The nails drew the most attention, but required little explanation. The two men must have been thinking exactly what she did the first time she saw them: what it would have been like to be impaled by them.
Charlotte expanded on the significance of the coins. Surprisingly, neither Santelli nor Donovan had yet to raise a question. Did they already know about these things? Had that bastard Conte been updating them with the findings from his spying? Trying to shake away her suspicions, she informed them that the cylinder contained a scroll that had yet to be studied. This particular relic had once again managed to hold Father Donovan’s attention for some time.
“We submitted a bone sample and some wood splinters for radiocarbon dating.” She passed across two copies of the dating certificates Ciardini had sent over. “As you can see, both samples date to the early first century. The wood turns out to be a rare walnut indigenous to ancient Judea. Organic material from flowers used during the burial ritual and flax were also found inside the ossuary. Again, both are specific to Judea.” She flipped open more images and data.
“Why flax, Dr. Hennesey?” Donovan asked.
“Most likely from the linen strips and shroud used to wrap the body during the burial ritual.” She paused. “Dr. Bersei performed a microscopic analysis of the ossuary’s patina.”
She moved on to images revealing the varying degrees of magnification applied to the stone’s surface.
“And the biological composition was uniform throughout the sample set. Plus the mineral content of the patina is consistent with similar relics found in caves throughout that region. More importantly, no signs of manual manipulation were detected.”
“I’m sorry, but what does that last point mean?” the Cardinal inquired.
“Simply that it’s not a fake—the patina hasn’t been artificially created by modern chemical methods. And it implies that the ossuary and its markings are authentic.” But you probably already know that, she thought. She brought up the 3-D skeletal imaging and swiveled the laptop toward them. “Scanning the skeleton, we calibrated the specimen’s muscle mass.” Working the mouse, she brought up the digitized, bloodred musculature, allowed them both a few seconds to absorb the image, then clicked a command to assign the monochrome “skin.” “By incorporating the basic genetic profile found in the specimen’s DNA we reconstructed this man’s appearance at the time of death. And here he is.”
She tapped the mouse button and the screen refreshed—pigmented skin, eyes alive with color, the hair dark and full.
Both men were astounded.
“That’s absolutely...extraordinary,” Santelli muttered.
So far, neither the cardinal nor the priest was letting on about whether they had any advance knowledge of the skeleton’s identity or the ossuary’s origin. As they studied the image, she eyed both of them in turn. Could these two clerics possibly be involved in a theft that had left people dead? “Lastly, Dr. Bersei was able to decipher the meaning behind this symbol carved onto the side of the box.” She was confident this next exhibit would elicit a reaction. She held up a close-up photo clearly showing the dolphin wrapped around a trident, and explained the significance of each symbol taken separately. “The fusing of these two pagan symbols was how firstcentury Christians represented...Jesus Christ.”
Santelli and Donovan exchanged uneasy glances.
Mission accomplished, Charlotte thought.
Silence fell over the room.
56
******
Cardinal Santelli was the first to break the atmosphere. “Are you telling us, Dr. Hennesey, that you believe these are the mortal remains of Jesus Christ?”
Though she instinctively liked it when people got to the point, this was more than she’d bargained for. Swallowing hard, Charlotte felt a bolt of energy shoot through her system—fight or flight. She actually had to temper the urge to look toward the open door.
Now she was glad that before leaving the Domus that morning, she had put in an hour’s reading of a book that was always readily available. In the drawer of the nightstand, in fact. If the report was going to even remotely suggest that these bones might have been those of Jesus Christ, doublechecking related parts of the New Testament was prudent.
“At face value,” she began, “the evidence is compelling. But there are discrepancies in the pathology report and contradictions to accounts in the Bible. For example, we found no evidence that a spear was thrust into the rib cage as the Bible states. And this man’s knees were broken.” She went on to detail how the Romans speeded up death with a metal club.
Father Donovan’s attention wandered momentarily as he thought about this anticipated inconsistency. He knew Charlotte was referring to the Gospel of John, verse nineteen, which stated that a Roman centurion pierced Jesus’s side with a spear to help expedite his agonizing death:
So the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first man and of the other one who had been crucified with Him. When they came to Jesus, they did not break His legs since they saw that He was already dead.
Donovan always mused that two lines included in that passage—thirty-six and thirty-seven—actually concisely explained the incongruent account:
...For these things happened so that the Scripture would be fulfilled: Not one of His bones will be broken. Also, another Scripture says: They will look at the One they pierced.
Interestingly, none of the synoptic Gospels—Matthew, Mark, or Luke— made mention of this event. Donovan could only surmise that the Gospel of John included this embellished account to convince Jews that Jesus had been the true Messiah foretold by Old Testament prophets—“so that Scripture would be fulfilled.” He was certain that the skeleton laid out in the Vatican Museum was actually telling the truth: Pontius Pilate and the Romans had treated Jesus just like every other faceless criminal that threatened the empire’s social order. They had ruthlessly annihilated him and when he wasn’t dying quickly enough, they had smashed his knees to speed up the process.
Charlotte forged on. “I’m sure you’re far more aware than I am about what the Bible says about Jesus’s occupation before his ministry.”
Donovan played along with this. “He’d been a carpenter since boyhood.” In fact, the Bible never made explicit reference to Christ’s occupation. Jesus was thought to have been a carpenter merely because the Gospel of Matthew referred to him as “the carpenter’s son.” It was assumed he would have been employed in the family business—even though Matthew’s Greek word, “tektonov”—loosely translated as “carpenter”— really could have applied to anyone who had worked with their hands, from builders to day laborers to farmers.
