The Third Day

by David Epperson

  He paused for a moment. “Whichever way it turns out, though I admit I have my own hypothesis. You can’t fault me for that.”

  “No; no I don’t,” Lavon replied. “Your objectivity as a scientist is commendable; but that’s not what’s troubling me. In terms of its ultimate persuasive value to the world, it’s not a question of what the video will show; it’s a matter of authenticating that video.”

  Bryson shifted uncomfortably.

  “Take your Kennedy tape, for example.”

  “What about it?”

  Lavon stood up, walked toward the window, and patted the meleke limestone blocks.

  “Given the incontrovertible evidence that we are in fact here, in first century Jerusalem, I have no trouble accepting the fact that you went back to Dallas as your wife described.

  “The problem is, to a viewer without our level of background knowledge, your Kennedy footage could just as easily be something that an eighth grader cobbled together with a cheap laptop and some off-the-shelf editing software. How do you expect that to prove anything?”

  Bryson hemmed and hawed but didn’t really answer.

  Lavon pressed on. “Let’s say you took that video to one of those conspiracy conventions. There, in the middle of all the exhibitors with their ‘secret evidence’ about Lyndon Johnson, Fidel Castro, the New Orleans mafia, and little green men from outer space, you present what you describe as iron clad proof that the Warren Commission got it right, that Lee Harvey Oswald did, in fact, act alone.”

  “You’d be laughed out of the building,” I said. “And those who didn’t laugh would assume that you’re an infiltrator, a part of the conspiracy, another cog in the vast machine the US government has created to hide the truth from the unwashed multitudes.”

  “Exactly,” said Lavon. “Now multiply this phenomenon a thousand fold. Whatever your camera ends up recording, it won’t change anyone’s mind, one way or the other. You’re smart enough to know that.”

  Now, my curiosity was piqued. I had not thought about it in this way before.

  Bryson didn’t say anything, which got my mind turning.

  “You have another plan,” I said.

  He didn’t respond immediately, so I repeated my question.

  “Yes,” he finally admitted. “Juliet and I recognized your point early on. Once I make the initial recording and get the lay of the land, the next step will be to set up a viewing platform, so that others may witness the truth for themselves.”

  I sat back in my chair and took another slug of wine. This was insane.

  Lavon was even more blunt.

  “Have you completely lost your mind?” he said.

  He gestured toward Markowitz.

  “Just look at us! One man in our party barely escaped being flogged to death a few hours ago. Our female colleague is facing God knows what sort of degradation at the hands of Herod and we can’t do a thing about it. And the three of us, though safe for the moment, have no idea when, or if, we’ll ever be able to go home.”

  “I understand your concerns,” said Bryson, “but it was never our intention to open this world to the masses. We planned to invite only professional historians and other subject-matter experts, under carefully supervised and controlled circumstances.”

  Lavon rolled his eyes. “How on earth are you ever going to ensure control? Forget about us and just look at yourself. This was going to be easy. You planned to come here and record a few hours of video – what could be simpler? But then you plunked yourself directly into the middle of a skirmish you could not possibly have known about ahead of time.”

  “That was bad luck, to be sure.”

  “That’s the point,” I said. “You’re always going to overlook something that turns out to be important. It’s the same thing your wife said about that trading algorithm Jonah Markowitz paid you to develop: there are too many variables. You’re guaranteed to get blindsided somewhere.”

  “No, I’m not,” said Bryson. “Once we’ve scouted the area, we’ll know who will be where, and when. After that, we’ll be like that guy in Groundhog Day who knew precisely when the waitress would drop the plates. We’ll be able to steer clear of any danger.”

  I wasn’t sure about the we part, but chose not to comment.

  And that wasn’t the half of it. Even if his historians came back to the first century, saw what Bryson expected them to see, and published their findings in the most prestigious academic journals, Aunt Mildred in Kansas was never going to take the word of some liberal Commie Harvard egghead. The whole thing would reek of yet another left-wing plot to destroy America from within.

  On the other hand, if the good professor’s guests saw what they did not expect to see, would they publish their findings, or would they dismiss their observations as an optical illusion, or a mind trick of some sort driven by the subtle shifting of the brain’s neural connections as a result of quantum transformation?

  For the moment, though, I decided it was best to keep such thoughts to myself. Lavon wasn’t finished.

  “And when one of your experts decides to run off and have a closer look, like our friend here did in the Temple?” he asked. “What then? Or are you going to keep them chained to their observation posts the entire time they’re here?”

  Bryson shook his head, flummoxed with his inability to make lesser mortals comprehend a seemingly straightforward concept.

  Lavon, though, didn’t let up. “There’s one more thing that I can’t figure out, Professor: how did you know when to come back?”

  Bryson acted surprised. “All four Gospels record that Jesus died on the Friday before Passover, do they not?”

  “Nice try.”

  We both laughed, though I wasn’t entirely sure why.

  “You are correct in that Jesus died on a Friday,” Lavon continued. “But the question remains: which Friday, and which Passover?”

  Bryson cast the archaeologist an exasperated glance, but didn’t otherwise respond.

  “You see,” said Lavon, “this is the odd thing: we’re talking about the most significant event in recorded human history; but no one knows for sure, within a decade, as to when it actually occurred.”

  This was news to me.

  “A decade?” I said.

  Lavon explained. “Pilate governed Judea from 26 to 36 AD, which gives us a ten or eleven year window. That’s really all modern scholars can be certain about.”

  “There are no other clues in the Gospels?” I asked.

  “None that are very helpful,” replied Lavon. “Luke says that Jesus was about thirty years old when he started his ministry, but that was just the author’s way of saying he was a mature adult and thus worthy of being taken seriously, not that he was 30 x 365 1/4 days old.”

  “Not some young hothead, then,” I said.

  “Right. Luke also ties the beginning of Jesus’s ministry to the ‘fifteenth year of the emperor Tiberius,’ but historians continue to debate whether that count should start when Augustus died, or when Tiberius became co-emperor with his elderly stepfather a few years earlier. No one really knows for sure.”

  This not knowing was becoming a common theme. We both turned our attention to the Professor, waiting for him to explain.

  “As you’re surely aware,” said Bryson, “Passover always occurs on the same day of the year in the Jewish calendar, the 15th of Nisan. That date, though, varies from year to year in our Gregorian calendar due to the differences between a lunar and a solar reference point.”

  “Yes, just like Easter,” said Lavon. “Go on.”

  “During Pilate’s term as governor, the 15th of Nisan never occurred on a Monday, Wednesday or Friday. I also concluded that Tuesday was too far removed to match the Gospel accounts.”

  Lavon nodded. “I would agree.”

  “Fortunately, that allowed me to eliminate five of the eleven possible candidates: the years 28, 31, 32, 34 and 35. Also, since the Gospels specifically state that Jesus died before the Passover, I could
scratch the two years it fell on a Thursday as well – 27 and 30.”

  “That still leaves four possibilities,” I said. “How did you narrow them down?”

  “From my reading of the Gospels, the most plausible day was a Saturday, which coincided with the Sabbath.”

  “That would still give you multiple options,” said Lavon. “I’ve read decent arguments for all three.”

  “Yes: 26, 33 and 36,” said Bryson. “From a probability standpoint, though, I ruled out 26 as too early, and 36 as too late. That left 33 …”

  “Which is obviously wrong,” I said. “I thought you said this was the year 29.”

  “It is.”

  “So when is the Passover this year?” I asked.

  Lavon began laughing. “Sunday.”

  “What’s so funny about that?” I asked.

  “It means their days are mixed up this month,” he replied.

  “You see; if this is the correct year – and everything we’ve seen so far tells us it is – then something is out of kilter. Under Jewish law, the Passover carried restrictions similar to those of the Sabbath. No one could do any work, which means that if the Passover were truly on Sunday, the women could not have gone to the tomb with the spices to anoint Jesus’s body that morning.”

  Now, I was really confused, and a glance at Bryson told me I wasn’t the only one.

  Lavon continued. “A Jewish month begins when the first sliver of the moon appears following a new moon. In modern times, this is calculated mathematically so there is no question when a month starts. But Jewish astronomers didn’t do that until the fourth century. Before then, they did it the old-fashioned way: somebody – actually two somebodies – climbed up on the roof and had a look. If they agreed, the new month began.”

  “What if it was cloudy?” I asked.

  “You’re getting the picture. A particular month could be off by a day, as this one obviously is.”

  Bryson stared ahead blankly.

  “You didn’t know that, Professor?” said Lavon. “All the more reason I asked my original question: how did you pick this year? Or did you just flip a coin?”

  “No, I didn’t flip a coin. The year 29 was the most plausible candidate left once I ruled out 33.”

  “How did you manage to do that?” I asked.

  He just looked down at the floor and didn’t reply.

  “You’ve been here before,” Lavon said.

  “No, not here. Despite what you think, I was not completely unaware of the dangers I could encounter in this world.”

  “Then what did you do? Where did you go?” I asked.

  “Nazareth,” he finally admitted. “I thought it would be safer. The Bible implies that it was a dusty, insignificant little village, which is what it turned out to be. I only needed to be on the ground a few minutes – just long enough to find out whether anyone knew of Jesus’ whereabouts. I didn’t think it would be as hazardous as Jerusalem.”

  I couldn’t argue with the logic, though I was struggling to believe his story, in spite of our current situation.

  “How did you communicate?” I asked.

  “I found a Biblical scholar in Washington. I paid him to write for me that ‘I seek Jesus, son of Mary and Joseph, the carpenter’ in both ancient Greek and Aramaic. I went back before the Passover in the year 33 and showed my note to an old man.”

  “And?”

  “He just shrugged. He pointed up to the sky, and then to the east, toward the desert, as if he had heard so many crazy stories that he had no idea which ones could be true. That told me what I needed to know: whatever happened, it had occurred before the year 33.”

  “Makes sense,” said Lavon.

  “Here’s something even you can appreciate,” said Bryson. “The man must have been a carpenter by trade. After he took my note, he led me to his shop and gestured like he wanted to sell me a table. I don’t think he cared anything about religion at all. What seemed to excite him the most was that one of his competitors was no longer in business.”

  Chapter 46

  That thought led to a whole new set of questions I didn’t have a chance to ask. We heard footsteps tromping up the stairs, followed by a loud thump as the servant stationed in the corridor opened the heavy door. To our relief, our visitor was the centurion Publius, alone.

  He wasted no time with ceremony.

  “Your woman has been caught,” he said.

  We all feigned surprise, since technically speaking, none of us were even aware that she had fled the palace.

  Publius explained the details he knew, beginning with her slipping the blanket rope past the sleeping guard and ending with her discovery by a desert Bedouin whom Herod employed to track down the occasional escaped slave.

  “Is she OK?” I asked.

  Publius nodded. “I think so. The guards roughed her up a bit, but from what I heard, Herod is all the more eager to have her. Tell me: are the women of your country as resourceful in bed as they are outside of it?”

  “Resourceful enough,” Lavon said. “Do you know where they caught her?”

  Publius laughed as he poured himself a cup of wine.

  “This is the best part: after dropping from the wall, she headed to the quarry northwest of the palace, looking for a place to hide, I suppose. But the cave she found turned out to be a tomb that the stonemasons had carved for one of the high priests.”

  “A tomb?” said Lavon.

  “Yes; for a member of their Sanhedrin – Joseph something, I believe.”

  Lavon’s eyes lit up, despite his best efforts to hide them. Bryson’s did too, after Lavon had translated.

  “Where is this tomb?” said the Professor. “Can you show us?”

  Publius didn’t say anything at first. Instead he stared into each of our faces in turn.

  “First I must ask you a question,” he finally said. “Who are you? And where are you really from?”

  Lavon acted as if he were taken aback, though deep inside his bowels must have been dissolving. I know mine were.

  “You know our names, and that we are from Norvia, a land far to north, beyond Germania,” he said.

  Publius slammed his hand down on the table. “Do not lie to me!” he shouted. “You know this name, this Joseph of Arimathea.”

  Bryson turned white after Lavon had translated, though the archaeologist himself managed to keep his composure.

  “You recognized other names, too, that you would have no reason to know if you were truly from the other side of the world – like that squalid little village we passed through on our way to the city – or, as our informants told us, the old priest Nicodemus, there in the Temple.

  “You even knew of that prophet who drove out the merchants the other day. I could see it in your eyes that you did, as much as you tried to conceal it. How is this so?”

  “We have not lied to you, Publius,” said Lavon. “We have indeed traveled from a far country, beyond Germania. Look at our white skins. Do we resemble anyone native to this part of the world?”

  “No, but that does not answer my question.”

  “We have told you nothing untrue,” said Lavon.

  “Then you have left part of your story out. What have you omitted?”

  Lavon, to his credit, kept his cool and looked the centurion straight in the eye. “The part you would not believe, even if we explained it to you.”

  “Try,” he ordered.

  Lavon gestured toward me.

  “All right,” he said. “Do you recall that bandage that he used to save your soldier after the ambush on the road?”

  “Yes; his recovery has been remarkable. It worked almost like magic.”

  “That’s right – magic; and in seven days, it will begin to melt away. In fourteen, it will disappear of its own accord. Within a month, your man will be fit to return to full active duty. By then, his wound will have healed so completely that aside from a small scar, no one who wasn’t already aware of his injury will be able to tell that it
had ever occurred.”

  Publius stepped back; his face reflecting an uncharacteristic alarm.

  “Are you gods?”

  Lavon laughed and pointed to Markowitz, who now lay curled up in the fetal position around a bucket reeking of vomit.

  “Gods. Yes, I can see how some would conclude that we are gods.”

  At this, the Roman smiled and the tension started to melt away. However, his wariness did not completely vanish.

  “What is it you want?” he finally asked.

  “The same thing you do: to leave this place and return to our homes – after we get our woman back, of course.”

  The centurion’s expression darkened. “How do you know I want to leave?”

  I answered after Lavon translated.

  “When I commanded soldiers, I spent a year in a country much like this one – a morass of warring tribes and religious fanatics trying to kill me and my men. All I wanted to do was finish my job and go home.”

  “You did complete your duties?” asked Publius. “You followed your orders?”

  “Certainly. If there is anything we soldiers know how to do, it’s to follow orders, whether they make any sense or not.”

  The centurion glanced once more toward Markowitz. “Is that why you tolerated this young man?”

  I nodded. “It is as we told you before: his father is rich; we serve him. He ordered us to look after him.”

  “And the woman: surely she is no princess.”

  “I apologize for not telling you the whole story,” said Lavon. “In truth we have no princesses. We live in a republic, but the people in the lands we passed through do not understand what that is. It is a difficult concept to explain.”

  “Rome was a republic once,” said Publius.

  “We did not know that at the time,” said Lavon. “Otherwise we would have told you the complete truth.”

  Publius considered this for a moment.

  “If you do not bring her back, your consul will be angry with you, no?”

  “In such an event, our disgrace would be so complete that we could not return home at all,” said Lavon.

  “Can you help us?” he added.

  Publius frowned. “I am three years from retirement. I will find a wife and have my own farm. I will not stand for anyone to put this at risk.”