Skeleton 03 - The Constantine Codex (43 page)

Ordinarily, Jon would have told him to skip such peripheral details, but now he savored every syllable.

“Anyway, Jim dumped his waste at the landfill in North Andover—oh, it’s about twenty miles from Harvard Square—and I’ll tell you what we’ve done. We’ve cordoned off the area in the landfill where our trucks discharged yesterday, and we’re dumping elsewhere while we
try
to find that big book you told us about.”

“Thank you. Thank you ever so much,” Jon said.

“Again, though, I hate to tell you, it’s going to be a downright miracle if we find it. And even if we do, three thousand pounds of pressure probably crushed that Kotex thing . . .”

“That’s ‘codex,’” Jon advised.

“Fine. Codex. But it was probably crushed into pulp.”

Jon winced. The statement was true enough. “Just try, please,
try
. I’ll be driving out to the landfill to help you look.”

“Well, I don’t think . . . Hold it, on the other hand, it’d be helpful to know exactly what we’re looking for.”

“I’ll be there at eleven, with photographs of the codex.”

For the next two hours, he and Shannon called the secretaries of all departments with offices at or near Harvard Yard with a question that must have seemed quite ridiculous: “What sort of waste did your department discard yesterday?” Of course, there was a quick follow-up to explain the context of that inane query. Clearly grasping at straws, Jon was trying to see if some marker might not be found within all the tons of waste.

But there seemed to be nothing at all unusual. Most of the waste mentioned consisted of cardboard mailers for books sent to professors by publishers in hopes of adoption, interdepartmental communications, intradepartmental memos, book catalogs, advertisements, and the like—nothing with real value as a marker.

One slight glimmer of hope came from the economics department. The secretary there reported that they had discarded about three years’ worth of unclaimed examination blue books the previous day. But could they serve as a marker? Doubtful.

By late morning, Jon, Shannon, and Marylou had raced up Highway 193 to the North Andover landfill, where they were obliged to put on yellow hard hats. Jon passed out photographs of the codex to the dozen or so in the search party that Waste Management was kind enough to supply, all armed with picks to try to pry apart the great, caked slabs of waste. With enormous good fortune, the huge bulldozer that further compacted the slabs of waste by traveling back and forth over them had not yet accomplished that task, or the search would have been fruitless even to attempt. The dozer and all Waste Management trucks were discharging at least a hundred yards away from the zone management had marked off. Jim Peabody, the driver of truck number 68, had shown them approximately where he had dumped his load—to the best of his recall—and was now one of the search party.

But it seemed to be a futile effort. Slab after slab was picked apart, only to disgorge everything from orange peels to coffee grounds to flattened tufts of used Kleenex. By midafternoon, despair started setting in. Jon, returning to Plan B, wondered if the world would have to be satisfied with mere copies of the codex. After all, they did have copies of its every word, so that was at least something.

Yet another part of his mind was telling him,
It is humanly possible to examine every last piece of garbage in this sector. Yes, it could take weeks. Yes, it would be enormously expensive. But it
can
be done.

He was ready to draw up a formal request that exactly this be done when he noticed a thin vein of light blue in one of the untouched slabs. Well, the Department of Economics
was
near his office, so why not let that vein be the blue-book marker he was seeking. Gently he picked into that slab, and it generously fell apart for him. They were blue books indeed. Student names were written on them, of course, and the department listed on each cover was “Econ.”

Another vein of cardboard framed them off, then a vein of Styrofoam packing. Jon pried the packing material apart and found . . . the codex. Mercifully, it had been wedged between sheets of protective Styrofoam. In worshipful awe, Jon meticulously disengaged it from its whitish shroud and opened it with tender care. Only a few pages had been detached from their sewn binding by the compacting pressure, but they were still there, nestled underneath the ancient leather cover now embedded with flakes of Styrofoam. The thin board inside had been cracked, but with no apparent damage to the pages of vellum. Only the coverless last page of Revelation had been torn and damaged, though not beyond hope of restoration.

Jon knelt down on the heap of garbage in the North Andover landfill and gave thanks to God.

As miraculous as it was to find the codex in the landfill, Jon thought an even greater wonder was the fact that—with a considerable number now in the know—there had been no real leaks to the media about their astonishing manuscript discovery. Now, however, it was time—high time—to tell the world.

The Ecumenical Patriarch and his party flew in from Istanbul for another visit to New York, where he would have the privilege of making the initial public announcement. His venue would be the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Manhattan. Several weeks earlier, Jon had sent out invitations to the most significant religious bodies and media outlets across the world “to attend a press conference in New York at which a significant biblical manuscript discovery will be announced.” He intentionally underplayed the language in his letter for purposes of security, although by now he was developing something of a track record for issuing bland invitations that led to extraordinary announcements.

Kevin Sullivan arrived from Rome with seven cardinals in tow, including Augustin Buchbinder, the Vatican secretary of state. Kevin confided to Jon that Pope Benedict XVI would have loved to come himself, but in Christian concern, he did not want to risk upstaging the Ecumenical Patriarch. Nevertheless, he could not contain his joy that the codex had been found again and implored divine blessing on its reception.

Many of the major religious bodies in America and beyond were allowed four representatives each—including Jews and Muslims—but no political leaders were invited, intentionally so. Seats along one side of the cathedral were reserved for the newspaper and magazine media, as well as the radio and television networks. When Anderson Cooper of CNN arrived, he looked at the forest of TV cameras and commented, “Well, they’re all here—even Kol Israel and Al Jazeera—though I haven’t come across Radio Nepal, yet.”

Before arriving at the cathedral, Jon had put in a busy early morning, making good on his you’ll-be-the-first-to-know promises by putting in calls to all the curious crucial experts who had aided them. All now readily understood the reason for his previous silence.

At 10:06 a.m. on announcement day, the dean of Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Cathedral stood before a thicket of microphones and said, “We welcome you all in the name of the Lord, distinguished ladies and gentlemen. It is my great honor to introduce to you His All Holiness Bartholomew II, Archbishop Patriarch of Constantinople, New Rome and Ecumenical Patriarch.”

Bartholomew stood to enthusiastic applause that he tried to terminate by holding up his arms. At last he succeeded. His clear baritone resonated across the cathedral as he gave the Trinitarian invocation in Greek: “
Eis to onoma tou Patros, kai tou Huios, kai tou Hagiou Pneumatos.
Amen! But since some of you may not know Greek, I shall continue in English.”

Ripples of laughter erupted. The audience was now his.

“For centuries, the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople—many of you may know the city as Istanbul—possessed a literary treasure of immense significance for Christians everywhere. It is a magnificent New Testament manuscript codex, written in Greek uncial lettering that dates from the early fourth century—that is, the AD 300s—and is thus a document even earlier than the great
Codex Sinaiticus
in the British Library, which, up to now, has been the most important of the earliest versions of the Bible. But more. This newly discovered codex is also one of the fifty copies of the Holy Scriptures that the Emperor Constantine commissioned Eusebius, the church historian, to prepare for distribution across Constantinople and elsewhere. Scholars have long searched for one of these codices, but without success. Now, I am privileged to announce, the lost has been found.”

Vast waves of applause splashed across the sanctuary and even some unliturgical whistling and cheering.

Bartholomew continued. “This precious document we have officially named the
Codex Constantinianus
, but you may simply call it the Constantine Codex. It lies before you on the pedestal to my left, and it is open to the Resurrection account in the last chapter of the Gospel according to St. Mark, chapter 16. After this conference, you may view it briefly in an inspection line, but kindly do not try to touch it in any way. Guards will assist you in this request.

“The codex was discovered by Professor Jonathan and Mrs. Shannon Weber of Harvard University and the Institute of Christian Origins. I am deeply embarrassed to report that the codex was not recovered from our library or archives, but from a room at our patriarchate devoted to manuscript repair and storage. The entire Christian world is in your debt, Professor and Mrs. Weber. Dr. Weber will now provide some extraordinary additional information regarding the codex.”

As Jon walked to the microphone, nothing less than a standing ovation greeted him, and a raucous one at that, complete with cheers and whistling—in a cathedral, no less. He’d wanted Shannon to have this honor—after all, she had really discovered the codex—but she had demurred. “You’re much better at public speaking than I,” she’d said, needlessly buttering him up.

When silence finally fell, Jon looked to the patriarch and began. “Thank you, Your All Holiness. Without your magnificent cooperation, none of this would be possible. I must now tell you, distinguished ladies and gentlemen, of two additional discoveries
in
the text of the Constantine Codex that some will greet with shock, others with disbelief, and still others with exuberant joy. I would remind the press that all this material will be available in press releases in the narthex after our conference. These have been translated into the ten most widely used languages in the world, identified by an appropriate sign over each stack.

“The first discovery lies before you. If you file by the codex, you will notice that there is
more
text regarding the resurrection of Jesus at the close of Mark 16 than the traditional last verse you find in all your Bibles. And here, please, understand that the text we do find after chapter 16, verse 8, in your Bibles was added later. The Constantine Codex, however, preserves
the original ending that Mark actually wrote
. It not only accords perfectly with the other Resurrection accounts in the Gospels, but also helps explain their variations.”

Stunned shock seemed to vacuum all life out of the cathedral, until a veritable explosion of response replaced that void. Shouting, laughing, and cascades of applause reechoed across the cavernous expanse of the cathedral from the sector where the churchmen were sitting. They knew well enough that the broken ending of Mark’s Gospel was one of the greatest problems in New Testament scholarship. Non-Christians, in fact, used it as one of their prime arguments against the Resurrection. But at last, Jon was happy to announce, the problem was solved.

When quiet returned, Jon reported the other “surprise” in the discovery of Second Acts. The vast assembly sat in stunned silence as he sketched its contents: Paul’s trial before Nero, his trip to Spain and subsequent journeys, and finally his martyrdom at Rome. This time the mood of the audience was one of profound awe rather than the raucous elation over Mark’s Gospel. Clearly they were equally thrilled, but totally unprepared for the profound implications of a missing book of the Bible being found. But then a din of discussion seemed to well up from each pew, as church leaders and scholars started putting the pieces together and understanding, for the first time, why Luke ended the book of Acts as abruptly as he did in chapter 28.