The Constantine Codex

by Paul L Maier

  Benedict now called on Jon to address the council. He had asked the pope for a brief opportunity to do so if the votes so warranted it. He walked up to the dais. “Thank you, Your Holiness,” he began. “I would respectfully ask all of you, distinguished church leaders, to remind your followers of something extremely important; namely, that this council has not approved ‘a new Bible,’ as it were, and has not replaced the traditional Scriptures. The ‘old family Bible’ is as relevant as ever with its sixty-six books. The sixty-seven-book version simply enhances the text of that great traditional document which has served the church so well for almost two thousand years. My wife and I now commend the enhanced edition and its reception in the church to the providence of God.”

  As he left the dais, shouts of “Amen” and even “Hallelujah” ricocheted throughout the vast reaches of the hall. No one present would ever forget that memorable day, which became a milestone in church history.

  Jon and Shannon were treated to endless rounds of congratulations by the church’s great, which they vigorously tried to deflect. In fact, they were the last to leave the convention hall. Jon looked into Shannon’s sapphire eyes, still a bit misty, and said, “Thanks, my darling, for-how did you put it?-for finding the two missing pieces in that sacred mosaic called the Holy Bible and setting them safely into place.”

  Epilogue

  Although the decisions of the Jerusalem Council were not binding on individual church bodies, 96 percent of world Christianity did adopt them in fact. Holdouts were the extremely conservative sects, rigorist splinter groups, and the Appalachian churches that practiced snake-handling as a centerpiece of their worship. The assurance that not one syllable of the newly discovered material contradicted any part of Scripture fell on deaf ears. As one of their elders put it, “If the King James Bible was good enough for St. Paul, it’s good enough for us.”

  Publication of the sixty-seven-book Bible became the greatest statistical phenomenon since Gutenberg invented movable type printing. When Jon and the ICO had first permitted the fresh addenda to be published separately as part of the public domain, publishers privately deemed them “crazy,” in view of the incredibly valuable property they were giving away. Now they called them “crazy like a fox,” since publishing any new Bible with the addenda would have certain strings attached, spelled “royalties.” The newly discovered Greek texts in the codex and any translations thereof were fully protected if they became part of any new edition of the New Testament or the Bible.

  Jon explained that the reason for the copyright was far more than royalties. A restriction clause in all publishing contracts gave the ICO the right to approve any translation. A “dirty little secret” in Bible publishing had been the intrusion of denominational interests in slight shadings in translating some verses of Holy Writ.

  To be sure, new Bible editions had been flooding the market of late. A whole cavalcade of specialty Bibles were crowding the bookstores, such as women’s Bibles, men’s Bibles, Scriptures for the young, for the aged, and every niche market imaginable. Jon once cracked to Shannon, “Next there will be A Bible for Left-handed Mothers-to-be in the Second Trimester of Their Pregnancy.” But all these were only adaptations of the traditional text. The new sixty-seven-book Bible rewrote the sales records in Bible publishing.

  The ICO had authorized the Boston law firm of Allen, Stover, Gemrich, Haenicke, and Hume to handle the crush of publishers lining up at their doors. Known for their expertise in international rights and permissions, they monitored worldwide sales of the new edition so well that a record 93 percent of global sales were legitimate. There were exceptions, of course. Customs officials in Long Beach, California, had to seize a whole boatload of the new Bibles because they were pirated editions printed in China with a fake Zondervan imprint.

  Although Jon and Shannon disliked the name “The New Bible” because it could suggest that the traditional version was now supplanted, this was the name bestowed on it by the vast public. And because global sales of the New Bible quickly reached truly biblical proportions, the phrase “an embarrassment of riches” had fresh meaning for Jon and the ICO. Their royalties were not large; they were simply prodigious.

  Meetings of the ICO were now devoted to the happy task of deciding how to share the wealth. The repository was the Institute of Christian Origins Foundation, and interviews with Warren Buffett and officers of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation were helpful. While theirs were secular in nature, the ICO Foundation would serve primarily Christian and biblical interests. Accordingly, the primary beneficiaries were: • The Institute of Christian Origins, Cambridge, Massachusetts Charity began at home. A large endowment fund was established to underwrite an expanded research program for the ICO in all its endeavors, present and future. • The Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople The enclave in Istanbul was landlocked and needed to expand. Now it could buy up surrounding properties in overcrowded Istanbul and enjoy something that actually resembled a campus. This was but a debt repaid. • The Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts Its program of photographing and/or purchasing biblical manuscripts across the world could now be fully funded and, in fact, prioritized because of the race against time to secure the texts before inevitable deterioration. • Endowment for Interfaith Dialogue In greater efforts toward Christian unity, far more interchange between Eastern and Western Christendom was necessary, as well as between Protestants and the rest of Christendom.

  Soon other beneficiaries included an Endowment for Christian-Jewish Dialogue and an Endowment for Christian-Muslim Dialogue. The list eventually ran to seven pages.

  Abbas al-Rashid and Jon remained in close touch. Abbas’s commencement address at al-Azhar University, “Freedom for Truth,” was widely published in tract form throughout the Islamic world, provoking the ire of the orthodox but kindling a powerful response among moderate Muslims everywhere. Some were calling Abbas the long-awaited Muslim Martin Luther for championing the cause of reform in Islam. Too long the moderate Muslim majority had failed to speak out. Whether their long silence had been prompted by fear of the jihadists or general passivity, they now became far more vocal through such moderate organizations as the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, headed by Dr. Zuhdi Jasser. An American version of Abbas al-Rashid, Jasser and his colleagues vigorously opposed extremism in Islam in all its forms.

  A European counterpart surfaced to oppose the fiery rhetoric of the radical mullahs who were trying to hijack Islam. In March 2010, Tahir ul-Qadri, a Pakistani sheikh in London, had issued a public declaration declaring that terrorists were the very enemies of Islam and that suicide bombers were destined not for heaven but for hell. Abbas included his statement in tracts that were published in the hundreds of thousands and dropped over Taliban strongholds in Afghanistan and al-Qaeda camps in Pakistan and elsewhere. Some of the tracts were released from helium balloons floating over their targets, and they had a surprising impact. Double agents told of heated discussions now taking place in jihadist camps, recruits no longer satisfied with their instructors’ calls for violence.

  The tracts quoted the Qur’an as prohibiting attacks against the innocent (Sura 5:32) and against suicide in both the Qur’an (Sura 4:29) and the hadith (Bukhari 23:446). They concluded with the warning: Remember, you are being deluded by false teachers into committing murder against the innocent and against your own selves. This violates the very heart of Islam.

  Thinking for themselves, many Muslim youth started abandoning terrorist cells. As an overlooked communication device, the lowly tract was accomplishing big results.

  Having escaped American justice, Osman al-Ghazali had pleaded with his wife and daughter to join him in Cairo. But they were genuine converts to Christianity and were perfectly horrified to learn of his role as Judas Iscariot. Osman promised that they could remain Christian and attend the Coptic Cathedral in Cairo, where Christian Pope Shenouda III was in charge.

  They countered with what they thought a far better plan: Osm
an must, instead, return to the States, sincerely repent of his crime, and suffer whatever civil or criminal consequences were necessary. In view of the horror stories regarding American women moving to the Middle East only to learn that the husbands they had trusted were now misogynist tyrants operating under sharia law, their response was inevitable.

  When Osman refused their terms, Fatima al-Ghazali was granted a civil divorce by the Massachusetts courts on the basis of desertion. She later wrote a bestselling expose, titled Women Victims of Islam. Needless to say, it was banned in Baghdad and throughout the Middle East.

  Some months after Osman arrived in Egypt, he had business in Istanbul and used the occasion to visit the radical cadre that had engineered the theft of the Constantine Codex. He called the cell members “greedy, stupid swine” for trying to get a ransom for the codex instead of destroying it, as he had specified. He even suggested that they rename their group “Idiots for Islam” for having blown his master plan out of the water. It seems they didn’t like to be called such nasty names, so they pounded Osman bloody. He emerged with a broken nose that never healed properly, and he spent his days in a low-paying job as translator at Cairo University Library, a lonely man bitter at the world, bitter even at Allah.

  For Jon, Shannon, and the ICO, as the months rolled on, the royalties rolled in. The charity list lengthened. A generous sector of their largesse, however, would always be devoted to the purposes for which the ICO was founded: to expand knowledge of the biblical world in general, the origins of Christianity in particular. Spending their massive sums turned out to be a true chore for the ICO, but a welcome one. In time, however, at Jon and Shannon’s urging, the ICO surrendered its copyright of the new material in the Constantine Codex and threw it open to the world for scholarship and publication. The codex itself was finally committed to the Library of Congress for the ultimate in security, with ownership retained by the Ecumenical Patriarch.

  At last, Jon and Shannon could spend more time at Cape Cod. In previous exploits, they had defended Christianity against diabolical fraud as well as a false Christ. Now they had even enhanced the credibility of its Holy Book-all in all, a rather respectable record. They could only wonder what intriguing adventures might await them in the future.

  Reality Note

  The first draft of this novel was completed six months before the Vatican announcement on June 28, 2009, that a probe had in fact been drilled through the lid of the sarcophagus at St. Paul Outside the Walls in Rome and that some purple linen and bone fragments were retrieved that dated back to the first or second century AD. The plot in this novel, then, turned out to be prophetic in imagining how the interior of the sarcophagus might be revealed. As of this date, however, the Vatican has not undertaken any further examination of the interior of the sarcophagus, especially to determine if there is a skull, attached or detached.

  That Constantine the Great authorized Eusebius of Caesarea to have fifty elaborate copies of the Bible prepared for use in the early church is absolutely historical. Strangely, not one of these has been found to date, although some scholars think that the Sinaiticus might be one. Whether such a discovery would have included the two documents featured in this novel is not known. But it is indeed possible that either or even both might surface someday or that a biblical manuscript might be discovered that would merit inclusion in the Canon.

  Such inclusion would certainly require action by an ecumenical church council. Unfortunately, however, the way any such universal council might be constituted, as set forth in this novel, is quite remote at present. The two largest components of Christendom-Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy-have not yet achieved a degree of mutual trust even to hold a joint conclave. Perhaps in decades (or centuries) to come it might indeed be possible, with Protestants participating as well.

  Accordingly, the Vatican III ecumenical council referred to in this book is also fictional and first appeared in my prior novel, More Than a Skeleton. A council with such a name, however, might indeed take place in the future.

  As for the two new biblical documents “discovered” in this novel, one should not conclude that our present Scriptures are in any way incomplete or insufficient without such addenda. They are merely what many biblical scholars would put at the top of their wish list were such a manuscript discovery to take place in fact.

  Finally, the question of whether ancient texts-biblical or secular-may be copyrighted successfully is rather open, especially if the texts require some critical reconstruction. In America, the prevailing view is that such texts are in the public domain and do not have copyright protection; whereas in Europe and elsewhere, this is not necessarily the case. Several years ago, for example, the German Bible Society invoked copyright protection on the Nestle edition of the Greek New Testament, claiming that Zondervan’s New International Version translation relied too heavily (though justifiably) on the Nestle text. Yet it has not brought suit against the Grand Rapids publisher to date.

  Thank you for reading these pages.

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