Reading Online Novel

The Fifth Gospel(138)



            “What do you see?” Ugo asked.

            “Nothing.”

            “Are you sure? Look again.”

            But there was no need to look again. From the first torture until the last mention of the burial cloth, the account given in the gospels is scarcely a thousand words. I knew those words by heart.

            “Maybe we’re not looking in the right places,” I suggested.

            Ugo ran an anxious hand through his hair.

            “There are dozens of pages left to be restored,” I said. “It could be anywhere. We’ll just have to be patient.”

            But Ugo ran a finger under his nose, considering something, then whispered, “Maybe not. Come with me. There’s something I want you to see.”



* * *



            I FOLLOWED HIM BACK to his apartment.

            “This is confidential,” he said, wringing his hands with eagerness. “Do you understand?”

            I nodded. Not since our initial meeting here, when he first described his exhibit, had I seen him so carried away.

            “I’ve always proposed that the Shroud,” he said, “was brought to Edessa after the Crucifixion. Around 33 AD, do we agree?”

            I nodded.

            “We don’t have to be exact,” he continued, “since the Diatessaron wasn’t written until 180 AD. The point is: Shroud first, Diatessaron second. When the book was written in Edessa, the cloth was already there.”

            “Okay.”

            “But,” he said with a glint in his eye, “what happens if we apply the same logic to John?”

            “What do you mean?”

            “The gospel of John was written around 90 AD. So the same idea applies. Shroud first, book second. The cloth was in Edessa before John was written.”

            “But Ugo—”

            “Hear me out. Since you’ve shown me that John adds and subtracts material as he sees fit, what if John tells us something new about the Shroud in his gospel?”

            I lifted a hand to stop him. “Ugo, you can’t make that leap. There’s a geography problem. Tatian was writing in Edessa. If the Shroud was there, he would’ve seen it. But John wasn’t writing in Edessa. So how would he have seen it?”

            Before answering, Ugo stepped back toward a bookcase and unraveled a map that was waiting there in a scroll. It showed ancient Syria, from the coast of the Mediterranean to the Euphrates and Tigris in the east. His index finger stabbed at a familiar point.

            “The city of Antioch,” he said. “One of the likeliest places John was written.” His thumb moved an inch inland. “The city of Edessa. Where the Shroud was.” He glanced up at me. “Sister cities. If the Shroud arrived in Edessa around 30 AD, news would’ve reached Antioch long before 90.”

            I shook my head. “Ugo, I think this assumes too much.”

            “Why? We have plenty of historical records showing that news traveled between the cities.”

            I fidgeted in my seat, feeling flustered. It was true that John had incorporated new material into the gospel corpus—hints of gnostic ideas and pagan philosophies and new Christian attitudes toward Jews—but Ugo was proposing something different. Something worse: that John’s gospel was as tainted by personal prejudice and local color as the Diatessaron. The real problem wasn’t geography. It was personality. Tatian was a brilliant but eccentric loner, a man who drifted further and further from mainline Christianity. He changed the gospels to agree with his sectarian beliefs. The author of John, whoever he might have been, was a philosophical genius who set his sights on something different and much higher. Something essential to all Christians. The invisible truth about God.