More Than a Skeleton

by Paul L Maier

  Joshua paused, and this time a buzz of concerned whispering replaced applause. Many, however, like the Bishop of Rome himself, were nodding in agreement with Joshua’s strictures.

  “But even this is not the greatest problem facing the church today,” Joshua continued. “I shall now tell you what it is.” He stopped, looked up toward the ornate ceiling of the basilica, and then, with powerful emphasis, added: “It is for this very reason that the Father sent me into the world again!”

  Not since it opened in 1615 had the Basilica of St. Peter been suffused with such instant silence. No one even moved, for fear of missing the next word.

  “Seventeen centuries ago, the holy Christian church made a tragic error, an error that has been a festering wound in the body of truth ever since. And it must now be identified. It must now be cauterized. It must now be corrected!”

  Many in the great basilica moved forward on their seats. Shannon cupped her ears lest she miss a syllable. Benedict XVI clutched the arms of his chair and exchanged glances of concern with Bartholomew II. Both knew well enough what had happened seventeen centuries earlier.

  “This tragic error,” Joshua continued, “occurred at the Council of Nicaea in the year 325, when I was declared ‘God’ and put on the same plane as the almighty Father. This is not true! I am the Father’s special representative, to be sure—yes, His Messiah—but to say, as in the Nicene Creed, that I am ‘God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father’ is blasphemy! All these many centuries, our Father’s chosen people—the Jews—have been correct in proclaiming that God is one and one only, and so I have been commissioned by my Father to purge this error and unify Judaism and Christianity under His divine unity and supremacy. And then we will be able to meet the challenge of Islam and—”

  “No!” a lone voice rang out, with the same intensity as Joshua’s, and it reechoed No No No throughout the lofty galleries of St. Peter’s.

  “Joshua Ben-Yosef is a fraud!” the voice continued. Fraud Fraud Fraud echoed.

  The voice continued inexorably in the stunned silence. “Don’t believe this hoax!” Hoax Hoax Hoax . . .

  Whose voice was it? Shannon knew, to her utter shock. The voice belonged to Jon! But where was he? Looking down the long nave of the basilica, she saw three figures walking briskly toward the high altar. When they were halfway there, a squad of fifteen Swiss guards in blue, red, and yellow medieval garb rushed in with their halberds, surrounded them, and held Jon tightly.

  But the seized figure exclaimed, “This is Jon Weber, Santissimo Padre! I invoke James 1:16: ‘Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers!’”

  Kevin Sullivan and Gideon Ben-Yaakov were standing on either side of Jon. Kevin had equipped Jon with a portable lapel microphone tuned to the basilica’s public address system. Kevin now rushed up to the dais and whispered something to the pope in high agitation. Benedict turned ashen and started trembling. He stood up, shakily, and moved next to Joshua at the lectern. Pulling the microphone over toward himself, he commanded, in Italian: “Che la Guardia Svizzera, rilasci immediatamente il Professor Weber e lo scorti fino alla predella!”

  The Swiss Guard obeyed at once, releasing Jon and escorting him up to the dais.

  The many thousands in attendance sat stupefied. People of the world sat stupefied, disbelieving their eyes at what their television screens were showing them, not trusting their ears despite what they were hearing.

  Shannon’s relief that Jon had finally shown up was shot through with horror at what he was saying. To believers like herself, such an attack on the Messiah could only be followed by lightning from heaven, or, perhaps, the earth opening up and swallowing him as it did Korah and those who disobeyed Moses in the Sinai wilderness. Joshua, meanwhile, had also lost color, but he quickly mastered his shock, pulled the microphone over, and, as usual, said the unexpected. A word of malediction? A dire curse on Jon, consigning him to the flames of hell? No. Joshua put his hands together, gazed heavenward with a look of sad serenity, and said, “Father, forgive him, for he doesn’t know what he’s doing!”

  Bedlam broke out inside the sacred Basilica of St. Peter. The mind, theological or otherwise, can stand only so much. One moment, the faithful were listening to the words of their returned Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. The next, that Savior was telling them that their faith was hopelessly flawed. Then, a world-class theologian was calling that Savior an impostor. Finally, the “impostor” seemed to have returned to the Jesus mode in forgiving his detractor, much as Jesus had forgiven His executioners at Golgotha!

  Joshua held his arms up for silence and continued, “The Father warned me that during my mission into the world this time, the Judas Iscariot figure would come . . . not from the ranks of my faithful followers gathered on the dais here, but from someone in the New World who would usurp a place in the temple of God as the Antichrist. And that Antichrist from the New World, who will deny my mission, is now advancing to this very platform!”

  A grand chorus of murmuring wafted up from the packed benches to the highest galleries of St. Peter’s.

  Jon stopped below the steps leading up to the dais, locked his own penetrating gaze onto Joshua’s, and said, “If this is true, Mr. Ben-Yosef, then I ask you—in the holy name of God—to blot this Antichrist out of existence here and now! ”

  Joshua’s classic, tanned cheeks took on a darker hue as he fired a ferocious scowl down at Jon and spit out the words, “No, you demonic enemy of the truth! I prefer to have mercy even on such a wicked blasphemer as yourself!”

  “Now is the moment, Joshua! If you are telling the truth, and I’m the Antichrist indeed, then, for the sake of the church and for all believers on earth, I demand that you use your supernatural powers to annihilate me at once!”

  “You, a mere mortal, dare to tell me what I should do?”

  “I dare indeed, fellow mortal! The original Judas went out and hanged himself. So if I am the latter-day version, then please confirm your identity before this great assembly and before the world by terminating me at once! Untold millions of people are watching us at this moment, Ben-Yosef, and not one of them would ever doubt you again if you were able to cause my instant death!”

  Joshua flashed a beam of pure, undiluted hatred at Jon. He had a momentary urge to leap down from the platform, encircle Jon’s neck with hands of demonic force, crush his neck vertebrae into splinters, and strangle the very life out of him.

  “Or is it that you have no supernatural power whatever to eliminate me, Joshua?” continued Jon, relentlessly. “And that all of your so-called miracles were tricks? Like raising not Shimon Levine from the dead, but his identical twin brother, Baruch, who is sitting behind you?”

  While exclamations of shock and groaning rippled instantly throughout the basilica, the two continued to glare at each other, Joshua’s genius working every neuron in his marvelous mind for a solution.

  “Well, since you won’t answer, Ben-Yosef, then I will,” said Jon. “And the answer is this: no, Joshua, you do not have any supernatural powers, because you and your henchman Baruch there had planned to use very natural means to murder me about a week from now—namely, by forcing potassium cyanide down my throat!”

  The basilica broke into an uproar.

  “I had discovered your stratagems, you see, and so I had to be eliminated. I must now introduce Dr. Gideon Ben-Yaakov, director of the Israel Antiquities Authority in Jerusalem, who has been specially deputized by the government of Israel. He is also here as a second witness, should any of you doubt our mission.”

  Gideon, who had also been fitted with a lapel mike, stepped forward and held up two documents, one in each hand. “Joshua Ben-Yosef and Baruch Levine,” he announced, “in my right hand is a warrant for both your arrests, issued by the State of Israel, on charges of complicity to commit murder. In my other hand is a formal request from the Government of Israel to the State of Vatican City and to the Republic of Italy for your
extraditions!”

  The immense basilica was jolted into a demonic chorus of shock and consternation. Shaking his head mournfully, Benedict XVI returned to the lectern, grasped it with trembling hands, and ordered the Swiss Guard to take Joshua and Baruch into custody.

  The guardsmen clattered up the steps to the dais in tight formation and arrested them. Thirty thousand disbelieving eyes watched the messianic figure in white being marched off the platform, followed by the faux apostle whose ersatz name graced the vast cathedral. The dumbfounded eleven “disciples” remaining on the platform could only conclude that, once again, their Lord and Master was being taken into captivity by the Romans.

  During the continuing near-chaos in the nave of St. Peter’s, Jon huddled with the pope and Kevin Sullivan, planning urgently on how to deal with the awful crisis. Suggestions were voiced, options quickly explored. At last, all three nodded in agreement.

  Jon now stepped up to the lectern and asked the assembly for permission to say a few words. When calm was finally restored, he said, “I deeply regret, honored colleagues in the faith, that you’ve been so profoundly shocked this afternoon. In view of time constraints, there simply was no other way to expose this deception. Christianity itself was at stake!

  “Now, of course, you have many, many questions about Ben-Yosef, his apparent miracles, his motivation for attempting this colossal fraud, and the like. We plan to answer all of them in a general press conference that will be held tomorrow afternoon at 3:30 P.M. in the papal audience auditorium, Paul VI Hall. And now, our host has some parting words. Your Holiness . . .”

  Benedict XVI stepped before the lectern and said, his voice trembling with emotion: “By the grace of almighty God . . . truth has apparently triumphed again . . . and the holy Christian faith is secure. But many of you may be thinking that now there is no reason to hold the Third Council of the Vatican. Nothing could be farther from the truth! Please do not even think of leaving Rome! We need this conclave now more than ever in order to enhance the unity of the church and equip it to meet the challenges of our day. Our first general session, which was to have been held today, will take place instead the day after tomorrow—again, here in the Basilica of St. Peter.

  “And now may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all!” “AMEN!”

  “Go in peace! Serve the Lord.”

  “THANKS BE TO GOD.”

  Jon remembered very little of the rest of that extraordinary day. He had been without sleep for the past thirty hours and almost fell on his face several times as he trip-walked out of the basilica and across the Piazza San Piètro. He recalled a passionate hug and kiss from Shannon, and he vaguely remembered that he had commended Gideon Ben-Yaakov into Kevin Sullivan’s able hands.

  Shannon shepherded him up to their opulent accommodations, where he nibbled a bit at the food she had ordered in, promising to answer all her many questions in the morning. Then he took a healthy sip of Lambrusco, passed out on the bed, and slept for twelve hours straight.

  But sleep escaped Shannon for several long hours. She was enduring the most agonizing emotional clashes in her life, bouncing between utter happiness—her husband was safe—and utter depression: her returned Lord and Savior, Joshua-Jesus, on whom she had pinned her faith, hope, love, and trust, was evidently a colossal fraud. How could her relief and elation be mingled, at the same time, with chagrin, disenchantment, bewilderment, and sadness? However unlikely such a combination, it was happening to her.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Much of the Christian world shared Shannon’s bewilderment. While night’s encroachment on the Far and Middle East postponed some of the bafflement until the next morning, it became the immediate central story throughout the Western world. Joshua’s arrest in the Vatican hit the world news wires at 3:30 P.M., which was 9:30 A.M. in New York. An immense number had seen it all live, of course, but for those who did not, most other programs on radio or TV were interrupted with the momentous news. The old saw, “People would always remember where they were when—” was dusted off and used again and again.

  Headlines in the American midday, special, and evening newspaper editions had all the obvious wordplay: JOSHUA NOT JESUS! was the most frequent, with FRAUD ON THE FAITHFUL, JOSHUA BEN-FAKE, HOLY HOAX! and A SCAM SAVIOR following. Editorial after editorial pompously excoriated the gullibility of the religious public, even though hardly any of the writers had previously predicted fraud.

  While Jon and Shannon slept, massive responses were boiling up in all segments of society. Religious liberals and religious ultraconservatives— usually the very antitheses in spirituality—finally found common ground: both had, for different reasons, doubted or denied Joshua’s claims, and both now felt vindicated. Although some trumpeted their I-told-you-so’s as loudly as their voices would carry, most showed considerable restraint, especially when they saw the pain in the eyes of so many who had believed, with various intensities, that Jesus had returned.

  Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, and Jim Lehrer were already in Rome to cover the opening of Vatican III, and their evening news programs for NBC, CBS, ABC, and PBS respectively gave full reports on the high drama that had unfolded at the Vatican just hours earlier. Fox, CNN, CNBC, PAX and other cable networks had also sent their anchors to Rome, prompting one irate network executive to complain, “Is anyone left in the U.S. to cover the news?” Though it was now night in Europe, the BBC, Radio-Television Francaise, Deutsche Welle, Radio e Video Italia, and all other European national networks replaced their usual fare with the urgent news from Rome. Jon’s confrontation with Joshua before the high altar in Saint Peter’s was translated into a dozen languages on the tube, and many European Christians got very little sleep that night.

  Joshua’s hard-core “true believers” in both hemispheres, of course, continued to believe. He had been called a fraud and was arrested, true. But wasn’t that arrest itself further proof that Joshua was indeed Jesus? Before anyone even asked him, Melvin Morris Merton predicted that Joshua would “certainly” go to the cross—if not in Italy, then “certainly” in Israel, to which he would “certainly” be extradited.

  Anti-Semitic elements in society started parroting that particular aspect of Merton’s forecast. Not that Merton was an anti-Semite— quite the opposite was the case. But twisted bigots started mounting the following message on the Internet: Jews did it to Jesus once, now they’ll do it to him again! Leaders of some fringe sects called one another and debated about somehow trying to rescue Joshua from his adversaries. One proposed that they change the Second Article of the Creed to: “I believe in Joshua Christ, God’s only Son, our Lord . . .” as a first step in reestablishing his credibility.

  Yet even their warped approach to reality required, after all, a little more information before any attempts could be made to rescue Joshua or his reputation. And the only one who could deliver that information was fast asleep.

  It was the bells of Rome that awakened Jon. In the Eternal City, it doesn’t have to be Sunday for the bells to ring one out of bed. The place is bell heaven: tinkling bells that sound like celestial, though castrated, chimes; marvelously matured midsized bells that carry whatever melody is intended by the tintinnabulation; and great bass monstrosities that mournfully—even threateningly—toll like megaphones of fate.

  “Hello, darling!” said Jon sleepily to the lovely elfin figure tiptoeing around the room. “Sorry I cut out on you last night.”

  “Hello, Your Eminence!” she teased. “How does it feel to be One Man Against the World?”

  “Very lonely, now that you mention it. But let’s cure all that: come on over here and let’s do some serious snuggling.”

  She only chuckled. “With the whole planet waiting to hear what you have to say at the press conference? I don’t think so!”

  He glanced at the clock on a table next to their bed. “Oh . . . that was kind of you, Shannon,” he said. “Taking the p
hone off the hook.” “Otherwise, you’d have had two hundred calls by now and not slept a wink.”

  “Yeah, probably. Is it really ten-thirty?”

  “Yup.”

  “Okay. Let’s do brunch before we face the press.”

  “Make that, before you face the press, Jon. If I could, I’d be out there in the press corps myself, ready to send two dozen questions your way! No, more like a hundred.”

  All sixty-five hundred seats in the auditorium for papal audiences— Paul VI Hall—were occupied a half hour before the press conference was set to begin. A thicket of television cameras and cables rimmed the rear of the hall, while a bulging cluster of microphones surrounded a speaker’s lectern on which the papal coat of arms was emblazoned. The pontiff himself had been asked to open the conference, but he delegated that responsibility to Kevin Sullivan, while he sat with Curia officers and members of the college of cardinals in the front of the auditorium. Ordinarily, he would have occupied the papal throne, but since the Joshua affair had engulfed the highest echelons of the church, it was thought best to proceed in this manner.

  Promptly at 3:30 P.M., Kevin stepped up to the battery of microphones and welcomed the crowd. Then he identified two others who shared the platform with him: Gideon Ben-Yaakov and Jon, introducing the latter as “the man who played a major role in preventing the church and the world from making a terrible mistake.”

  Now fully rested and no longer tripping over everything in his path, Jon delivered an opening statement in words that he knew would be fiercely important in guiding world response to the Joshua affair and heading off a whole galaxy of misinterpretations. “I should like to emphasize at the very start, ladies and gentlemen of the media, that the Joshua Ben-Yosef episode does not and will not affect the credibility of the Christian faith in any manner whatever. Simply because Jesus did not return in the form of Joshua does not mean that He will not return in the future, according to the basic Christian creeds. While this may seem obvious to you— in fact, overobvious—please never underestimate the ability of people to get it wrong unless you make this point very clear in your coverage.