The Constantine Codex Read online

  “Hard artifacts will wait patiently until they’re uncovered-maybe decades, centuries from now-but manuscripts are impatient. In their case, we have a time factor on our hands. We discover them, or they die.”

  Shouts of “Hear, hear!” and “Right on!” accompanied much nodding among the thirty-eight world-class scholars seated around the huge conference table at the ICO headquarters on Brattle Street in Cambridge. There were twenty-six men and twelve women at that particular conclave, at least a quarter of them from Europe, Africa, and the Far East.

  “Tell them about biblical manuscripts alone, Dick,” Jon said.

  Richard Ferris was the general secretary for the Institute of Christian Origins, a lanky scholar whose crew cut seemed to remove a decade from his actual age. “Well, you all know the numbers and how our list of New Testament manuscripts has exploded across the years. For the King James translators in 1611, only six basic manuscripts were available, but by 1870, two thousand had been discovered for the Revised Version translators. Today, however, we have about 5,700 manuscripts in whole or in part. And of course, as we have to tell the public again and again, through textual research and criticism of all these manuscripts, we get more and more exact versions of what was originally written by the New Testament authors. That’s the good news.

  “But the bad news Dr. Weber has already expressed. There are more manuscripts out there, and if we don’t find them in time, the world will have lost some priceless treasures. And it’s not just discovery. Some of these manuscripts have already been ‘discovered,’ as it were, but they’ve not been photographed, cataloged, or even examined. For example, Dr. Daniel Wallace, executive director of the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts, recently sent a team to Albania to photograph ancient manuscripts in its national archive. They found no less than forty-five New Testament manuscripts that had never been photographed before-an incredible cache of documents in one of the least-likely places in the world! In fact, he estimates that maybe a thousand Greek New Testament manuscripts are still out there, yet to be discovered.” He paused to let the tidings mellow.

  Heinz von Schwendener, New Testament professor at Yale, raised his pen and added, “And I’ll bet there could be more than a thousand in the long run. Okay, my colleagues, what’s our role in all this? How can the ICO contribute?”

  “Glad you asked, Heinz,” Jon said. “In fact, I’m a little surprised that a Yalie is still awake to hear all this.”

  “It’s only you Harvards that put me to sleep, Jon.”

  Amid chuckling over the inevitable Harvard-Yale banter, Jon smiled and continued. “Here’s what I envision: an effort-hopefully an international effort-to search out every known library or archive of ancient manuscripts in the world and photograph all early un photographed biblical manuscripts contained therein. We’d then do further examination of the most ancient and important of those manuscripts as well.”

  “Sounds like a task for several lifetimes, Jon,” said Sally Humiston of Berkeley’s archaeology department, “and requiring resources far beyond ours.”

  “Exactly, Sal. I’ve been discussing this with the leadership at the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts. They’d be delighted to cooperate with us in this endeavor, and we’ve sketched the following procedure.”

  Jon switched on his PowerPoint presentation and directed his colleagues’ attention to the large screen behind him.

  “First, we must reach a consensus on the most feasible modus operandi. This would determine the dos and don’ts in terms of searching out locations of libraries and archives with ancient biblical manuscripts, how to approach the respective authorities at each and secure permissions to photograph, and the like.

  “Next, I recommend that we work up an overall comprehensive plan for the project, including the initial target collections. Then we would be ready to approach appropriate foundations for funding as well as recruiting scholars and photographic teams to do the job.”

  “But haven’t many of the collections been microfilmed already?” Brendan Rutledge wanted to know. He was Princeton’s prime theologian.

  “Yes, but many of them ought to be redone. Microfilming is really passe with our new technology. We’ll use digital photography instead, which is much better in every way. Here, check out the difference for yourselves.”

  Jon passed out photocopies that showed two views of a leaf from the fourth-century Codex Vaticanus, one of the earliest uncial biblical manuscripts. To the left was a regular microfilmed version, and to the right a digital version. There simply was no comparison. In terms of clarity, ease of decipherment, even shadings in the lettering, the latter was far superior.

  “Beyond that,” Jon continued, “at critical passages, we’ll also use multispectral imaging to check for text that’s faded, altered, or even erased. Manuscript copyists have been known to make mistakes.” A titter of laughter followed the last comment, since it seemed that nearly all ancient manuscripts had their share of errors, most of them quite minor.

  A drone of discussion followed-not in challenge or objection, Jon was delighted to note, but in affirmation and enthusiasm. Suggestions and ideas rattled off the walls; scholar candidates were suggested, names of foundations offered.

  At the close of the conference, Jon announced, “In order to practice what I preach, my wife Shannon and I want to participate in the project by targeting libraries and archives in Greece and Turkey-not all of them, obviously, but several that we think may be promising candidates. We plan to fly off just after the close of the spring semester.”

  Those, of course, were the plans before the translation catastrophe struck. Now, it seemed their summer would be grotesquely transformed from the research and travel they had planned into a sickening scenario of looking behind themselves at potential danger-imagined or real-their lives hostage to the whim of some fanatic. Curse the translation error! Curse the fanaticism that could augment a tiny publishing miscue into world riots and bloodshed!

  Some relief, however, came swiftly. The American and Canadian television networks had announced the error in translation earlier, and the BBC, Deutsche Welle, and the French, Italian, and Spanish networks soon followed. Jon and Shannon were greatly heartened when the ghastly riots on their TV were replaced by interviews with spokesmen for Islamic councils in the western European countries who announced that this had all been a mistake after all, that Professor Weber had apologized for it, and that the offending effigies and signs had now been removed.

  “But I didn’t ‘apologize’ for it,” Jon objected. “I regretted it. There’s a difference.”

  “Half a loaf is better than none, Jon,” Shannon reminded him.

  Jon nodded slowly. “At this point I should be grateful for small favors. But why hasn’t Al Jazeera come clean on this? That’s the most-watched TV network in Muslim countries, so for their world, I’m still a blasphemous villain.”

  But it was Al Jazeera that might rescue their summer after all-not intentionally, of course-and television rivalry seemed partially responsible. The Abu Dhabi television channel in the United Arab Emirates broke the news on the translation error to the Arab world, and Qatar Television immediately followed suit. Rather than be upstaged, Al Jazeera, perhaps in compensation for its late coverage, did an entire half-hour special on the typographical error in Jon’s book and how it had happened. They even had footage of the typesetter at his computer inside the editorial offices of the Cairo publisher, who blamed Osman al-Ghazali for the error, followed by footage of Osman in Cambridge blaming the typesetter. The program concluded with close-ups of the corrected text in the second printing of Jon’s book. Islam was now the greatest challenge to Christianity, not the greatest evil.

  Sunni Muslims across the Islamic world-that broad band of latitude from Morocco to Indonesia-soon responded, almost with pride, at the corrected reading that showed their powerful counterpoise to Christianity. Still, Jon was hardly home free. The Shiites were silent. Although they r
epresented only 16 percent of world Islam, it was the Shiite clergy in Iran who had placed the fatwa on his head. That fatwa had not been lifted.

  Jon discussed the matter with Osman. They had been in continual phone contact over the past two days. Predictably, the translator took some credit for Al Jazeera’s finally announcing the error, but he also took the wind out of his own sails by confiding his surmise as to their delay.

  By dragging their feet in announcing the error-cum-correction, he told Jon, the Sunni Al Jazeera got the Shiites to make fools of themselves with their instant fatwa. “There’s just no end to the rivalry between Sunnis and Shiites.”

  “You really think the grand ayatollah and his Iranian clergy are embarrassed by the fatwa?” Jon asked.

  “Not embarrassed. More like mortified, I’m sure. In fact, I’ll bet that they’ll never even mention this again.”

  “What! Not even to lift the fatwa?”

  “Probably not. That would look like they’d made a mistake. And of course, they did! But it’s the same reason Rushdie’s fatwa was never lifted.”

  “So I have to live the rest of my life with this hanging over my head?”

  “Welcome to the club, Jon. Since I converted from Islam to Christianity, I’d also face a sentence of death in almost any Muslim country if I returned. But I think you can put away the worry beads. Salman Rushdie lives, as you may have noticed, and I understand that VOA and Al Arabiya have also been giving full coverage to the truth in their Farsi broadcasts. Truth will win, even in Iran.”

  Jon was neither entirely convinced nor consoled.

  A week later, something happened that shocked not only Jon and Shannon, but much of the Western world as well. It was a very pleasant shock. Sheikh Abbas al-Rashid-probably the most influential Muslim theologian in the world-came down on Jon’s side. Al-Rashid was the grand sheikh and imam at al-Azhar Mosque and University in Cairo, the number one Islamic theological school and the oldest university in the world. Before giving the commencement address at al-Azhar, he had alerted Al Jazeera, as well as network reporters and stringers from other nations, that they might find his remarks rather more newsworthy than was usually the case for commencement addresses.

  This was enough to attract a small army of media sorts, all festooned with cameras of every description, to cover the occasion. Thousands of miles away in Weston, Massachusetts, Jon and Shannon joined the international audience in watching the televised address, which was titled “Freedom for Truth.” Al-Rashid opened by telling of an observer that the Sung dynasty in China dispatched in the year 987 to survey life in the West. When he returned home, the observer reported that the Roman Empire had fallen and been replaced by two great civilizations in the West: one was Byzantine, the other Islamic. The latter, however, was far superior to the former. Then, as an afterthought, he also told of a third-that of the Frankish kingdoms in Europe. “But they are sunk in barbarism,” he concluded.

  Al-Rashid continued-in Arabic, of course, but with simultaneous translations. “The observer from the Sung dynasty was absolutely correct. Today, all scholars, both East and West, agree that Islam was the foremost culture in the entire world during the tenth through twelfth centuries. Our cities had the first universities, the first hospitals, the first public libraries, even the first fire departments. We were at the forefront of all branches of human knowledge: astronomy, physics-all the sciences, in fact-mathematics, medicine, literature… The list is endless. We preserved manuscripts of the ancient Greek and Roman philosophers that were lost in the West. Their scholars learned from us.

  “Yet this is not the case today. Some even regard Islamic nations as ‘backward’ and in need of foreign help. What happened? The reasons are many, but perhaps two dominate the others. One, we were brutalized by the Mongol invasion when Baghdad, the center of the Islamic world, fell in 1258. But the second reason, I think, is even more significant: our academic freedoms were curtailed from that time on. In later centuries, our most creative minds were constrained by intellectual blinders, fresh ideas were suspect, and our scholars were no longer at liberty to pursue truth for its own sake. Islam and the teachings of the Prophet-may Allah’s peace and blessing be upon him-were by no means responsible for this, but narrow minds that claimed to speak for Islam were.”

  Al-Rashid went on to cite passages from the Qur’an that stressed the importance of free inquiry and tolerance, such as Sura 2:256-“In religion, there is no compulsion”-and how later on, stringent mullahs tried to explain away such verses. He then lashed out at the current fanaticism and violence fostered by Islamic fundamentalists and jihadists that not only endangered the world but were an insult to Islam itself.

  He capped his argument with a powerful illustration. “Lest you think that this is not the case today, I would call your attention to what happened very recently. The Arabic edition of a book by a well-known American professor, Jonathan P. Weber of Harvard University, contained a misprint or innocent error that has since been corrected. And yet this professor was instantly attacked by today’s mullahs, and fanatic mobs inspired by them caused riots in various countries that led, tragically, to some deaths. Not only that, but straining all canons of logic, a fatwa was even issued against the professor, which should immediately be lifted. We call on our Shiite brothers in the faith to nullify that fatwa.”

  “Jon, did you hear that?” Shannon asked unnecessarily.

  Jon himself was speechless. What a magnificent development-in fact, a true answer to prayer! If the fatwa were lifted, their summer plans were intact once again.

  The university imam closed with an appeal that Islam resurrect its past glories and world cultural leadership by returning to the path of free inquiry, which alone could lead to truth itself in all fields of human knowledge. His final words, of course, were the formulaic “All praise be to Allah, the Lord Sovereign of the universe, and may Allah praise his Prophet Muhammad and his household.”

  Moments of stunned silence followed, and then deafening applause erupted, especially from the students, with shouts of “Allahu Akhbar! Allahu Akhbar!” “God is great! God is great!” Of the seventy-five al-Azhar faculty members sharing the platform that day, some were smiling, while others wore frowns of deep concern.

  Jon shook his head. “It’s the finest address by a Muslim that I’ve ever heard-and certainly the best since 9/11. This is the voice of moderate Islam that should have been much louder following what happened in New York and Washington. What a man! I’ll bet the archconservatives in the Islamic world cordially hate him.”

  “Do you think it’ll take some of the heat off of us?”

  “It certainly should, Shannon. It looks like we may be heading for Greece and Turkey after all.”

  They called Washington the next morning and discussed the matter with Morton Dillingham of the CIA. He was his usual cautious-perhaps paranoid-self. Jon was sure there must be a plaque on his office wall that read, The light at the end of the tunnel is an approaching freight train. Yes, he admitted that the climate had improved for Jon since the now-celebrated commencement address by al-Rashid. He also reported that the CIA operatives in Tehran had reported very little public follow-up on the fatwa issue. It was no longer news there, and there were no further riots.

  “Then it should certainly be safe for my wife and me not to alter our plans for Greece and Turkey, right?” Jon asked.

  “Oh, I’m not sure that’s the case,” he demurred. “It only takes one fanatic, one unstable-”

  “We’re fully aware of that threat, Mr. Dillingham, but our decision is to go ahead with our plans in any case.”

  There was a long silence at the other end of the line. Finally Dillingham replied, “Well, you’re free citizens, and we can’t stop you. But please fax me your specific itinerary, along with dates, after which I’ll dispatch you a complete protocol of procedures to avoid danger, CIA contacts overseas, and other security measures.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Dillingham. That will be very helpful.”


  “But while you’re abroad, always look behind you. Always.”

  A fortnight later, Jon and Shannon were on an Olympic Air jet, flying from JFK to Athens. As the plane settled into its cruising altitude, she turned to him and said, “You know, Jon, despite all the traveling we do, this trip is the first one in a long time that almost feels like a vacation.”

  Jon squeezed her hand. “Whoever said that business and pleasure can’t be mingled?”

  Shannon was almost prepared for “no dancing in the aisles” on their plane, based on Olympic’s ads, but she was quite content to settle for tasty introductions to Greek cuisine. They were served calamari (“almost like chewing rubber bands,” Jon commented), angarodomata salata, pastitsio, souvlaki, dolmas nicely drenched in a thick avgolemono sauce, with a main course of either baked lamb or chicken and potato slices bathed in lemon olive oil. To be sure, there were also olives from first to last-not the modestly flavored Spanish sort cored with pimento, anchovies, or nuts. No, these were dark and salty Greek olives-totally salty-the kind that took command of your mouth and provided a day’s suggested sodium intake apiece. It took several glasses of retsina wine-Jon intentionally mispronounced it “rinsina”-to “rinse” the palate for the deliciously sweet baklava that followed. Cups of steaming elliniko kafe capped off the gustatory marathon.

  Suddenly, and apropos of nothing, Shannon sat up straight and asked, “Jon, the case with the manuscripts from Pella-where is it?”

  He stared at her, wide-eyed, and seemed to grope for words. “I… I thought I… I hope I… didn’t leave it at the JFK security line.”

  When Shannon gaped at him in horror, Jon quickly stood, opened the overhead compartment, and extracted the case. Holding it overhead as some sort of trophy, he returned it to the compartment and sat back down.

  “Are you proud of yourself, Professor Prankster?” she asked.