It seemed that more Americans had watched the debate than the seventh game of the World Series the previous October, and far more than the Academy Awards in March-yes, despite the extraordinary length of the debate, which exceeded even that of the awards, Hollywood’s annual attempt to model eternity. With so huge an audience, every shade and stripe of response was being collated by several secretaries at the ICO, but Jon and Shannon got a general picture from the comments of institute members, prompting a long discussion over the next several hours.
A large secular sector of the viewing audience thought it “engrossing… good theater,” but no one expected such to join church or mosque once they had switched off their TVs. The general Christian response was overwhelmingly positive, although fundamentalists complained that Jon had not sufficiently “proclaimed Christ in that citadel of Satan,” while radical liberals like Harry Nelson Hunt objected, “Too bad Weber couldn’t have gotten beyond that Trinity thing. It’s been a millstone around the neck of Christianity for twenty centuries now. And Weber even seems to believe in the Resurrection-a Harvard professor, no less!”
“I plead guilty!” Jon laughed, holding his hands up in surrender.
Heinz von Schwendener commented, a twinkle in his indigo eyes, “I think the most careful, in fact, the finest response to your debate that I’ve heard, Jon, came from the mouth of… Melvin Morris Merton.”
“You’ve got to be kidding, Heinz!” Richard Ferris thundered. Everyone knew that Merton was a prophecy freak who had always been Jon’s nemesis.
Barely able to keep a straight face, von Schwendener continued, “Merton announced that the debate was a meeting of the ‘Two Antichrists.’ I don’t know where he got that idea, maybe somewhere in Revelation. But there you were, both of you sitting in the temple of God-guess he meant Hagia Sophia-so the second coming of Christ and the end of the world are just around the corner!” Then his shoulders shook with released laughter.
Jon and the rest joined in. If an institute could have a court jester, Heinz von Schwendener filled the bill for the ICO.
Next, Osman al-Ghazali, who had spent the week assembling reactions from the Muslim world, gave his report, which was a shade more sobering. Jon and Shannon had received daily updates after the debate, but these were the first details many institute members had heard about the Muslim reaction.
“The Islamic response-to put it mildly-is less nuanced than what we’ve just heard from the West. They seem to love you or hate you, Jon. The moderates, the leading intellectuals, and the secular leaders thought it a very fair debate, and they particularly appreciated the near-friendly atmosphere you developed with al-Rashid. Some thought it a model for future Christian-Muslim dialogue.” Sounds of approval rose from those gathered.
Osman went on. “Then, of course, there’s the broad middle of Islam. The faithful there seemed to range from neutral to bewildered. We’ve heard reports of believers rising from their prayer mats to ask some penetrating questions of their mullahs regarding the Prophet and the Qur’an.”
“But I find it interesting,” Shannon interposed, “that the reaction from the Islamic conservatives was not as vocal as we anticipated. Right, Osman?”
He nodded. “Most of the noise is coming from the radical clerics-those we call our ‘usual suspects’-the firebrand mullahs in London, radical cells elsewhere in Europe, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, jihadists in the Middle East, the Taliban in Afghanistan, and, of course, al-Qaeda wherever. Actually, they’re attacking Abbas al- Rashid nearly as much as you, Jon. It’s almost as if we’re back to where we started. Well, things are a bit better; we don’t have another fatwa on Jon’s head, for example.”
“At least, not yet,” Jon offered, helpfully. “Fanaticism, in any form, replaces reason with madness. It’s the greatest enemy of truth ever devised.”
Lunch and a backlog of business consumed the rest of the day. At the close, Jon made an announcement that he knew his conferees would find startling. “Two items, my colleagues. One, thank you all once again for your deliberations and advice during the weeks before the debate in Istanbul. Two, which you may find more interesting, Shannon and I came across something of extraordinary importance during our time in Turkey that I want to share with you once we’ve arranged everything. I know that our next meeting isn’t scheduled until two months from now, but might we make an exception and hold a special conclave-I hate to say it-about three weeks from today? I well realize this is terribly short notice and your schedules may not permit it at all, but that’s how very significant this matter is.”
For some time, silence ruled the room. But then Katrina Vandersteen coaxed, “Come on, Jon, give us a little hint…?”
“You’ll understand when you hear what it is, Trina.” Jon grinned at her. Then he reconsidered. “Well… on second thought, I guess I’ll have to give you a bit of a hint anyway since I’ll need your permission to invite a few guests. Might you members of the ICO be kind enough to allow members of the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts to join us for that meeting?”
Much oohing, aahing, and nodding at the clue signaled an affirmative.
“Another semi-hint: the Eastern Orthodox Church is already involved in this matter, so I think it only fair that Roman Catholicism be represented also. I have a close friend at the Vatican-Monsignor Kevin Sullivan-whom I’ve also asked to fly over and attend- if you agree. Would that be acceptable?”
Agreement seemed unanimous, punctuated by comments like “I don’t have a problem with that.” “Of course, Jon.” “Why not?”
Pleased with the response, Jon said, “Fine. Dick will be in touch as to the specific date and time.”
The conference adjourned. Had an artist rendered the scene in a cartoon, he would have drawn thought clouds over each head with just two characters: a question mark and an exclamation point.
Shannon was uncharacteristically glad for the ICO meeting to adjourn. Ever since their return from Turkey, Jon had been busy at work translating Second Acts. After a day or two battling jet lag-it was always worse on the homebound trip-he had taken a happy plunge back into the AD 300s, to see what a scribe in Caesarea, writing for an emperor in Rome, would have to say to them in Massachusetts-and of course, to future Bible readers everywhere.
As they drove to the ICO meeting, he told her he had translated the first third of Luke’s final treatise, and he planned to let her read it when they got home. The text had proven so challenging that they both agreed it would be best to wait until he had a good chunk of it completed for her to read, rather than his trying to share it word for word, as he’d tried to do at first.
While driving back to their still-guarded home in Weston, Jon resisted all of Shannon’s efforts to pry any nuggets of information out of him.
“No, darling, I really think it’s best if you read it for yourself. Although, I admit I got so caught up in the account that I couldn’t resist adding paragraph divisions in the text, as well as some of my own comments-in brackets, of course, or at the margins. Obviously, they’ll be removed when the text goes public. I really can’t wait to hear your reaction.”
Shannon could hardly wait and had earlier been tempted to tease out a translation for herself. But Jon’s printout, presented on their return home, was much more convenient.
“Here’s what I have so far, sweetheart,” Jon said. “Our final, authoritative version will look much more biblical in format, and I left out a few ‘he said,’ ‘she replied’-that sort of thing. Chapter and verse divisions can come later too.”
She took a deep breath, walked over to the sofa, and started to read. This third treatise, O Theophilus, deals with all that befell Paul after Aristarchus and I arrived with him in Rome, where we lived in his own rented house near the Praetorian camp for two years, awaiting his trial before Caesar. No one from the priests and the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem had come to Rome to speak against Paul in his appeal to Caesar, for they preferred that he simply languish in house arrest. But our Lord intervened. On the Ides of May, in the eighth year of Nero Caesar [May 15, AD 62] we learned that Titus Flavius Sabinus, the prefect of Rome [mayor of the city!] whose wife was a believer, asked the emperor to hear Paul’s appeal. He agreed, provided that his friend Ofonius Tigellinus could serve as substitute accuser [prosecutor] and Sabinus himself as defender. It was agreed. At Paul’s hearing, a board of assessors served as advisers to the emperor, including the philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca. Paul took great heart at this, because Seneca was the brother of Gallio, the very proconsul of Achaia who had heard Paul’s case in Corinth ten years previous and had set him free, as noted in my second treatise [Acts 18]. Tigellinus, who had read the documents of indictment against Paul that the centurion Julius had saved from our shipwreck on the way to Rome, now stood up and said, “Hail, beloved Caesar, you who guide our empire and our lives with the same wisdom that Jupiter employs for the world itself; you who have spread the marvelous blanket of peace and
