The Fifth Gospel(44)

            “Then what is it?”

            I squinted. “These are brushstrokes.”

            “What?”

            “These stains are paint. Someone already found this book. It’s been censored.”



* * *



            THE BLOTS WERE everywhere. Swallowing up words, phrases, entire verses. The text beneath was impossible to read.

            In shock, Ugo murmured, “You’re saying someone got to this book before we did?”

            “Not anytime recently. This paint looks very old.”

            I scanned the text, trying to understand what I was seeing.

            And Joseph took down Jesus’ body. and wrapped it in the clean linen a new tomb hewn in the rock where no one had ever been laid. It was the day of Preparation, and the Sabbath was beginning, so they laid him in it and rolled a great stone against the door of the tomb, and departed.

            “Who did it?” Ugo asked.

            I closed my eyes. I knew these gospel verses by rote. Fusing together the testimony of all four gospels would yield:

            And Joseph took down Jesus’ body. Nicodemus, who had at first come to him by night, came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pounds’ weight. They took the body of Jesus, and wrapped it in the clean linen cloth/cloths. Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb hewn in the rock where no one had ever been laid. It was the Jewish day of Preparation, and the Sabbath was beginning, so as the tomb was close at hand, they laid him in it and rolled a great stone against the door of the tomb, and departed.

            The censored parts were about the burial spices, the shroud, the man named Nicodemus, and—strangest of all—the word Jewish. The only unknown was whether the word for the burial linen would be singular or plural: three of the four gospels use the Greek word sindon, meaning “cloth” or “shroud”; the other uses othonia, meaning “cloths,” plural.

            I could think of just one thing that connected these censored words.

            To be sure of it, I checked the rest of the column.

            “Ugo,” I whispered, “do you have any idea how old this manuscript is?”

            “Fourth or fifth century, I estimate,” he said.

            I shook my head. “I think it’s older than that.”

            A nervous smile crossed his face. “How much older?”

            I tried to contain the trembling in my hands. “Nicodemus is mentioned only in the gospel of John. So are the burial spices. So is the word Jewish in this final sentence. Everything this censor cut out was from the gospel of John.”

            “What does that tell us?”

            “There was a group of Christians called the Alogi. They wanted John’s gospel rejected. I think they censored this manuscript.”

            “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

            “The Alogi existed in the late one hundreds AD. This manuscript is probably the oldest complete gospel manuscript in the world.”

            He looked despondent. “So the word they censored must be cloths. That’s the word John uses.” Then he registered what I’d said. “Sorry, repeat that?”

            “I said, this is probably the oldest—”

            Only then, when he interrupted me, did I understand the depth of his obsession.

            “No. Before that. You said these people wanted to reject the gospel of John. Why?”