A Skeleton in God's Closet

by Paul L Maier

  “Absolutely. We’ve also agreed to do a PIXE on the ink.”

  “What’s that?” Jon wondered.

  “Particle Induced X-ray Emission Analysis. That procedure’s particularly useful for very small samples. We’ve used it to test for metal oxides in the ink of the Gutenberg Bible, for example.”

  “Superb! Can it tell the age?”

  “Unfortunately, no. Most of these tests, except for thermoluminescence, are merely analyses, but they’ve spotted as many forgeries as C-14 by finding traces of elements not used at the time claimed—Yale’s notorious Vinland map, for example. So, if we find any iron oxides in the ink or pigment, we’ll suspect forgery, since pure carbon inks were the norm then.”

  “Well, you could find some copper too,” Jon replied. “In the Dead Sea Scrolls, the earlier ones used pure carbon-based inks, but the later ones show some copper.”

  “We’ll bear that in mind,” Sandy commented, then resumed reading the schedule: “‘The wooden backing of the “titulus”: ditto procedures for the parchment. The grave linen and matting materials: ditto, with special emphasis on pollen analysis. The bronze coin: optical emission and atomic absorption spectrometry, and neutron activation analysis for metallurgical assay and comparison with similar bronze coins of known authenticity. The four debris packets: separation of materials, quantitative and qualitative analysis of ingredients, further testing as deemed necessary.’ Does that about cover it?”

  All nodded.

  “Some of these tests will be done elsewhere, of course,” Sandy concluded. “After we’re through with the pottery, for example, we’ll take it to the Museum Applied Center for Archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania, since they have the finest thermolumi-nescence laboratory in the country.”

  The late fall symposium of the Institute of Christian Origins convened in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as usual, but this time the one and only theme on its agenda was Rama. Jon provided a comprehensive report on the dig, including video footage Cromwell had fortuitously shot. Dick himself was also in attendance, en route back to Israel, and he assured Jon that he had not left the papyrus prints lying exposed in his darkroom.

  “Are you sure, Dick?” asked Jon.

  “Absolutely! And I did lock the darkroom before flying to the States.”

  Jon frowned, drummed his fingers on the dais, and then asked, “Who else has a key to the darkroom?”

  “Oh, gosh! I guess most of the senior staff members there do.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Well, you’re a Johnny-come-lately!”

  They tittered briefly and moved on to the second part of the conclave, which was a report back to Jon on how the nation and the world were reacting to Rama. All symposium members wanted to speak at once, it seemed, and Jon listened to them one by one, each offering a colorful or lurid or tragic piece of a panorama entitled “Crisis.”

  “So, the spectrum looks something like this,” said Jon, when they had finished. He stood up and wrote from right to left on a blackboard, Hebrew style:

  LIBERAL LEFTMODERATE LEFTCENTRISTCONSERVATIVE RIGHTULTRAORTHODOX RIGHT

  Full acceptance with no concern Some acceptance with much concern (Mainline churches) Very troubled response with much shock (Evangelicals) Terrified rejection, but anxiety that Rama could prove authentic (Fundamentalists) Horrified rejection and open hostility

  “Give me some further examples of the extreme left,” Jon asked.

  Heinz von Schwendener, the renowned New Testament scholar from Yale, replied, “Well, you recall those theologians who’ve been claiming that the discovery of Jesus’s bones wouldn’t surprise them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, they’re now issuing genteelly worded ‘I-told- you-so’ statements in seven languages. And, of course, way-out sorts like Harry Nelson Hunt are claiming that your discovery really favors the conservatives, Jon.”

  “How in the world?”

  “Because it proves that there was a historical human being named Jesus after all! Hunt had his doubts.”

  “Predictable. All right, colleagues, you’ve reported on the theology out there. Give me a little more on the grass roots. Anecdotal stuff.”

  Jon almost wished he hadn’t asked. A potpourri, prepared in hell, seemed to boil over in tales told by symposium members: a country parson so choked up in his pulpit that he collapsed and died halfway through his sermon. Trappist monks who had taken a vow of silence now screaming their disillusionment. Fall registration at seminaries and divinity schools down a catastrophic 85 percent as trend pundits promised they would close altogether, along with monasteries and convents. Futurologists predicting the conversion of empty churches into restaurants or beer halls. Suicides, mental and moral breakdowns, vastly increased crime, and the reduction of world Christianity to cult status.

  “Enough!” Jon threw up his hands. “For my money, the most tragic thing I’ve heard this afternoon is how the dying had the hope of the Resurrection torn away from them when they needed it most. But we’ve got to move on. The third part of this symposium has the elegantly phrased theme, ‘Where Do We Go from Here?’ We’re open to suggestions.”

  What followed was the liveliest debate in the annals of the ICO. The conference room rattled with suggestions, counter-suggestions, and passionate exchange. Late in the afternoon, however, a consensus developed. The Smithsonian test series would be of critical importance, obviously, but they also worked out a master contingency plan pending the results. Jon endorsed it enthusiastically, but all members swore to keep the plan confidential.

  To brighten the mood, just before closing the session, Jon asked, “What’s the most inane reaction any of you have come across to date? I mean, some-thing really off-the-wall.”

  Katrina Vandersteen, professor of Semitic paleography at Johns Hopkins, raised her pencil. “I give you the case of one Maharishi Yogananda, a guru at a commune near Monterey, California. He claims that your dig has now proven the truth of Hinduism, Jon!”

  “How, for goshsakes?!”

  “Well, it’s true, isn’t it?” she teased with a twinkle in her eye. “What’s the chant you hear from those bald sorts in peach robes wandering our airports? ‘Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna . . . Hare Rama, Hare Rama.’Well, the Maharishi claims that the very name of your dig, which has just ‘buried Christianity,’ exalts Rama, who is Lord over all!”

  The symposium rocked with laughter, and they got up to leave. Suddenly the door flew open and a small, slender man with thinning white hair stormed into the conference room, slamming the door behind him. He stalked over to Jon and glared at him.

  “Well, hello, Mr. Nickel,” said Jon. “We’re delighted to see you!”

  Joshua Scruggs Nickel was clearly in furious fettle. He opened his mouth and roared, “Why wasn’t I notified of this meeting today?”

  “I’d intended to give you a résumé during our appointment tomorrow morning, Mr. Nickel, as in our previous meetings. I didn’t think you wanted to sit through all the technical discussions.”

  “You assumed wrong! Especially when our faith is at stake!”

  “Well, you know you’re always more than wel-come at—”

  “Hear me, all of you!” Nickel cut him off. “I provided the seed money for this Institute, and the seeds were pretty big, as I recall: an endowment of five million dollars! The purpose of the ICO—at least as I saw it—was to explore ever more deeply the story of how our Lord and His holy apostles founded the Church and sent it out to conquer the world in His name. You were supposed to provide fresh data about Christ’s life and ministry. And for a while you succeeded. I was quite satisfied with your book, Jonathan.”

  He now took another step toward Jon and, emphasizing his words with one long finger, said, “But now you’ve overturned everything you’ve achieved! Instead of the proofs for the truth of Christianity you were supposed to supply, you’ve plunged a terrible dagger into the very heart of our faith! When I first learned of your horrible discoverie
s I was going to send you a wire, Jonathan, but I couldn’t find the words. I still can’t find the words . . . other than to say that this is a . . . a treacherous way to reward my investment in you . . . in you all. In place of truth, you’re supplying deceit and fraud! ”

  The little man quaked with fury, his gray eyes filmed with tears, and his wrinkled skin took on an apoplectic red. Jon tried to calm him. “Please, Mr. Nickel, take a seat and let’s—”

  “Let me quote from Psalm 1, which I, at any rate, still regard as the Word of God. ‘Blessed is the man who sits not in the seat of scoffers.’ No, I shan’t sit down, Jonathan. And now let me tell you my plans for the ICO. I’m cutting off the annual subsidy of $250,000 I’ve been providing you, effective immediately, and I will seek legal counsel about retrieving my original endowment!”

  A vein throbbed visibly in the middle of his fore-head, and Jon feared the man might suffer a stroke. “Please, Mr. Nickel,” he pleaded, “can’t we discuss this over dinner tonight?”

  “No, my mind’s made up. In fact, only one thing could change it.”

  “What’s that?”

  “If you go on record as admitting that you must have been duped, Jonathan. And I’d also want the ICO to denounce the Rama ‘finds’ as a devilish fraud, which you all intend to expose by further research.”

  “But that’s just the point, Mr. Nickel,” Jon protested. “We’ve just laid out the most comprehensive plans to continue research on possible fraud.”

  “Yet, in the meantime, you’re poisoning the world with evidence that seems to affirm this fraud. As the discoverer, one word from you that this must all be a fake would help to calm the world and save the Church.”

  “I can’t do that, Mr. Nickel. That would go against the principles of sound scholarship. And honesty.”

  Nickel glared at Jon several moments more, then at the entire symposium. “Very well, ladies and gentlemen,” he now sliced out his syllables. “My support for the ICO is at an end!” He whipped about and left the room.

  The symposium sat stunned for some moments until von Schwendener said, “I move that from here on we all donate our time. And that we also help raise alternate funding for the ICO.”

  “Hear! Hear!” many sounded. The rest applauded.

  The motion passed unanimously.

  The remaining days of November and early December were not his own, Jon soon discovered. While trying to coordinate the work of the ICO—now fiscally threatened—and consult with Sandy McHugh on the progress of the test series, he had all he could do to dictate answers to the huge stacks of mail that had accumulated during his absence. But he and his word-processing prodigy of a secretary, Marylou Kaiser, worked up twenty different letters in the computer’s memory that covered almost 90 percent of the correspondence, including cancellations of a host of speaking engagements that had been on Jon’s docket before Rama exploded.

  Yet the hardest task, by far, was fending off the broadcast media and the press. Reporters had dogged him constantly, ever since some enterprising cub drove into the rolling countryside west of Cambridge and did a stakeout at his home in Weston. If it wasn’t the media, it was the maniacs. Police had to put regular patrols in his neighborhood after some madman smashed a spear through his window, claiming he was the prophet Elijah sent to skewer the Antichrist.

  No, he had a harder task yet—surviving without Shannon. She had sent a booklet of love poems she had composed for him and illustrated with sketches of their favorite haunts in Galilee. Jon, ordinarily a prosy sort, thought the verses unspeakably beautiful, and wondered what it was about poetry that made it the medium of communication for love. One incandescent chapter, entitled “Our Love Is . . . ,” was followed by burning descriptives on pages that followed, the first being “Eternal.” Its definition, “I will love you until the ends of earth and time,” brought tears to his eyes and only enlarged the hollow ache that gripped him from the brushing of teeth in the morning to the shedding of shoes at night. He missed her more than he thought possible. A packed schedule should have dulled the emptiness, he thought, but it has not. Unintentionally he had been conducting his own test of attachment to the girl, and those results were in. It was true love, and more. Yet the English language had no word for it.

  He told her as much in torrid overseas calls, pleading for her to fly to Boston so they could spend the Christmas holidays together. He had to stay in the States because the test series was almost concluded. While sharing his need, she felt she could hardly leave her father, who seemed exhausted in the aftermath of all the excitement. “I love you more than I can ever express, my darling,” she added. “Do spend Christmas with your folks in Missouri. But then hurry back!”

  Jon’s jet landed at Lambert Field in St. Louis on Christmas morning, and he booked a rental for the ninety-mile drive north to Hannibal. It was 9:30 AM, and if he sped up Highway 61, he’d make it just in time for his father’s 11 AM service at St. John Lutheran Church. His visit would be a surprise—possibly an unwelcome one. Rama’s tentacles reached everywhere.

  Blowing snow mixed with sleet delayed him, and when he arrived at the very church where he’d been baptized and confirmed, he slipped into one of the back pews as surreptitiously as possible, since the congregation was already singing the final verse of the presermon hymn. Jon recalled that, when he was a boy, Christmas and Easter were the record-attendance days, and he was startled to find the church half empty. Perhaps the sleet had something to do with that. Or perhaps a certain excavation in Israel.

  Was the figure in the wheat-colored alb who mounted the pulpit really his father? It was two years since he had seen him last, but the Reverend Erhard Weber seemed to have aged at least ten. The salt-and-pepper hair was now all salt. The full rectangular face was now trapezoidal due to sunken cheeks, and a pallor clouded his features. Mercifully, though, his voice was the same, and he began his sermon in firm tones, though with a sad pun.

  “It seems more of a wary than a merry Christmas. The world is asking the Church if it intends to celebrate this year. Two thousand years ago, wise men came from the East to worship the baby Jesus. But now we have “wise men” from the West denying the very heart of the Christian faith! Doubts, not angels, hover over Bethlehem, as modern-day Herods would seek again to kill the infant Christ—”

  Jon squirmed uncomfortably, wondering how his father would greet him after the service—as Jonathan, Herod, or Judas? He always did have a way with words.

  Reverend Weber continued: “The text I’ve chosen may not sound very Christmasy, but I hope you’ll find it appropriate all the same—Matthew 24:23–24, where Jesus tells His disciples, “If any one says to you, ‘Lo, here is the Christ!’ or ‘There he is!’ do not believe it. For false Christs and false prophets will arise.” I truly believe that this prophecy is being fulfilled at the present moment, my fellow believers. They’re telling us that what’s left of Jesus Christ is somewhere in Israel, but, as our Lord told us, do not believe it!”

  Once again, Jon shifted uneasily in the back pew, and quickly donned his shaded glasses so no one would recognize the “false prophet” in their midst. But suddenly the man in the pulpit brightened, even smiled, as he said, “No, my Trudi and I plan to celebrate Christmas! We’ll sing with the angels, worship with the shepherds, adore with the Magi! No matter what my own son or any other archaeologist thinks he may have discovered in Israel, they’ll never be able to take Christ out of Christmas!”

  The rest of the sermon was less polemical and more seasonal, but Jon still felt he should not embarrass his father by waiting in line at the church door to greet him after the service. He slipped out of St. John when his father stepped down from the pulpit.

  The sleet had stopped, and the sky was brightening. But with awful reciprocity, Jon’s own mood was darkening. He took a walk down to the Mississippi waterfront he had loved and haunted as a boy. Sauntering onto a rickety old dock, he leaned against a mooring post, and stared at the icy gray waters tumbling and foam
ing their way to New Orleans before they froze. So this is what he, Jennings, and the team were doing to church life at the grass roots . . . and likely across the world. Good Lord, maybe they should have gotten a bulldozer and heaped tons of dirt on that corner of the dig rather than causing an international crisis. His own father all but disowning him in public. It had come to that.

  He looked at the hill-topped island in the middle of the Mississippi he had explored so often as a lad, the land of Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, and Mark Twain. How Sam Clemens would have cackled over the present crisis, Jon mused. Aside from Twain’s rol-licking humor and razor wit, there was also that bit-ter, antireligious side to Hannibal’s most famous son, as witness his Letters from the Earth.

  And maybe Mark Twain was right, Jon finally had to admit to himself. And not only Twain, but all of liberal theology, which had been denying a physical resurrection of Jesus ever since David Strauss and Ernst Renan did so in nineteenth-century Germany and France. Yes, maybe all the higher critics, particularly Rudolf Bultmann, were right all along. The Resurrection never happened, but it was the faith and belief that it did that was important. And all his conservative, Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod Sunday school and Bible classes, and all the endless sermons . . . wrong!

  Yet if this were truth, and if truth were liberating, why did he feel such gloom? And why was he so restlessly anticipating Sandy McHugh’s promised phone call on Monday?

  Jon ambled off the wharf, wrapped his scarf more tightly to block a frigid blast from the north, and headed briskly back to his rent-a-car. He had driven only six miles back toward St. Louis on Highway 61 when he told the steering wheel, “This is some stupid way to celebrate Christmas!”

  Braking onto the shoulder, he engineered a U-turn across the median, nearly slid off the other shoulder, spun his wheels just in time, and headed back to Hannibal. “Let’s see if Mother will serve Sunday chicken and cherry pie to a heretic.”