“Father,” he whispered, “tell me what I’m looking at.”
Hazy clouds dotted the page where the restorers had removed the smudges of censorship. Before our eyes was the verse that had vexed Ugo most. The one he had been dying to uncover.
“It says cloth,” I said. “Singular.”
“Ha! That supports the Shroud!”
He was excited but not jubilant. He’d had enough lessons by then to understand that Tatian could’ve chosen that word for other reasons. In fact, the word Tatian used—οθονίο, or “strip of cloth”—was John’s word, which Tatian had changed from plural to singular rather than using the completely different word found in the other gospels. Confronted by this discrepancy in the gospel testimony, Tatian had split the difference, and the Alogi had dutifully smudged it out. This proved nothing.
But there was more here.
“Look,” I said, pointing to a word on the page.
According to Mark and Matthew, Jesus was offered a mixture of wine and gall to numb the pain of crucifixion. But Tatian was a teetotaler. He didn’t want the Messiah drinking wine. So the page before us had changed the word from wine to vinegar.
“It’s happening again,” I said. “He’s changing the text.”
Ugo signaled to a conservator and called, “Bring me the photos of the other pages in this section.”
I scoured the pictures for other examples.
ΚΑΙΠΛΕΞΑΝΤΕΣΣΤΕΦΑΝΟΝΕΞΑΚΑΝΘΩΝΕΠΕΘΗΚΑΝΕΠΙΤΗΝΚΕΦΑΛΗΝ.
“And plaiting a crown of thorns,” I said, “they put it on his head.”
Ugo watched but said nothing.
ΚΑΙΕΤΥΠΤΟΝΑΥΤΟΥΤΗΝΚΕΦΑΛΗΝΚΑΛΑΜΩΙ.
“They struck his head with a reed.”
ΚΑΙΠΑΡΕΔΩΚΕΝΤΟΝΙΗΣΟΥΝΦΡΑΓΕΛΛΩΣΑΣΙΝΑΣΤΑΥΡΩΘΗ.
“And having scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified.”
“What are you looking for?” Ugo asked.
These were the injuries that produced visible marks on the Shroud. So if Tatian had seen the Shroud, then he might’ve been tempted to enrich these verses with his own knowledge, just as he’d done elsewhere. The gospels don’t say how often Jesus was scourged or how badly his wounds bled. They don’t mention which side of him was stabbed by a spear or where each nail of the crucifixion pierced him. Only the Shroud maps this gore. And to Tatian, who wrote the Diatessaron at a time when Christians were suffering bloody persecution across the Roman Empire, it might have seemed important to make the gospels fully express the horror of Jesus’ torture.
“I’m looking for anything different,” I said. “Added or taken away.”
“Get a Bible for Father Alex,” Ugo called out.
But I waved him off. “I don’t need it. I know these verses.”
Yet there seemed to be nothing changed. Not a word.