“Only one way to find out,” Zahed said.
He snatched the pick from Tess and, before she could stop him, slammed it into the top of the pot. The plate that was sealing it shattered. Zahed then pried off the pieces that were still hanging in place.
He took the flashlight from the Byzantinist and aimed it inside the pot, then turned to Tess, making an inviting gesture with his hand.
“Be my guest,” he told her. “After all your hard work, you deserve it.”
She looked at him askance, then leaned in for a look. The sight made her heart bolt. She reached in and pulled out the pot’s contents: two codices—small, ancient leather-bound books, each roughly the size of a hardcover novel.
She held them with quivering fingers, carefully, as if they were made of the most fragile porcelain, marveling at them. For a blissful instant, all the horrors she’d been through, the Iranian monster standing inches from her—it all faded away. Then she set one down in her lap and examined the other.
“What are they?” Abdulkerim said, his tone a whisper.
Tess gently unfurled the thin, leather strap that was rolled around the first codex. The back cover extended into a triangular flap that folded over the front one. She peeled that back, then, slowly, opened the codex.
The golden-brown papyrus leaves inside were clearly brittle, their edges crumbled in places. She didn’t dare turn a single page, so as not to damage the manuscript, but the lettering on the first page was enough to announce what she was looking at.
“Alexandrian text-type letters,” she said. “It’s written in Greek.”
“What does it say?” the Iranian asked.
Tess read it, then looked up at Abdulkerim and showed it to him. Even in the faint light in the cavern, the astonishment on her face was evident.
The Byzantinist was clearly familiar with Greek writing, his area of expertise. “The Gospel of Perfection.” He looked at Tess. “I’ve never heard of it.”
“Me neither. But it’s in Greek.
The Byzantinist’s expression morphed to mimic Tess’s surprise as her point sank in—something the Iranian caught too.
“What about it being in Greek? Why’s that such a surprise?” he asked.
“Koine Greek was the lingua franca—the working language—of the Near East during Roman times. It’s what any gospels that would have been written around the time of Jesus’s life would have been written in. But we don’t have any original copies of gospels from back then. The oldest Bibles we have are in Greek, but they’re from the fourth or fifth centuries. The older texts we have aren’t from the Bible. They’re non-canonical, gnostic gospels, like the Gospel of Thomas that was found in Egypt in 1945—and they’re Coptic translations of earlier Greek texts.” She held up the codex. “This isn’t Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. But it’s in Koine Greek, which means it’s an original. Not a translation. It might be the oldest full gospel ever found.”
The Byzantinist looked baffled. “Why is it here? How did you know about this?”
“What about the other one?” the Iranian interjected, ignoring Abdulkerim.
Tess set the first codex down and picked up the second book. Again, taking great care, she opened it. Although the two codices were very similar outwardly, this one was different in that it consisted of bound parchment leaves, not papyrus, indicating that it was likely to be more recent than the first. The lettering was the same, though. It was also written in Koine Greek.
“The Gospel of the Hebrews,” she read. This was a title she recognized. She looked up from it. “This is one of the ‘lost’ gospels. Some of the founders of the Church talked about it in their writings, but it’s never been found.” Her fingers brushed the open leaf with profound reverence. “Until now.”
Her heart pounding, she was leafing through its first few pages slowly, her eyes roaming the tiny letters, trying to grasp what they said, when she saw something else. A folded sheet of parchment, inserted between the pages of the book.
She pulled it out and realized it wasn’t just one sheet, but four, all folded onto one another. It had to be an official document of some kind, as it was sealed with a dark reddish-brown wax seal that had left its impression on the pages of the codex it had been sitting against. She pulled Abdulkerim’s light closer for a better look and bent a corner of the top sheet back slightly, but she couldn’t see much beyond some of the letters on it. They were different from those in the codices.
“I think it’s Latin, but I can’t see what’s inside without breaking the seal,” Tess told Zahed.
“So break it,” he replied.
Tess exhaled with frustration. It was pointless to argue with the man. She just fumed in silence and slid her fingers under the upper fold of the sheet. As gently as she could, she popped the seal off the parchment, but still couldn’t help cracking it in two. The seal had fulfilled its purpose, even hundreds of years after it had been put in place.
Tess folded the sheets open slightly, making sure she didn’t crack them.
The writing on them was indeed different. The words they held were written in Roman literary cursive script—that is, in Latin, not Greek.
“What is it?” Abdulkerim asked.
“It looks like a letter.” She squinted as she studied it. “My Latin’s not great.” She held it up to him. “Can you read it?”
The Byzantinist shook his head. “Greek, no problem. Latin, not my speciality.”
She perused the text, then her gaze rushed to the bottom of the last sheet.
“’
Zahed’s eyebrows rose in a rare display of piqued curiosity.
“Hosius,” Abdulkerim observed. “The bishop of Cordoba. One of the Church’s founding fathers.”
“The man who presided over the Council of Nicaea,” Tess added. Something occurred to her as she said it. “Nicaea’s near here, isn’t it?” she asked.
The Byzantinist nodded, frowning with confusion as he processed the information. “It’s close to Istanbul, but yes, I suppose it’s not that far from here. It’s called Iznik nowadays.”
Tess could see that he was bursting to ask her a hundred questions and was just barely managing to hold himself back. Nicaea was an iconic word as far as the early days of Christianity were concerned. There were a lot of unanswered questions as to what had really happened at that historic gathering back in A.D. 325, when Constantine the Great had summoned the senior bishops from all of Christendom and forced them to settle their disputes and agree on what Christians were supposed to believe in.
Tess looked over at Zahed. “We need to get this translated,” she told him.
The Iranian was also lost in his thoughts. “Later,” he replied. “Pass them over to me.”
Tess took one last look at the document, hesitated, then folded it and placed it back inside the codex as she had found it. She handed both books back to him, and he slipped them into his rucksack.
“Let’s see if there’s anything else buried with him,” he said as he handed the pick back to her.
Tess’s mind stumbled. The man didn’t seem at all fired up by what they had just unearthed. She thought of questioning it, but decided against it. Instead, she just got back on her knees and dug and prodded around the rest of the grave.
There wasn’t anything else buried there.
She looked across at the Iranian.
He seemed dissatisfied. “We’re missing something.”
Tess couldn’t hold back anymore, and her exasperation spilled over. “What are we missing?” She flared up angrily. “This is it. We’ve done everything we can. I mean, hell, we found his grave. We found these texts, and whatever’s in them, that’s already one hell of a find. These gospels … they’re unique. And this man, Hosius … he was Constantine’s head priest. He was there when Constantine decided to become a Christian. He was at Nicaea, for God’s sake, he was there when all the arguments about what Jesus really did and what he really was were thrashed out and when Christianity became what we know it as today. It’s where they came up with the Nicene
