The Fifth Gospel(213)

                                                              Luke 23:46–47

                                                                  is a fake. Studying the Diatessaron has taught me what a gross misreading we’ve been guilty of. The same gross misreading, in fact, that reveals the truth about the Shroud.



                                                                                   My discovery is outlined in the proof enclosed here. Please read it carefully, as this is what I’ll be telling your friends at the Casina. In the meantime, I send my best to Michael, who I know has become your close follower.



                                                              John 19:34

                                                                  In friendship,



                                                                                   Ugo



                                          I hear my voice shaking when I utter those two words.

            “A fake?”

            Lucio doesn’t answer.

            But I realize, as I stare at the lines of Greek on the photographic enlargement, that I don’t need him to. My heart has gone cold. My body feels brittle. This is what Ugo meant. This is what he found.

            The page of the Diatessaron before me combines the testimony of all four gospels about the end of Jesus’ life. About his final moments on the cross. But not his burial. Not the Shroud. Not yet. Ugo spent weeks studying every detail of the burial accounts, only to make his discovery where he didn’t expect it.

            The damning fact isn’t what the gospels say about the cloth. It’s what the gospels say about the wounds on the cloth.



            THERE ARE NINE LINES of text on this Diatessaron page that stand out. The reason they stand out is that our conservators removed the blot of censorship left by the Alogi but couldn’t get it all. A hint of the ancient stain remains, making these nine lines darker than the ones around them. Thus any passerby can tell they must’ve come from the only gospel the Alogi objected to: John. And this simple observation is what will doom the Shroud.

            The seven lines include John 19:34, the last verse Ugo quoted in his letter. The significance of John 19:34 is hard to see straight-on. But it’s much easier to see when approached from the very spot where Ugo was the last time we worked together: the story of Doubting Thomas.

            Doubting Thomas is John’s creation. No other gospel claims Thomas needed to see and touch Christ’s wounds. But there’s an oddity about the Thomas story that Ugo had noticed in our final meeting: namely, a very similar story is told by Luke. According to Luke’s version, Christ appeared to the frightened disciples after the Resurrection, and in order to prove that He was a resurrected man rather than a terrifying ghost, He showed them His wounds. Ugo realized that a comparison between Luke’s story and John’s story would reveal the details that John had changed. And the most visible difference was that John had focused the story on Thomas—so that was where Ugo, in turn, focused. Later, though, he must’ve noticed the much smaller, and yet far more destructive, difference: that the wounds mentioned in Luke are not the same as the wounds mentioned in John.