Skeleton 03 - The Constantine Codex (19 page)

“So this could be the real thing, Jon?”

He slowly shook his head. “I’d hate to be premature, but yes, it could well be.” He broke into a great smile. “It’s well known that Constantine had commissioned Eusebius to prepare fifty elegant copies of Scripture, but none of them has ever been found. And just look at the layout: four handsome columns of beautiful Greek lettering on each page of vellum, just like the
Codex Sinaiticus
, which dates only a bit later.”

Jon paged further in growing excitement. “Aside from the
Sinaiticus
, we have only two other codices from that time: the
Vaticanus
and the
Alexandrinus
. This is . . . this could be . . . well, I’m not given to superlatives. Let’s just say that this might be a . . . a simply stupendous find. Depending on what the text says, this could . . . well, it could be a discovery far more important than even the Dead Sea Scrolls! How in the world, Shannon, do you have such off-the-wall great luck, such over-the-top serendipity, that—?”

“Oh, Professor Weber,” said Brother Gregorios, who had just appeared in the doorway, “have you seen enough of our tattered collection?”

“Yes, thank you, good brother.” Then he whispered to Shannon, “Just put this back exactly where you found it.”

On the way back to the hotel, Jon unpacked his strategy. “We had no time to get into the text, Shannon, so telling anyone there what we found would have been totally premature. And foolish! If the thing
is
authentic—and how in the world could it
not
be?—it will stun the entire scholarly world. Report it too early, and it would become a cause célèbre and complicate any evaluation. We could even be denied further access to it.” If Jon had one questionable habit, it was his proclivity to overexplain things to people, born of many years’ teaching university undergrads, who, in fact, needed his careful reiteration of what might have seemed obvious.

The moment they returned to the Hilton, Jon headed for his laptop, found the folder on the early church fathers, and opened a work by Eusebius called
Vita Constantini
—
The Life of Constantine
. He paged through the document until he came to chapters 36 and 37, where he read aloud, for Shannon’s benefit, the dated though colorful translation from
The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church
. It began with Eusebius’s transcription of Constantine’s own letter, written from Constantinople to Eusebius in Caesarea.

VICTOR CONSTANTINUS, MAXIMUS AUGUSTUS

to Eusebius,

It happens, through the favoring providence of God, our Savior, that great numbers have united themselves to the most holy church in the city which is called by my name. It seems, therefore, highly requisite, since that city is rapidly advancing in prosperity in all other respects, that the number of churches should also be increased. Do you, therefore, receive with all readiness my determination on this behalf. I have thought it expedient to instruct your Prudence to order fifty copies of the sacred Scriptures, the provision and use of which you know to be most needful for the instruction of the Church, to be written on prepared parchment in a legible manner, and in a convenient, portable form, by professional transcribers thoroughly practiced in their art.

The procurator of the diocese has also received instructions by letter from our Clemency to be careful to furnish all things necessary for the preparation of such copies; and it will be for you to take special care that they be completed with as little delay as possible. You have authority also, in virtue of this letter, to use two of the public carriages for their conveyance, by which arrangement the copies when fairly written will most easily be forwarded for my personal inspection; and one of the deacons of your church may be entrusted with this service, who, on his arrival here, shall experience my liberality. God preserve you, beloved brother.

Jon looked up from the screen in jubilation. “What you found was written on parchment, Shannon. You found one of the fifty. Scholars have been looking for that edition since the early centuries of the church!”

“Yes, but don’t the ‘Scriptures’ ordered by Constantine include the Old Testament? I just found the New.”

“Well, they were supposed to be portable, so they were most likely in two volumes, exactly as the title ‘Book Two’ implies. Anyhow, in the next lines, Eusebius tells how he responded to the emperor’s letter.”

Such were the emperor’s commands, which were followed by the immediate execution of the work itself, which we sent him in magnificent and elaborately bound volumes of a threefold and fourfold form. This fact is attested by another letter, which the emperor wrote in acknowledgment. . . .

“‘Threefold and fourfold form’? Whatever can that mean?” Jon wondered.

“Maybe three or four columns of writing per page?” Shannon suggested.

“Why not? Excellent, Shannon! What we saw were four columns per page, and remember how carefully the calfskin cover had originally been tooled? That’s it! That’s one of them!”

Shannon smiled, but her reserve showed that she wasn’t quite ready to celebrate. She shook her head and asked, “But why would they put something so incredibly valuable as that in their junk room?”

“Well, who knows when it landed there? We’ll try to find out. But probably they did it for some stupidly simple reason, such as a missing back cover. That room was full of mangled books.”

“Okay, Jon, let your mind roam. What, finally, is the ‘world-shaking’ importance here? Might it not be simply an early edition of the New Testament that we all know? And if so, what’s the big deal?”

“You know the rule, Shannon: the earlier, the more authoritative. The Bible has come down to us with thousands of tiny variations. None of them amount to a hill of beans, despite sensationalizing claims to the contrary. But now textual scholars will have a tremendous new source to work with in getting us the best possible reading of what the biblical writers actually wrote. And who knows what else we might find in the text? For openers, even issues regarding the Canon come into play here: what books are included in that early New Testament, and which are left out?”

Shannon quickly found Jon’s enthusiasm contagious and said, in a beaming smile, “I bet you’ll have trouble sleeping tonight!”

“You bet, and for the next two nights, my darling, since the debate is tomorrow. But after that, I’m loading up our cameras with freshly charged batteries to photograph every last inch of that incredible document.”

In a great bound, Jon now leaped to the mini fridge in their suite, hauled out a bottle of Dom Pérignon, popped the cork, and filled two glasses with bubbly. “I know this is too traditional, sweetheart, but . . . a toast to Shannon Jennings Weber, amazing archaeologist, scintillating scholar, dauntless discoverer of precious codices, and magnificent mate! By the way, we’ll both have trouble sleeping tonight!”

The night before the debate was indeed rather sleepless for Jon, and not only because he and Shannon were celebrating God’s magnificent gift of marital love—itself a proof of his existence. He was also chagrined to realize that instead of fighting nervous concern over the forthcoming debate, his mind was focused on the ancient codex Shannon had discovered. It was almost as if he had told himself, “Let’s get this debate thing out of the way so I can finally
read
what’s in that document!”

Now, on the sun-drenched morning of September 3, while their motorcade wound its way to Hagia Sophia, he came to his senses. How selfish, how very solipsistic could he get? Millions across the world would be watching the debate—either live or later on DVD, and over the next hours he had to defend the faith as best he could rather than fixate on a dilapidated manuscript. The Crusaders were unable to succeed militarily against Islam eight centuries in the past; was he, perhaps, supposed to try making up for that intellectually? Then again, he was glad he had not ventilated such wild thoughts to Shannon, for she would have replied, “The faith will survive nicely without your success or failure, dear!” Shannon was God’s gift to Jon for many reasons, not least of which was to keep her husband humble. As the magnitude of the event finally registered with Jon, he wondered why it had taken him so long to invoke divine help. Although he was not in a private oratory but in the midst of urban bedlam, he offered up the most earnest silent prayer of his life.

It was difficult for them to get inside the basilica, since it was surrounded by a host of humanity even an hour before the debate was to begin at 9:30 a.m. The lovely park that extended between Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque several blocks to the west had turned into a temporary parking lot for television and communications vans, each sprouting relay dishes aimed toward their counterparts outside the western upper gallery of the basilica.

Surrounded by Turkish gendarmes, Jon’s party made its way through the small west portal into Hagia Sophia. Overhead inside the passageway they saw a magnificent, semicircular mosaic of Constantine offering the city of Constantinople to the Virgin Mother and Jesus. To the right was Justinian, offering Hagia Sophia to the same pair—all against a gleaming background of golden mosaic. Jon offered up another quick prayer to the Christ who received these gifts to bless the debate.

Inside, they walked down a side aisle, under the vast dome overhead, and toward a dais erected at the southern end of the sanctuary. Several times Jon stopped at a given row, exchanging a glad hello with a friend from the States who had made the long trip to Istanbul. Shannon, in fact, had to shoo him on several times.

On the eastern side of the sanctuary, Abbas al-Rashid and his party were approaching the dais. It was the first time Jon had seen his debate partner in the flesh, but he answered well to the many photographs he had seen of the sheikh in the press and on television. He was a fair Islamic counterpart to Jon—the same solid, broad-shouldered frame, medium-tall height, and square-cut visage, but perhaps five years older and with dark hair and deep brown eyes. He was wearing a Western-style suit but with Islamic headdress, perhaps a compromise to please both extremes among his faithful seated in the eastern sector.

As they took their seats in the front row on the opposite side, Jon—almost instinctively and without forethought—got up and walked across the aisle to shake the sheikh’s hand. Abbas unleashed a broad smile and shook Jon’s hand with evident enthusiasm. Both sides of the audience erupted into applause. It was an unanticipated and pleasant touch.

At 9:33 a.m., three men emerged from somewhere in the apse and stepped up to the dais. One of them Jon had already seen emblazoned on the Turkish lira, no less than the president himself—all six feet of him and his trademark mustachioed face that resembled a latter-day Süleyman the Magnificent. He moved to a central microphone and opened in Turkish, then English: “In the name of the Republic of Turkey, it is my privilege to welcome you to Haya Sofya and this important debate between Imam Abbas al-Rashid, the grand sheikh of al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt, and Dr. Jonathan P. Weber, professor of Near Eastern studies at Harvard University in Cambridge, USA. To my right is the Muslim mufti of Istanbul, His Excellency Mustafa Selim, who will be one of the moderators, and to my left is His All Holiness Bartholomew II, the Eastern Orthodox Christian Patriarch, who is the other moderator. May Allah-God guide all our proceedings here today.”

He then stepped down from the dais.

The Muslim moderator stood and approached the microphone, directing the audience, again in three languages, to don their headgear. From now on, there would be simultaneous translations of all speakers in the agreed-upon languages of Turkish, Arabic, English, Greek, Farsi, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian, and Chinese. The appropriate language would be transmitted via Bluetooth wireless technology to all earphones mounted on the thousands of heads in the audience. The expense for this arrangement—well into six figures—was the gift of a Saudi oil magnate.