Skeleton 03 - The Constantine Codex (48 page)

Soon other beneficiaries included an Endowment for Christian-Jewish Dialogue and an Endowment for Christian-Muslim Dialogue. The list eventually ran to seven pages.

Abbas al-Rashid and Jon remained in close touch. Abbas’s commencement address at al-Azhar University, “Freedom for Truth,” was widely published in tract form throughout the Islamic world, provoking the ire of the orthodox but kindling a powerful response among moderate Muslims everywhere. Some were calling Abbas the long-awaited Muslim Martin Luther for championing the cause of reform in Islam. Too long the moderate Muslim majority had failed to speak out. Whether their long silence had been prompted by fear of the jihadists or general passivity, they now became far more vocal through such moderate organizations as the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, headed by Dr. Zuhdi Jasser. An American version of Abbas al-Rashid, Jasser and his colleagues vigorously opposed extremism in Islam in all its forms.

A European counterpart surfaced to oppose the fiery rhetoric of the radical mullahs who were trying to hijack Islam. In March 2010, Tahir ul-Qadri, a Pakistani sheikh in London, had issued a public declaration declaring that terrorists were the very
enemies
of Islam and that suicide bombers were destined not for heaven but for hell. Abbas included his statement in tracts that were published in the hundreds of thousands and dropped over Taliban strongholds in Afghanistan and al-Qaeda camps in Pakistan and elsewhere. Some of the tracts were released from helium balloons floating over their targets, and they had a surprising impact. Double agents told of heated discussions now taking place in jihadist camps, recruits no longer satisfied with their instructors’ calls for violence.

The tracts quoted the Qur’an as prohibiting attacks against the innocent (Sura 5:32) and against suicide in both the Qur’an (Sura 4:29) and the hadith (Bukhari 23:446). They concluded with the warning:

Remember, you are being deluded by false teachers into committing

murder against the innocent and against your own selves.

This violates the very heart of Islam.

Thinking for themselves, many Muslim youth started abandoning terrorist cells. As an overlooked communication device, the lowly tract was accomplishing big results.

Having escaped American justice, Osman al-Ghazali had pleaded with his wife and daughter to join him in Cairo. But they were genuine converts to Christianity and were perfectly horrified to learn of his role as Judas Iscariot. Osman promised that they could remain Christian and attend the Coptic Cathedral in Cairo, where Christian Pope Shenouda III was in charge.

They countered with what they thought a far better plan: Osman must, instead, return to the States, sincerely repent of his crime, and suffer whatever civil or criminal consequences were necessary. In view of the horror stories regarding American women moving to the Middle East only to learn that the husbands they had trusted were now misogynist tyrants operating under sharia law, their response was inevitable.

When Osman refused their terms, Fatima al-Ghazali was granted a civil divorce by the Massachusetts courts on the basis of desertion. She later wrote a bestselling exposé, titled
Women Victims of Islam
. Needless to say, it was banned in Baghdad and throughout the Middle East.

Some months after Osman arrived in Egypt, he had business in Istanbul and used the occasion to visit the radical cadre that had engineered the theft of the Constantine Codex. He called the cell members “greedy, stupid swine” for trying to get a ransom for the codex instead of destroying it, as he had specified. He even suggested that they rename their group “Idiots for Islam” for having blown his master plan out of the water. It seems they didn’t like to be called such nasty names, so they pounded Osman bloody. He emerged with a broken nose that never healed properly, and he spent his days in a low-paying job as translator at Cairo University Library, a lonely man bitter at the world, bitter even at Allah.

For Jon, Shannon, and the ICO, as the months rolled on, the royalties rolled in. The charity list lengthened. A generous sector of their largesse, however, would always be devoted to the purposes for which the ICO was founded: to expand knowledge of the biblical world in general, the origins of Christianity in particular. Spending their massive sums turned out to be a true chore for the ICO, but a welcome one. In time, however, at Jon and Shannon’s urging, the ICO surrendered its copyright of the new material in the Constantine Codex and threw it open to the world for scholarship and publication. The codex itself was finally committed to the Library of Congress for the ultimate in security, with ownership retained by the Ecumenical Patriarch.

At last, Jon and Shannon could spend more time at Cape Cod. In previous exploits, they had defended Christianity against diabolical fraud as well as a false Christ. Now they had even enhanced the credibility of its Holy Book—all in all, a rather respectable record. They could only wonder what intriguing adventures might await them in the future.

Reality Note

The first draft of this novel was completed six months before the Vatican announcement on June 28, 2009, that a probe
had
in fact been drilled through the lid of the sarcophagus at St. Paul Outside the Walls in Rome and that some purple linen and bone fragments were retrieved that dated back to the first or second century AD. The plot in this novel, then, turned out to be prophetic in imagining how the interior of the sarcophagus might be revealed. As of this date, however, the Vatican has not undertaken any further examination of the interior of the sarcophagus, especially to determine if there is a skull, attached or detached.

That Constantine the Great authorized Eusebius of Caesarea to have fifty elaborate copies of the Bible prepared for use in the early church is absolutely historical. Strangely, not one of these has been found to date, although some scholars think that the
Sinaiticus
might be one. Whether such a discovery would have included the two documents featured in this novel is not known. But it is indeed possible that either or even both might surface someday or that a biblical manuscript might be discovered that would merit inclusion in the Canon.

Such inclusion would certainly require action by an ecumenical church council. Unfortunately, however, the way any such universal council might be constituted, as set forth in this novel, is quite remote at present. The two largest components of Christendom—Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy—have not yet achieved a degree of mutual trust even to hold a joint conclave. Perhaps in decades (or centuries) to come it might indeed be possible, with Protestants participating as well.

Accordingly, the Vatican III ecumenical council referred to in this book is also fictional and first appeared in my prior novel,
More Than a Skeleton
. A council with such a name, however, might indeed take place in the future.

As for the two new biblical documents “discovered” in this novel, one should not conclude that our present Scriptures are in any way incomplete or insufficient without such addenda. They are merely what many biblical scholars would put at the top of their wish list were such a manuscript discovery to take place in fact.

Finally, the question of whether ancient texts—biblical or secular—may be copyrighted successfully is rather open, especially if the texts require some critical reconstruction. In America, the prevailing view is that such texts are in the public domain and do not have copyright protection; whereas in Europe and elsewhere, this is not necessarily the case. Several years ago, for example, the German Bible Society invoked copyright protection on the Nestle edition of the Greek New Testament, claiming that Zondervan’s New International Version translation relied too heavily (though justifiably) on the Nestle text. Yet it has not brought suit against the Grand Rapids publisher to date.

Thank you for reading these pages.

About the Author

Dr. Paul L. Maier is the Russell H. Seibert Professor of Ancient History at Western Michigan University and a much-published author of both scholarly and popular works. His novels include two historical documentaries—
Pontius Pilate
and
The Flames of Rome
—as well as 
A Skeleton in God’s Closet
, a theological thriller that became a #1 national bestseller in religious fiction when it first released. A sequel,
More Than a Skeleton
, followed in 2003.

His nonfiction works include
In the Fullness o
f
Time
, a book that correlates sacred with secular evidence from the ancient world impinging on Jesus and early Christianity;
Josephus: The Essential Works
, a new translation/commentary on writings of the first-century Jewish historian; and
Eusebius: The Church History
, a similar book on the first Christian historian. More than five million of Maier’s books are now in print in twenty languages, as well as over 250 scholarly articles and reviews in professional journals.

Dr. Maier lectures widely, appears frequently on national radio, television, and newspaper interviews, and has received numerous awards. He has also penned seven children’s books and hosted six video seminars dealing with Jesus, St. Paul, the early church, and current Christianity.

Visit his website at www.paulmaier.com.