“You did?” Mac persisted. “Would you care to unpack that?”
Jon paused for several moments, then said, “Well, I guess it’s time to unload another little surprise for you.” He pressed a button on his laptop and flashed more columns of beautiful, uncial Greek onto the screen. It was the last chapter of Mark. “Here we have the last chapter of Mark from the codex,” he added.
For some time, the room was silent, since the Greek lettering, while clear, was very difficult to decipher in its run-together form.
“Anyone notice anything amiss?” Jon finally asked.
The eagle eye of Trina Vandersteen suddenly picked it up. “Hold it!” she said. “There’s too much material there-it should be only eight verses’ worth, no? You’ve got-what?-looks like almost three times that much text.”
Jon nodded, letting the implications slowly sink in.
Von Schwendener suddenly exploded. “Omigosh! Give us a break, Jon. You’re not going to tell us that… that this is the lost ending of Mark, are you?”
Quietly he replied, “You’ve got it, Heinz.”
A wild potpourri of surprise and awe filled the room, supposedly staid scholars ripping off their glasses or putting them on-depending on their ocular needs-as they tried to scan the text more closely.
Several minutes later, Jon announced, “I’m passing out my rough translation of the lost ending, although I’m sure one of the committees to come out of this group will do a better job.”
Silence reigned as each read the words Mark had actually written at the close of his Gospel. Scholars joined other scholars sitting nearby in a sudden buzz of discussion that picked up tempo and intensity.
Brendan Rutledge spoke up first. “Tends to support the Synoptic hypothesis, doesn’t it?”
Jon smiled at this and winked at Shannon.
Daniel Wallace, from the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts, raised his hand. “Thanks, Jon, for inviting our group to this historic occasion. And I don’t use that adjective lightly, since there’s no question but that this codex, if authentic, is the greatest find in centuries of textual scholarship. Our group has dreamed of coming across a text like this, yet we dismissed it as wishful thinking. We were wrong! Now, what do you propose as a modus operandi for this discovery?”
“Thanks, Dan! I was coming to that.” Jon distributed another handout. “I propose that we establish a ‘Mark 16 Blue Ribbon Task Force’ and charge it with items listed on what I’ve just distributed.”
The conferees read: • Compare the uncial lettering of the new material in this manuscript with the Markan text immediately preceding it. This will determine if another ancient hand tried to supply the ending, as happened subsequently in later texts. • Do a complete linguistic analysis of these verses, again comparing them with the grammar and syntax in the rest of the Markan text. • Provide an authoritative translation of these final verses into English. (Other translations can follow later.) • Write an official commentary on these verses, explaining how Mark’s ending had originally been lost-if true-and the significance of these verses for Synoptic scholarship and especially in the reportage of the resurrection of Jesus.
The silence was quickly broken. “Hear, hear!” “Good plan!” “Let’s do it” and other affirmatives welled up from both tables. Just before lunch, the ICO and CSNTM had even appointed twenty of their finest New Testament scholars to the task force. To these, Jon handed out enhanced digital images of all pages of Mark’s Gospel in the codex.
“Just remember, good colleagues,” Jon cautioned, “every last page of the codex is now copyrighted-my Harvard colleague Alan Dershowitz prepared an airtight instrument for us-so don’t run off to publishers and try to get rich on Mark!”
Jon was smiling and the rest chuckled, but amid the mirth the message was quite loud and quite clear.
Not one person in the group recalled, a year later, what they had eaten for their catered lunch. They were less diners and more a buzzing beehive of excitement over the codex.
Sitting adjacent from Jon and Shannon, von Schwendener asked, “Anything important for this afternoon, Jon? Or can we wrap it up early? I’d like to catch the four o’clock train for New Haven.”
Sure, take off, Yalie yahoo, Jon thought, and miss more of the biggest story of your life! But all he said, charitably, was “Try to stick around, Heinz.”
Jon began the afternoon session by flashing two pages from the codex on the screen side by side: the last page of Acts and the first of Second Acts, though with the title hidden. The two pages simply hung on the screen for endless moments, but this time no one got the message. Kevin Sullivan knew, of course, but he held his tongue.
“All right,” Jon said. “I suppose I’d best drop a hint. The left-hand page is the close of Praxeis Apostolon…”
“Okay,” Rutledge offered. “Acts of the Apostles…”
“Right, Brandon.” Jon flipped a switch. “And what’s the title of the next book on the opposite side- Romans?”
Rutledge stared. “It’s… Praxeis Apostolon Beta… Beta? What in the world?”
Sally Humiston screamed something unintelligible, followed by a more coherent “Not Acts 2? I mean, Second Acts? That reference in Hegesippus that Shannon found?”
Jon caught Shannon’s eyes and grinned and nodded.
“It’s really in that codex?” Sally asked, almost shouting.
“Yes it is, Sal.”
Silence in the room was deafening. The conclave of world-class scholars sat around the conference tables collectively stunned, many with open mouths and wide eyes.
Finally Edwin Yamauchi collected himself enough to ask, “Well, what does it say? Have you been able to read it?”
“Yes, we have, Ed,” Jon replied. “It’s shorter than our lengthy book of Acts. Luke beautifully ties down all the threads he left hanging in Acts. It turns out that he faithfully stayed with Paul for the rest of his days, so it has all the eyewitness appeal of his previous writings. It begins with a precis of Paul’s trial before Nero-and the fascinating reason he had appealed to Nero in the first place-and then goes on to his acquittal-yes, his acquittal! Their voyage to Spain followed. They landed there at Valencia-Valentia in those days-where they spent fourteen months establishing a mission that not only survived but flourished.”
Heads shook in bewilderment. Looks were exchanged around the tables, until finally everyone turned toward Jon to hear if there was any more.
Jon resumed. “From there we have something of a fourth missionary journey, when Paul and Luke sailed first to Sicily and then on to Crete, where Paul ordained Titus to carry on the work there. Then it was back to Miletus and Ephesus, where Timothy rejoined them, Paul all the while confirming early Christians in the faith.
“Again he faced opposition in Ephesus-why in the world couldn’t he have stayed out of that trouble spot?-but this time a human glob of scum named Alexander the Coppersmith got all the metalworkers in Ephesus to riot against Paul once again, as they had in Acts 19. But this turned out to be a dangerous embarrassment to the Roman governor of Asia because Nero was just across the Aegean at the time, giving his infamous concert tour of Greece in the year 65. So Paul was quickly arrested and shipped off to Rome again, where he was imprisoned for the second time.
“This time, though, Paul was in mortal danger because the Great Fire of Rome had broken out the year before, for which Nero blamed the Christians to save his own hide. Now they were outlawed. And now Paul stood trial again, not before Nero-who was still singing his recitals in Greece, if you can believe it-but before Nero’s man Helius, who condemned Paul to death. And yes, he was indeed taken out on the Ostian Way and executed about a mile outside the Ostian Gate-where the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls stands today. Constantine was right on target when he built the original basilica where he did.
“Well, that was a long speech, but I wanted to hit the high points of what’s in Second Acts.”
Dead silence continued until Katrina Vandersteen put her head down on the conference table and broke out sobbing. Others also had tears either in their eyes or coursing down their cheeks, so strong were the emotional currents swirling through the room on that memorable day. Jon, however, knew there were two reasons for Vandersteen’s tears; she had just completed a commentary on the Book of Acts and sent it off to her publisher, but now it had become virtually obsolete.
A pall of shock continued to shroud the conference. It was like breaking the news to Bartholomew II all over
