by Rene Fomby
“So how does this get us back to Constantine?” Sam asked impatiently.
Mehmed chuckled to himself. “As you Texans say, hold your horses. We’re almost there.” He took a small sip of water and continued. “As you can imagine, the infighting among the increasingly powerful members of the Christian leadership refused to die down, much like the situation we see today among the various sects within Judaism, Christianity and Islam. And by the time Constantine moved the capital of the Roman Empire to New Rome, the arguments had heated up almost to the point of open warfare. Constantine was advised to step in and resolve the dispute by establishing just one settled version of his new state religion, instead of many. So, with that in mind, in 325 CE he called for a council of all of the church’s leaders to convene in Nicaea, a town very near his capital.”
“And that’s where they put together the New Testament,” Margaret suggested.
“Well, that’s what the movies would have you believe,” Mehmed explained. “The mythology of that meeting suggests that the church presbyters who gathered at Nicaea were told to bring all of their gospels and other major religious documents—supposedly some eighty to a hundred competing religious writings—and the Council would pick and choose among them to assemble a final, official Christian Bible, an approved list of the orthodox teachings of the faith. But most scholars today believe that the core books of the New Testament had already largely been determined by consensus at least a hundred years earlier by the church’s early leadership. Although there may have been some votes on whether to include or exclude some of the books at the fringe—the Book of Revelations apparently just barely made it in to the final Christian canon, most likely a payoff to win over that faction’s votes for the Nicaeans—the primary focus of the Council was to decide upon one unifying creed, one interpretation of the nature of the Son and the Father they could all agree upon.”
“The Nicaean Creed?” Margaret asked.
“No, that came later, at the Second Council of Nicaea,” Mehmed said. “The main effect of the first council was to put to rest the supposed ‘heresies’ of the Arian faction and to finalize the one unifying Christian Bible, the New Testimonies. Also known as the New Testament.”
“Okay, so that’s the Bible we have today. The Catholic Bible, that is, not the version the Protestants use.” Margaret finally seemed comfortable with how all of this history managed to fit together.
Mehmed took another sip of water and sat back. “I wish that were so, Ms. Ricciardelli. It would certainly make my job as a comparative religions professor much easier. If perhaps not quite as interesting. But no, the story of how we got from the resurrection to the modern Bible still has a few more winding, convoluted little turns.”
Sam stood up and made a point of stretching broadly. “Well, I don’t know about you, but I think I’ve had enough Bible history for one night. Especially since this morning started very early, and tomorrow promises to be even worse. And I need to check in on Maddie, to make sure she’s still sleeping soundly.” She stuck out a hand to shake Mehmed’s good night. “But really, it was all very fascinating, even for a little old Jewish girl like me. Maybe, if we have time, you can tell us more about all that in the morning on the way up to Ankara. As for now, though, I think my crystal chariot has turned back into a pumpkin, and I’m ready to scurry off to bed like a good little mouse. You coming along, Margaret, or do you want to stay up a little longer?”
“Oh, no,” Margaret said, rising herself. “I’m afraid these old bones have just about had it, as well. But, oh, what a fascinating day we’ve had! I’m so glad you convinced me to come along.” She reached over to grasp Mehmed’s hand. “And oh, by the way, it’s just Margaret, cara. That Ms. Ricciardelli is just a stuffy old lady I’d rather leave in the closet.”
Mehmed smiled at that. “Margaret, it is. And I’ll be heading to bed myself in a bit. But there’s still one little detail from today I need to follow up on. That Chi Rho symbol we found. I’m a member of some academic listservs that just might be able to shine a little light on whatever’s going on with those. I think I’ll send out a general request for information on where and when these things may have been sighted recently. I have a picture of it I took with my phone, and my guess is that I’m not the only one scratching his head about all of this.”
Sam nodded, yawning widely. “Sounds like a plan, Mehmed. I’d be interested in what you find out. But I’m sure it’s nothing. Just another stupid idiot carving their name into a UNESCO World Heritage site. Happens all the time, unfortunately.” She inclined her head toward the waiting hallway. “Anyway, it’s late, and I hope you haven’t forgotten your promise of hot coffee and donuts in the morning.”
Mehmed stood up himself and looked toward the hotel’s office, where he hoped to be able to find a good internet connection to check in with the listservs before heading to bed himself. “Actually, we have a type of donut here in Turkey we call lokma, very sweet, and they practically melt in your mouth. And don’t you worry, I’ll have plenty waiting for you. See you bright and early in the morning.”
“Somehow, those two words don’t necessarily go together, given we’ll be leaving here at six in the morning,” Sam complained groggily. “But yeah, sleep tight. And don’t let the bed bugs bite.” As she headed toward her room, Sam glanced warily around the long hall. Well, I certainly hope they don’t have bed bugs in this place.
65
Göreme
Mehmed was true to his word, and as Sam arrived in the hotel lobby the next morning with Maddie and her carry-on in tow, he handed her a paper cup filled with coffee and a small Turkish donut wrapped in a napkin.
“So this is a lokma?” Sam bit down on the pastry carefully, her eyebrows shooting up almost immediately. “Really good, Mehmed! Every bit as good as anything Krispy Kreme ever put out. And maybe even a whole lot better. Except for, of course, it doesn’t have a hole.” She tore off a small bite and handed it to Maddie.
“I’m glad you like it, Sam,” he said, grinning widely and quickly whisking her bag out toward the waiting car. Margaret came out the front door of the hotel right behind Sam, crawling into the back seat and accepting a lokma and coffee from him thankfully. With the bags stowed away in the trunk, Mehmed motioned for the driver to take them to a nearby open field where the helicopter was waiting.
“We’re in luck,” he told them, bending slightly forward so he could be heard over the noise of the rough road. “The weather is perfect, beautiful clear skies for our tour of the valley and the trip over to Ankara.”
The driver turned sharply to the left and the whole of the Göreme Valley spread out before them, the rising sun just starting to fill in some of the deeper shadows. And hot air balloons beginning to fill up as well, preparing for their short dash across the length of the valley. Sam could barely tear her eyes away as the car lurched to a final stop and Mehmed opened their passenger door, leading them to the helicopter that was idling off to their right. “Time to go, ladies. Trust me, it’s even more beautiful from up above.”
Sam, Margaret and Maddie climbed out of the car carefully, cautiously respectful of the helicopter blades slowly circling above their heads. Mehmed opened the side door to the helicopter and they jumped in and strapped themselves into the front-facing seats. Mehmed climbed in behind them, securing their overnight cases that the limo driver handed up through the doorway and grabbing his seatbelt as well. In what seemed like seconds, the whine from the copter’s engine rose alarmingly and they leaped off the ground toward the valley below.
Margaret grasped Sam’s hand tightly, hesitant to get too close to the windows as the helicopter quickly gained altitude. “Are you sure this is safe?” she asked, her voice trembling slightly.
“Relax, Margaret,” Sam assured her. “I do this all the time. It’s perfectly safe. Especially compared to screaming down the highway at high speed just a foot or so from some maniac talking on his cell phone.” Despite her calm assuran
ce, Sam nudged a little closer to Margaret, as well, and draped an arm around Maddie, who seemed oblivious to any danger. If Sam could have peeked out the window with her fingers splayed across her eyes, she would have. But if the past few months in Europe had taught her anything, it was how to look peacefully calm and self-assured on the surface while paddling like hell just below the turgid waters.
As the pilot reached his cruising altitude and turned the craft down the valley, she finally began to relax, pulled in by the amazing scene laid out before her. A few of the hot air balloons had finally launched, and were slowly climbing into the sky below them, the tops of the balloons catching the rays of the early morning sun even as the gondolas hung down below in the predawn gloom. And straight ahead were the fairy towers of Göreme they had visited just the day before. Maddie sat transfixed, her face pressed hard against the window.
“Where are the underground cities we saw yesterday?” Sam asked Mehmed over the roar of the engine.
“About twenty miles behind us,” he answered. “And there are several more just off to our left, but of course you can’t see them from here. In fact, you couldn’t see them even if you got right up close, ignoring of course all the ticket booths and signs. And that’s the whole point, you know. Hiding out there in plain sight, while whoever’s trying to kill you rides right past, oblivious to the fact that you are literally right under his heels.”
Margaret had finally relaxed her death grip on Sam’s left hand and was leaning toward her own window, trying to get a better look down into the valley. But all too soon the valley was left far behind them, their flight path now taking them north and west toward Sam’s early afternoon meeting in Ankara. The pilot adjusted the collective a bit and the helicopter began to climb again, finally settling in well above the increasingly featureless landscape that was sweeping past below them.
With little in the way of detail down below to maintain her interest, Sam caught Mehmed’s attention. “So, when we left you last night, you said you were going to check in with your friends about that Chi Rho symbol. Did you have any luck?”
Mehmed’s mouth was a tight line. “No, it was pretty late when we went to bed, so I don’t imagine anyone will even notice my message until sometime later this morning. Maybe I’ll hear something back by the time we get to Ankara, but I don’t think so. We’re all very busy these days, dealing with families, students, jobs, and all the other distractions of our daily lives. But I hope something will pop up in a day or so. I’ll let you know when I do.”
“Thanks, I’d appreciate that. And by the way, if any of this winds up costing you money, just let me know and I’ll reimburse you.” She hesitated. “I have a—let’s say a personal interest in that particular symbol, so any information you could forward to me would be quite welcome.”
She felt a faint flush creeping up on her cheeks, and decided to change the subject. “When we left you last night, you were telling us about what really happened at the Council of Nicaea. And how we came to have the modern Christian Bible.”
Mehmed smiled warmly, clearly comfortable in his role as a lecturer on religious history. “Yes, and as I recall, Margaret wanted to know if the New Testament that came out of Nicaea was the final Catholic Bible. But the answer to that question is, probably not.”
Margaret leaned in to hear him better over the roar from the engine above. “Probably? You’re not sure?”
“No, actually, that’s part of a giant mystery that has dogged Christian scholars for over a millennia.” He motioned for them to put on the green headsets hanging on the walls beside them, and when they were finished, he continued on, the roar now a faint murmur and his voice sounding crystal clear. “Much better. Now, as I was saying, one of the big problems with the First Council is the fact that almost nothing is known about it. Which is probably why so many conspiracy theories have popped up like dandelions all around it. Constantine most likely chose Nicaea instead of New Rome as the host city for the council so he could keep a tight lid on the proceedings. And after it was all over—in either a few months or two years, depending upon which story you choose to believe—he had all of the records of the meeting destroyed, along with all of the religious documents the presbyters had brought with them to Nicaea. Which, in turn, may help to explain why so little has survived of the early Gospels and other key religious writings of that time.”
“That seems … criminal!” Margaret couldn’t believe that anyone would intentionally destroy such irreplaceable writings from the early church, writings that covered the life and teachings of her Lord, Jesus Christ.
Mehmed nodded in understanding. “Well, if you’re the Emperor, nothing you do is criminal. And I would agree, it seems inexcusable to all of us now. But you have to understand, Constantine didn’t actually worship this Christian God. He was only trying to put a lid on a religious battle that was threatening the stability of his empire. And once the council was over, the last thing he needed hanging around was more evidence to stir the embers of that controversy one more time. So he simply wiped out any of the records that could be used to disturb the status quo going forward. And he ordered the one Christian scholar he could trust, a bishop named Eusebius from the library in Caesarea—a follower, by the way, of our old friend Origen—to gather up the sole remaining copies of the notes from the council and any critical supporting documents, and then use them to piece together fifty copies of a unified Bible, the New Testimonies. Which is exactly what he did. Eusebius had everything boxed up and shipped back to his library in Palestine, where he slowly and meticulously crafted Constantine’s Bible.”
Sam looked perplexed. “But you said that wasn’t the final Bible for the Catholic Church. What changed?”
“Actually, Sam, I never said it wasn’t the final Bible. The problem is, no copies of Eusebius’ Bible have survived, and we know far too little about what it contained to even venture a guess as to its contents. Of course, given the fact that Eusebius was a student of Origen and a known supporter of the Arian branch of the religion—as was Constantine, for that matter—it is highly unlikely that the version of the Bible he created had the same bias in favor of the Trinity that shows up in more modern Bibles. And then, of course, we have the Codex Sinaticus. The Sinai Bible, the oldest known copy of the Christian Bible in the world. That Bible, along with the second oldest Bible, the Vatican Bible, offer up some very interesting and startling twists for the religion, indeed.”
“How so?” Margaret asked, fully intrigued.
“Well, let’s start with where the Sinai Bible came from,” Mehmed suggested. “It was discovered around 1850 in a small monastery named St. Catherine’s by a German Biblical scholar, appropriately named Constantin von Tischendorf. Tischendorf was a man who had spent his entire life traveling all around the world, collecting ancient Christian documents and relics. Legend was he was searching for something very specific, something that he thought had been part of the lost treasure of the Knights Templar, but he never found it. Anyway, he was following up on a notation he had found in the diary of an Italian nobleman, the man who had originally discovered the Sinai Bible—along with a large number of other valuable Christian writings—almost a century earlier. Backed by the treasure of the Russian Tsar Alexander II, he was able to purchase the Codex—the official name for the Bible—along with a trove of other documents from the monastery, and return with them to Russia. The Codex was displayed in Alexander’s own private parlor for some time, until the British government bought the Bible from Russia for the then-unheard-of price of 100,000 pounds. Parts of the Codex are currently scattered in libraries around the world, but the bulk of the Bible still remains closely guarded in the British Library in London. And, by the way, although the Codex Sinaticus appears to date from sometime in the fourth century, a close comparison to Eusebius’ other writings proves almost conclusively that it’s not one of the fifty missing Bibles that Constantine ordered.”
“So, if it’s not one of the original
Bibles, what the heck does it say that’s so all-fired interesting?” Sam asked, scrunching up her nose.
Mehmed smiled, dragging out the suspense. “It’s what it doesn’t say that’s the real key. The Codex is in amazingly good shape, given its age and the conditions under which it was stored. Being kept on the arid Sinai Peninsula no doubt saved it from crumbling into a pile of dust, like most other documents from its time. As it is, the Codex still contains almost half of the Greek version of the Old Testament, what we scholars call the Septuagint. In addition, the Bible contains a complete copy of the New Testament, plus all of the Deuterocanonical books, the Epistle of Barnabas, and key portions of The Shepherd of Hermas. Those last two books are early Christian writings that have largely been lost to the modern Bible and Christianity over the ages. Barnabas in particular was a stridently anti-Semitic tract that attempts to bridge the gap between the Old Testament and the New, and points to what he identifies as particularly troublesome elements of Jewish Mosaic law. Elements such as animal sacrifice and a reliance on one primary temple, which he cites as evidence of the Jewish religion’s blindness to the true faith and their ungodly association with angels of evil. So, no big surprise it would lose favor over time.”
“Okay, that’s what it does say, stuff that was added that no longer appears in the current Bible,” Sam noted. “But you said something else was missing. What was that?”
Mehmed smiled again. “Well, there are some minor sniggling things. Like the concluding verse of the Lord’s Prayer, ‘For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.’ Not there, not even close. But … I don’t know if you understand much about the controversy over the sequencing of the gospels. You know, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. How somehow the order of those books apparently got mixed up, and most scholars now believe Matthew and the other books were written after Mark. That Mark was the first and the oldest gospel.”
