must come.”
Drew tugged on the steel door, but it was locked. How did they get in…? “I’m here!” he shouted into the phone.
The buzzer went off and the lock clicked open.
Taking the stairs two at a time, Drew hauled himself up by the railing.
On the fourth floor he saw what he knew he would see. The lock had been broken off the door. Fresh wood—blond rather than tawny—had been exposed. Splinters littered the floor.
Kneeling beside the professor, Zafer looked at Drew and shook his head.
“It can’t be.”
“It is Allah’s will,” Kadir said.
“No one could have saved him.” Zafer pointed to the professor’s body. The gray shirt had turned crimson, and a bloodstain was spreading on the carpet like a dark ocean overflowing an oversized map. “Four shots to the chest. He was probably dead by the time he hit the floor.”
Although Drew’s vision had begun to blur, some part of him still refused to believe the evidence. “They couldn’t have … couldn’t …” He sniffed hard and swallowed a salty lump.
One of the professor’s eyes was half closed, the other almost completely open. For some reason, this made Drew cry harder. The human body had been exposed for what it was: an organic machine. Stephen, whose bristly cheek he had kissed not an hour ago, was dead.
As though Zafer had read his mind, he brushed the professor’s eyelids closed with an open hand.
“What are we going to do with him?” Drew’s lower lip trembled.
“They’ve taken everything,” Zafer said. “The computer on the third floor is gone—not the monitor or the printer, the tower. And the professor’s laptop. All that’s left is the bag. They ransacked the bedroom and knocked over a few things up here to make it look like a robbery. Even his pockets are empty.”
Drew barely heard him. Gaze sinking, he saw that the professor’s left hand had cramped into a claw. He was suddenly furious. He pushed Zafer aside, distantly surprised even in his rage at how solid the Turk was. Drew grabbed the professor’s clawed hand. It was warm, still pliable. He straightened the fingers out and held them. Tears burned his eyes. Never did he believe less that anyone had ever been raised from the dead—not Lazarus, not Tabitha, not Christ himself. Dead was dead. It was unholy. Something irreplaceable was gone. He didn’t know if it was chemical or spirit, but it was absolute, utterly beyond retrieval or comprehension. Whatever it was that had responded to the name Stephen had fled.
Drew stood and wiped his eyes on a shirtsleeve. “How did they find him?”
Zafer shook his head. “I don’t know.”
Drew looked at Kadir. “What about your cell phone? They have your number, don’t they?”
“Ne?”
“They probably stopped at your shop, Kadir. You didn’t even know who they were. They took a business card maybe—do you remember anyone taking a card recently? A foreigner? Maybe two of them?”
Kadir scratched the stubble on his chin. “This is possible.”
“If they have your cell number and the right equipment, maybe they can use the GPS to track you.” He looked at Zafer. “Can’t they?”
“If the phone is on …”
Kadir took his phone out of his vest and shut it off.
“There’s an easier way,” Zafer said. “Every phone has a signature— that’s how the cell recognizes it. If they get the signature, they can listen in on the conversation. They don’t need to track the signal with GPS.” He shook his head. “But only governments have access to that kind of technology.”
“That’s who you are, right?” Drew asked. “MIT. Turkish CIA.”
“Not MIT,” Zafer said. “Special forces. And not anymore.”
“Dishonorable discharge?”
“Something like that.”
“But you know something about how they operate.”
He nodded.
“So how did they find us?”
Zafer shrugged. “Maybe when they ransacked your place they found something. Where else would you go with an ancient manuscript?”
“If they find that scroll before we do,” Drew said, “we’re done.”
Zafer lifted an eyebrow and smirked. “Maybe, maybe not.”
“They’re not after the Dead Sea Scroll. It’s the other one they want. If they find it, they won’t need your photos, Kadir. Remember what Stephen said? You can’t be sure if it’s forged or genuine from a photo. Once they find that scroll, they’ll just send somebody to shut us up. Because we know there’s a thread—and if someone pulls hard enough, centuries of Church dogma start to unravel.”
He glared at Zafer. “I don’t care if you’re James Bond. You have to sleep some time. Do you want to spend the rest of your life wondering in which restaurant, in which bar, on which street someone is going to put you in the crosshairs, or poison your drink? Do you have family? Can you keep them safe? This isn’t some rich businessman we’re dealing with. This is much bigger. This goes way back. More than a thousand years maybe.”
“How you are knowing this?” Kadir asked.
“History repeats, Stephen said. I know who killed him. And Tariq.”
3: 10
KANKARDESH
ZAFER WALKED A FEW METERS from Timur the Lame, which was tucked into one of Taksim’s narrow backstreets, and took out his cell phone. Neon stained the cobbles red and blue. Inside, Kadir was trying to pry out of Drew what he knew about who had killed Tariq and the professor. The American, however, had suddenly turned solemn and was unwilling to talk. About anything.
Zafer dialed the number of his kankardesh, his blood brother. He and GÖkhan had met in the Army. After serving together in operations along the Iraqi border, GÖkhan was accepted to MIT while Zafer opted for special forces. A few years later, during the second Persian Gulf War, an incident with an American soldier had ended Zafer’s military career.
“Kankardeshim! N’aber?”
“Fine, fine. And you?”
“Same old MIT, same old me. What can I do for you?”
Zafer glanced up at a couple hugging each other by the waist as they walked. They disappeared inside Timur’s.
“There’s a mess your boys will have clean up on Oba Sokak, number 17. A murder. Stephen Cutherton, a British national. It was made to look like a robbery, but it wasn’t. That much I know. See what you else you can come up with.”
“A British citizen?”
“Yes. He has a flat in Antakya. Can you lock it down?”
“Tonight?”
“Unless you can do it sooner.”
“Anything else? I think you’re out of wishes.”
“He has a house somewhere in London. See if you can get British intelligence to lock it down. The guy was a well-known professor of religion. Shouldn’t be hard to find an address. He’s probably in the phone book.”
“Tonight, huh? You’ll have to give me something to feed the Brits.”
“Tell them you think religious fundamentalists are involved, probably terrorists. That ought to get them to put down their teacups.�
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“Is that all you’ve got?”
“I’ll have more for you in a few days, but I think this is big—very big. If I play this the right way, I think you guys might consider hiring me. We’ll see what happens after Cairo.”
“Cairo? You have a passport?”
“Three.”
“I mean, a valid passport.”
“Three.”
“You’re amazing.”
“After the dust settles, I may be more amazing than you think.”
BOOK 4: 1 - 8
THE EBIONITES
The main charge against the Ebionites, as Hippolytus tells us (“Philos,” vii, 34) is that they, like all the earliest “heretics,” denied the later doctrine of the miraculous physical virgin-birth of Jesus. They lived according to the Jewish customs, claiming that they were justified “according to the Law.” They further declared, so says Hippolytus, that Jesus had been so justified by his practice of the Law; it was for this cause that they called him “the Anointed (Christ) of God and Jesus; for none of the other prophets had fulfilled the Law.” They further declared “that they themselves could, by doing the same, become Christs; for, they said, that he (Jesus) was a man like all men.”
— GRS Mead
4: 1
ASHES
DREW HARDLY SAID A WORD during the first hour of the brief flight to Cairo. He spent most of it among rustling pages and an assortment of books, underlining sentences, making notes, and muttering to himself.
Now he was staring out the window at a massive cloud formation that looked like a billowy island. He still couldn’t believe Stephen was dead. For three consecutive nights he’d slept only a handful of hours. Two of those nights in a cheap hotel in Sirkeji—Zafer’s idea. When Drew had complained, Zafer had said. “Do you want to wake up with these guys standing over you?”
Drew shook his head numbly.
“And another thing, get me eight photos. Passport size.”
“What for?”
“Just do it.”
Drew’s cramped airline seat, along with the peculiar smell of airline upholstery and carpeting, was nauseating. When he closed his eyes, he saw the blood-soaked shirt. The bony fingers of one hand curled like the talons of an enormous bird. The eyes as lusterless as costume jewelry beneath lids unevenly open. Why the hell hadn’t Zafer closed them before he’d gotten there?