possible…”
His eyes were locked in wonderment on the codex. Nothing else existed for him at that moment.
“Are you okay, Dr. Jon?” Marylou asked.
“This is… beyond… all… belief.” Slowly he came back to life. “It shouldn’t have been sent FedEx. It shouldn’t have been sent at all, and yet here it is.”
Marylou seized the moment, opened the codex, and withdrew a letter that was inserted just under the cover. “Shall I read it to you?” she asked.
Jon was too dazed to reply, so she took it upon herself to read him the following: Dear Professor Weber: I greet you in the name of the God we both serve! I am sure that the document I have enclosed has much meaning for you and the faith you so ably represent. It was only by great fortune that I was able to obtain it. I knew nothing of your connection to this document until it arrived at al-Azhar University. It was sent from Istanbul by a radical group of jihadists in Turkey. They wrote that they had managed to take the document from the Ecumenical Patriarch at the airport in Istanbul. But they could not translate it or risk having it translated by any local Greek Orthodox Christians, so they sent it to a Greek scholar in our Department of Classical Languages here at al-Azhar for translation. That would help them know how much to ask for ransom, they wrote. They trusted this scholar- nameless, for his own security-because he was a secret member of the Muslim Brotherhood, and so a fellow jihadist-or so they imagined. In fact, he is a Muslim moderate-our own agent in their radical ranks, since we have also learned to play their game by way of defense. You should not worry about his future safety or that of his family. His role here was becoming more and more difficult, and this was his last service for us before leaving Egypt to teach elsewhere under a new identity. At first, I had planned to return the document to the Ecumenical Patriarch, but those who stole the document also mentioned your strong interest in this work, and I thought it safer to send it directly to you in America. Later, you may return it to the patriarch with proper security. I am glad to have this opportunity of being of some service to you, since I place great value on our continuing friendship. You would be more than welcome to give a presentation at al-Azhar University at any time you see fit, and I hope that our paths will indeed cross in the future. Yours, with admiration, Abbas al-Rashid Grand Sheikh
Jon shook his head. “What extraordinary nobility. Abbas has a higher standard of ethics than I’ve seen in many Christians. What a man! What a truly great man!”
Swimming in waves of elation, Jon picked up the phone and called Shannon. Her “What!” was so loud it nearly damaged his eardrum.
His next call was to Morton Dillingham. The least a good citizen could do was to save the CIA-and the federal government-any further expenses in a search that was no longer necessary. Not everything was solved, to be sure, especially the question of how the jihadist perpetrators at Istanbul learned about the codex and were able to get its dimensions right for their fake copy of the codex, but those problems could be solved later on. For now, the codex was here… present… real… and in the U.S.!
Jon’s last call was to the Ecumenical Patriarch in Istanbul, who wept for joy at the news. Before leaving his office, Jon also dictated the most cordial, most enthusiastic letter of appreciation to Abbas al-Rashid he had ever written to anyone, anywhere, at any time.
Jon determined to make short work of the authenticity tests on the codex itself. Putting on white gloves, he cut a small hanging flap of aged tan leather from the cover of the codex and inserted it into a lead-lined pouch. Then he opened the codex and turned through ten pages of Matthew’s Gospel until, on page eleven, he found a dog-ear at the upper right corner that was threatening to separate from the rest of the vellum. Carefully, he cut it free. This he also inserted into a separate pouch, then sent both via UPS Express to his friend Duncan Fraser at the radiocarbon labs of the University of Arizona in Tucson.
Fraser had helped him with crucial C-14 tests before, most recently on the leaves Shannon had brought back from Pella, so when Jon phoned to alert him to the express shipment, he seemed unsurprised.
“Since it’s you again, Jon,” Fraser commented genially, “I’ll bet your samples came from, say, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.”
“No, Duncan. Earlier.”
“Okay, how about the Magna Carta?”
“No, earlier still. But no more clues, Duncan. That wouldn’t be scientific, now, would it? You and TAMS will have to tell me the date, but do treat those samples as if they were a letter from God himself.”
“Got it.”
Under normal circumstances, Jon would have sent the codex itself to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., where another friend, Sandy McHugh, would have given it a variety of forensic tests. But Jon decided that the reverse had to happen. The scientists would have to come to Cambridge instead, so very priceless was the codex. He was simply unwilling to risk its safety again.
In fact, a parade of scientists came not only from Washington, but from other points on the compass for an extraordinary, secret conclave. Members of the ICO filed one by one to examine the precious document, as well as Daniel Wallace and his delegation from the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts. Wallace quipped that he felt like Simeon: ready to depart this life since the ultimate manuscript discovery had been made and he had seen it.
Perhaps the most colorful, yet crucial of the many imported experts was Lancaster Whimpole, curator of manuscripts for the British Library in London. Here was the man who was largely responsible not only for that library’s immense collection of papyri, but who also served as curator for the until-now greatest of all New Testament manuscripts, the Codex Sinaiticus. Whimpole was a tall, tweedy Oxonian sort who looked like James I of England, though even more slender, his teeth yellowed from years of contact with a meerschaum pipe. Whimpole did not suffer fools gladly and could detect fraud with one eye at a distance of fifty paces. Jon knew the man would have to be skeptical regarding the codex since nothing could dare rival “his” Sinaiticus.
Watching Whimpole examine the codex was an event in itself. He bent over the document like a Sherlock Holmes-with magnifying glass but without the silly cap. His gloved hands felt the texture of the cover and swept across the pages of vellum. From time to time he would stop, squint, use the magnifying glass, and then move on. He pulled out an orthography chart of Greek writing styles from the first to the fifth century AD and compared the uncial lettering for each era. He then superimposed another chart of the uncials in the Sinaiticus and nodded briefly-the first sign of any sort that his poker face or bodily mien had betrayed.
It seemed to Jon that he spent an eternity going through almost every page of the codex, again without registering any sort of response. Jon looked helplessly at Shannon, who stood beside him, just as eager for the verdict as he.
Whimpole failed to notice the Markan ending, but his eyes widened when he came to Second Acts. And they seemed to remain wider for the rest of his perusal. When he had finally finished, he stepped back, looked up, pieced his fingers together, and then said to Jon, “I hope you’ll provide more detail on how you discovered this. You gave some information in your phone call.”
“I will indeed. But what’s your impression of the codex thus far, Dr. Whimpole?”
“Well, I would call it an extremely clever fraud…”
Jon froze.
“… were I given to what you colonials call ‘practical jokes.’ But this codex is authentic. Absolutely authentic. Beyond all debate. The orthography-those beautiful uncials-are fully consistent with the Sinaiticus and other manuscripts from the fourth century. I… I must congratulate you, Professor Weber, on the manuscript find of the century-no, of the millennium. And-quite naturally-I’m also fiercely jealous of your success!”
A round of laughter was enough to transform the stiff and stodgy Brit into a fellow human being.
Two weeks later, all the material test results arrived at Jon’s Harvard office. It began with a phone call from Arizona, Duncan Fraser genially announcing, “I guess you want a pair of dates, Jon, right?”
“That would be very helpful, Duncan.”
“How about 1650, plus or minus fifty years-both samples?”
Jon’s heart plummeted. “AD 1650? You mean… you mean the vellum’s less than four centuries old?”
Fraser laughed. “I knew I’d catch you on that one! No, Jon, 1650 BP, and I don’t mean British Petroleum.”
“So, 1,650 years before the present?”
“Yes. Of course.”
Jon quickly calculated, then broke out laughing. “Perfect! Right on target! Early to mid-fourth century AD. You
