solely by Jewish zealots during the first-century revolt. Maybe early Christians were up here, too. Who knows? What I do know is that it’s tragic DNA wasn’t obtained from the shroud bones. Especially since it’s clear that at least one of the people in the cave up here was related to the people in Jake’s tomb down there.”
Ryan considered that. Then, “So, even though DNA links a tooth from Masada to the Kidron tomb, you think the resurfacing of Max and the discovery of the shroud bones within weeks of each other was pure coincidence?”
“I do. The tooth was undoubtedly from someone in Cave 2001, and mistakenly became associated with Max. But Max may have been only the messenger, not the message, in this whole saga. Funny. I’m even more curious about whose tooth it was than I am about who Max was.”
“I’m not following.”
“This all started with Max, but Max may simply have lucked into a prime cemetery plot.”
“Still lost.”
“Because Max’s grave was at the back of the cave, his body wasn’t disturbed by animals. It’s possible he remained intact not because he was buried in a manner that differed from the others, or because his social status was more exalted than the others, but simply because he was put into the ground at a greater distance from the cave mouth. But since his was the only complete, articulated skeleton, people viewed Max as special. Someone shipped him out of Israel. Lerner stole him. Ferris and Morissonneau hid him. In the end, Max’s main contribution may be that he survived intact and led us to the odd molar.”
“Tying the Kidron tomb to Masada. Jake got any theories whose tooth it might be?”
“Lots of bodies in the cave. Jake’s thinking a nephew of Jesus, maybe a child of one of the sisters. The mitochondrial DNA shows a maternal link.”
“Not a sibling?”
“Unlikely. Inscriptions account for Jude, Joseph, James, if that ossuary’s real, the Marys, and Salome. Simon died years later.”
Again, we fell into silence. I spoke first.
“It’s funny, Max started everything. Lerner stole him from the Musee de l’Homme because he believed Joyce’s story about the scroll and his theory about Jesus living on at Masada. It turns out Joyce could have been right about Jesus, some Jesus, but wrong about Max. Max can’t be Jesus of Nazareth, who died in his early thirties, according to Scripture. His age doesn’t fit, and his mitochondrial DNA makes him an outsider to the Kidron tomb matrilineage. But Max could be a nephew of Jesus.”
“Grosset’s scroll was supposedly written by someone named Jesus, son of James.”
“Exactly. But the tooth could also be from a nephew of Jesus. According to Bergeron, the tooth man died at the age of thirty-five to forty. If one of Jesus’ sisters had married a man named James and had a son, that child would have shared her mitochondrial DNA. If these events took place around the time of the crucifixion, the age would fit. The tooth could have belonged to a Jesus, son of James. Hell, Ryan. Any male in that jumble could have gone by that name. We’ll never know.”
“Who was the Cave 2001 septuagenarian in Yadin’s report and book?”
“Same answer. It wasn’t Max, it wasn’t the tooth man, but it could have been any male in that heap.”
Ryan’s next comment went right to the heart of it.
“The kicker is, whoever that tooth belonged to, if Jake’s right about the James ossuary, and by corollary the Kidron tomb and the Holy Family, the tooth’s presence in the cave places Nazarenes on Masada at the time of the siege. A fact inconsistent with Israel’s accounts of Masada.”
“Very much. Israeli theologians in particular would view a Nazarene connection to Masada as sacrilege. Consider their reluctance to discuss the cave skeletons or do further testing.”
I turned and gestured toward the northern end of the summit.
“There’s a small monument off the western side, at the tip of the Roman camp, where all the Masada remains were reinterred in sixty-nine. The Cave 2001 bones could be exhumed, but the Israelis won’t do it.”
“And the shroud bones?”
“We’ll never know. If Jake had been able to get DNA or pursue other testing, maybe scanning electron microscopy of the calcaneus lesion, we might have learned more. As it stands, all we have are the few lousy photos I took in the loculus.”
“What about the hair and bone samples Getz recovered?”
“The hair could yield something someday. The bone particles are barely more than dust. I’m amazed Getz spotted them.”
“Jake hadn’t set some of the shroud bones aside?”
“Never had a chance.”
“Is he planning to ask for DNA testing on the James ossuary bones?”
“He submitted a request. The Israelis turned him down and they have the bones. Knowing Jake, he’ll keep at it.”
“The James ossuary may be fake.”
“It may,” I agreed.
“Jake’s theory may be wrong.”
“It may.”
Ryan pulled me tight. He knew I was hiding feelings of guilt and disappointment. Max was gone, interred for all time in an anonymous grave. The Cave 2001 bones were gone, interred under one of Israel’s most sacred monuments. The shroud bones were gone, destroyed in a holocaust of fuel and fire.
For a moment we stood gazing out at that melancholy rim of the universe. Empty. Dead.
For years I’d read and heard about this conflicted piece of our planet. It was impossible not to.
The book of Psalms called Jerusalem the City of God. Zachariah called it the City of Truth. Whose God? Whose Truth?
“LaManche phoned today.” I switched back to a world in which some control over my life seemed possible.
“How is the old bird?”
“Pleased that I’ll be back on Monday.”
“You’ve only been gone a week and a half.”
“He had news. There was an exhumation. Sylvain Morissonneau suffered from congestive heart failure.”
“The priest at the abbey?”
I nodded. “He died of a massive coronary.”
“No wild-eyed jihadists?”
“Just bad heart muscle, probably coupled with an elevated stress level brought on by the reemergence of the skeleton issue.”
“Reminds me. Friedman has breaking news. He ran the maid’s note past Mrs. Hanani and finally got the story on the B-and-E of your room. There was no B. Hossam al-Ahmed is a hotel cook who’s been tomcatting around on his girl, one of the hotel maids. The lady-done-wrong decided to set the cad up. Trash a room, point a finger. Your door was unlocked.”
“It’s ironic. All our mega-theories to explain Ferris’s murder and the theft of Max. Ultra-Orthodox Jews did it. Zealot Christians did it. Islamic fundamentalists did it.
“In the end, it was revenge and greed. Two of the old reliables. No state secret. No holy war. No sweeping question of doctrine or creed. We unraveled the methodology of a murder and we identified a killer. I should be elated, but somehow in the context of the last two weeks the murder seems mundane, almost like Charles Bellemare.”
“The stoned-out cowboy stuck in the chimney?”
“Yes. In pursuing our small players over the large stage, I got overwhelmed by the larger context. The murder seemed almost insignificant.”
“We both got caught up.”
“I read something called the Gallup International Millennium Survey. Researchers sampled populations in sixty countries representing one point two billion souls worldwide, trying to learn how people feel about God. Eighty- seven percent of the respondents considered themselves part of some religion. Thirty-one percent believed theirs was the only true faith.”
