33.

Manuscript

Wednesday, April 24 - 10:00a.m.

Rabbi Goldberg had called the newspaper to share his encounter with Mike. He had been routed to an answering machine and had left his name and number, expecting a call back, but days had passed and there had been no contact. He never expected a reporter to show up on his doorstep. Especially one that was hysterical, talking about a Catholic conspiracy.

Yet there he was, sitting in disbelief as she machine-gunned her story at him, talking faster than he thought humanly possible. She played him the tape-recorded transcript of the e-mail. She said, “It all makes perfect sense now. Father Lowry must have told the church authorities about the newspaper articles I wrote about Mike. They must have conducted their own little investigation and found out he was the real thing, a genuine Messiah, or at least close enough to be dangerous. They knew he could perform miracles and convert people to his cause, but the problem was, he wasn’t Catholic. They needed him dead because they knew he would undermine the authority of the Church. So they sent the assassin, Tony Malone, to kill him. When he failed and shot me instead, they sent that lunatic Jeremy Jenkins to Israel to assassinate him. And now they want me dead too.” By the time she reached the end of her sentence, she sounded almost hysterical. She wondered if they knew about the baby yet. It was only a matter of time before they got to Dr. Elders and found out.

Goldberg tried to calm her down. “You’re jumping to conclusions, Jennifer. Do you know how many lunatics claim to be Jesus Christ every day? The Catholic church would never have perceived Mike to be a threat. They knew no one would take him seriously. I’m sure they didn’t take him seriously. Even if they did, they wouldn’t kill him. That just isn’t the ‘Christian’ thing to do.”

“Mike definitely upset some people with his beliefs. I can write off one assassination attempt as a coincidence, but two smacks of a conspiracy.”

“Come on, Jennifer, you’re reaching. The Vatican is not in the assassination business.”

She shook her head and almost laughed at his statement. “Yes they are. Or at least they were. How many thousands of innocent women were killed at the mere accusation of witchcraft in the 1600's? Giordano Bruno was burned alive at the stake for heresy because he disagreed with the church. He died for insisting that the Earth travels around the sun, for God’s sake. How many millions of Moslems died during the Inquisition and other holy wars? Lots of people died at the hands of the so-called ‘Holy’ Catholic Church.”

“That was hundreds of years ago. This is the 21^st century. Besides, didn’t Father Lowry save Mike’s life?”

Even she knew her argument was weak. The problem must have gone deeper. She looked down at her lap, trying to focus on why. “The e-mail said that Vatican security had been breached, and they think ‘F’ and ‘T’–Farrell and Tomson–were behind it. Maybe Mike had something on them. Something dangerous. Something that threatened them.”

“Like what?” he scoffed, “What could possibly threaten them?” The idea was preposterous.

“Mike once told me he had proof that Jesus was a mortal man. I wonder if. . . ” Then she remembered the e-mail. “E-mail,” she said. That was Mike’s dying word. She looked up suddenly. “I wonder if that’s what he meant.” she said, excited. Seeing the blank look on Goldberg’s face, she explained. “I was in Mike’s apartment this morning, looking through the e-mail on his computer. One of them had a bunch of attachments that looked like photos of an old manuscript. Maybe this manuscript is related to what the Catholic Church is afraid of. I tried to copy the attachments to a floppy disk, but I ran out of room. I was only able to get one of them copied.”

At last, she was making sense. “Can I see it?”

“Sure. I couldn’t tell what it was. Maybe you’ll recognize it.” She opened her purse, fished out the floppy diskette and handed it to him.

He inserted it into his computer and clicked his mouse several times. The disk contained several chapters of Mike’s book, but only one saved e-mail attachment, so he opened it. Clicking once more on his mouse, the image appeared on the computer screen. He studied it a long time and mumbled, “Hmm.”

“Do you know what it is?” she asked hopefully.

He peered at it intently. “I’m not sure. It looks like some sort of Aramaic manuscript to me.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Aramaic is an ancient language from the Middle East. It is what most of the Bible was originally written in.”

“Can you read it?”

“No, but I know someone who can. Professor Alice Bailey. She’s a friend of mine who works in the Language Department at UNLV. She’s Nevada’s leading expert on the Aramaic language. But I still don’t think this proves a conspiracy. Even if they did kill Mike, why would they want to kill you?” the Rabbi asked her.

“Because right now Mike is just an obscure guy who did a few parlor tricks, but if my book ever gets published, he will become a martyr. People might recognize him for who he really was. The Church is hoping that by getting rid of me, Mike will be forgotten, and they’re probably right. If I die, no one will care anymore.”

Goldberg furrowed his brows and turned back to look at the computer screen. He saw the truth in her argument. Christianity was built on martyrdom. If Christ hadn’t died for his cause, he might have been forgotten; another obscure preacher and nothing more. If Apostle Paul hadn’t been martyred, he might have been forgotten too. The same goes for hundreds of other Christians who were martyred. “It figures,” he sighed, reaching for his address book. “For two thousand years they’ve been blaming us Jews for crucifying Jesus. Now when he returns, they turn around and do it themselves. We’d better find out what this document says. I’ll call Alice.”

Wednesday, April 24 - 12:00p.m.

Rabbi Goldberg drove Jennifer to the UNLV campus. They went up to Professor Bailey’s office where she was waiting inside.

“Thanks for agreeing to meet us on such short notice, Alice.”

“No problem. What’s this about an Aramaic manuscript?”

Jennifer began to explain about Mike and her newspaper articles, but she interrupted. “Oh, that Mike.” She told them about her dinner with him. Jennifer felt a small stab of jealousy. Had Mike dated her? But Bailey kept talking. “Nice guy. Very intense and hard to figure. One minute he acts like he knows nothing about the origins of early Christianity, and the next minute he’s sharing little details, just like he had been there.”

Jennifer was relieved that Bailey spoke of Mike so professionally. Clearly, Bailey was only interested in Mike from a scholarly point of view, and that made her feel a little less jealous.

Bailey asked, “Where is this document you mentioned? Can I see it?” She looked like a kid in a candy store.

Jennifer found it hard to believe that anyone could get so excited about an ancient manuscript. She handed the floppy disk to Bailey and watched as she inserted it into her computer. She clicked her mouse a few times and the document appeared on her computer screen.

“Wow,” she said. “This is awesome.”

“What does it say?” Goldberg asked, getting excited despite his reservations.

Her finger ran across the computer monitor while she voiced the obscure foreign words. The only thing she said in English was, “Heavy stuff. You say Mike had this?”

“Yes, but what is it?” Jennifer demanded, starting to get impatient.

“Well, the Rabbi was right. It is Aramaic. This is a very old manuscript, first century, I’d guess. Written shortly after the death of Christ. The four Gospels in today’s Bible were all written at least eighty years after his death. The way they refer to him implies it is only a few years after his death, max.”

“What do you mean, today’s Bible? Are there others?”

“Yes. As a matter of fact, the Bible has a long history. After Christ’s death, most of his teachings were passed on by word of mouth. Most of what survived was in the form of sayings. Christ said this, Christ said that. We call those original teachings, ‘Q,’ the source of the Gospels. The problem was, nothing from ‘Q’ was written down for eighty years. After that amount of time, stories and legends built up around him and these eventually got written down into the gospels.”

“The Gospels.” Jennifer recited mechanically. “Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.”

“Actually, there were several others. The Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary, the Gospel of Truth, and others. But in 325 A.D. Roman Emperor Constantine held the first counsel of Nicea and decided which books should stay in the Bible, and which should be cut. Basically, they kept the watered-down stuff and everything else was branded heretical. Anything that encouraged self-exploration was cut. Most of the books were locked inside the vaults of the Vatican or burned–along with their owners–but a few of the faithful buried the manuscripts inside jars. That’s why we know about them today.”

Jennifer wasn’t sure she bought Professor Bailey’s explanation, but she was impressed. Bailey talked with confidence and Jennifer was pretty sure she could hold her own in the man’s world of academia. But right now she was more interested in Mike’s document. She said, “Do you think this is one of them?”

“It looks like a Gnostic text, similar to the Nag Hammadi texts. Are you familiar with it?”

Jennifer stared at her with a blank expression. Bailey pursed her lips and lowered her eyebrows in disappointment. “Christianity 101: Right after Christ died, there was only one Christian church. Its leader was James the Just, brother of Jesus and its members were all Jews. It lasted for several years until another Jesus-cult was formed by the Roman you know as the Apostle Paul. Paul’s cult was very different from the church of James. He recruited gentiles and wrapped his own beliefs around the concept that Jesus was God. Eventually, he undermined the authority of James and his cult grew bigger while James’ church grew weaker. After Paul’s death, there was infighting and the church split up.”

Jennifer said, “Typical. Men.”

Bailey smiled. She was growing fond of her. “There were actually several splits from the original church, such as the early split between the Catholics and the Orthodox church. One of the early splits was the Gnostics. They had their own doctrines, their own gospels and their own stories about what Christ said and did. The Gnostics weren’t sexist like the Catholics either, by the way, but that’s another story.” She winked at Jennifer, who smiled her approval.

Bailey continued. “Back then, Christians were persecuted by Rome and paper was expensive, so these documents were treasured by the faithful who hid them. One example of this is the Dead Sea Scrolls found in caves near Qumran. You have heard of them, haven’t you? Well, anyway, this document of yours appears to be one of those early Christian texts. It seems to be the secret Gospel of Jesus Barabbas, the man who was set free by Pontius Pilate.”

“That’s all very well and good, but would the Catholic Church be threatened by it?”

“Yes, they most certainly would be threatened. If it’s genuine.” She was skeptical. After all her years of study, she considered the possibility that the document was a hoax, but she didn’t say anything.

“Why? What does it say?”

“It talks about the location of where Christ’s body is buried.”

Jennifer’s eyes widened as the lightbulb went on in her head. “The Catholic Church teaches that Christ rose from the dead and ascended into heaven. If Christ’s body was found, there goes the foundation of the Catholic Church. The whole thing could crumble. Mike told me he had proof that Christ had been an ordinary man, but I had no idea. This could prove he was right.”

“Exactly.” Bailey looked at her. “The Church has already been plagued by lawsuits and sex scandals. People are already losing faith in them.”

A puzzled look crossed her face. “But Christ was seen by his disciples after his death.”

“There are different theories about that. Some religious scholars think Barabbas impersonated Christ after his death.”

“Okay, so Jesus died. Barabbas pretended to be him long enough to wow the disciples, but not long enough for them to catch on. Then he wrote this. It sounds like a confession of the guy who wrote this, not a gospel. So where does it say the body is?”

“It doesn’t. This is just a fragment. It actually says very little. We need the rest of the manuscript.”

Jennifer looked at Goldberg. “Do you believe now that they wanted Mike dead? They knew he was onto something.”

Goldberg asked, “So where did you say he got the text?”

“It was in his e-mail. It said something about the ‘VCDB.’ Does that make any sense to you, Alice?”

Bailey was excited. “Hacker talk. It probably means Vatican City Database. These manuscripts probably came from the vaults of the Vatican. They harbor a trove of ancient controversial documents under lock and key. Do you have more fragments like this?”

“Sure. A lot of them. On Mike’s computer.”

“I need to get a copy of those attachments. This could change our entire views of the early Church. Scholars will be arguing and debating this one for years.”

Jennifer said, “Plus, once it’s out in the open, the Catholic Church will have to come clean about its sordid past. I’ll let you have the documents on one condition. After you translate the text, I get to use it in my book.”

“Agreed.”

“All right, let’s go get that computer.” Goldberg said. “I’ll drive.”

“Once we get the computer, then what?”

Bailey said, “Then we have to copy those documents to my computer for analysis.”

“We’ll need a lot more floppy disks.”

“Forget the floppies. It’s too much data. I’ll just do a hard-disk to hard-disk copy then I can burn them onto CD-ROMs.” They started at her with vacant eyes and she knew the two of them put together couldn’t tell a CPU from a hard drive. Her worst nightmare was that the two computer ignoramuses would somehow botch it and erase the manuscript by accident. She couldn’t take that risk. “I tell you what. I’ll do it.” They smiled their approval.

Excerpt from The Gospel According to Mike

He said, “Only a fool takes life seriously, bemoaning its every painful twist and turn. A wise person sees her childhood, teen years, adulthood, old age–even life, death and suffering–as a fleeting drama; all are actors performing in a play. The fool identifies with the drama and thus is miserable. And if he does a poor job of acting, he will be condemned to do re-takes until he gets the part right. The wise person walks through life unattached and nonchalant. She sees the drama as vastly entertaining, and thus takes nothing seriously.”