Now the archbishop’s smile faded into a frown. “Unfortunately, we cannot approve your list as it now stands.”
Jon shot a glance at Shannon that said, Well, our worst fears are nicely confirmed.
“But there will be no problem,” the archbishop added, a twinkle in his eye, “if you will add a sixth condition, which we have written out. It is similar to provision five, but stronger.” He handed Jon and Shannon the second document. 6. Except in the case of heretical writings, if upon reading the ancient texts in the photographs, a word, phrase, or paragraph appears that seems in any way to contradict, threaten, or imperil the holy, ecumenical beliefs of Eastern Orthodoxy, the text or translation editor(s) must report this immediately to the offices of the archbishop of Athens rather than making that text public. Nor shall they in any way publicize this text but instead promise to keep this information absolutely confidential until it is released by the archbishop.
When Jon frowned a bit while reading, Christodoulos commented, “Please understand, dear friends, that this is not intended as censorship, but rather as a measure that will alert us to give a proper answer for such an item, should it arise.”
Jon brightened. “In that sense, we can certainly sympathize with your concerns, Your Beatitude, since worthless reinterpretations of Jesus and the church that he founded are all the rage in the print and electronic media today. Our sensationalist novelists and theologians would just love to twist some obscure line in an ancient source to discredit Christianity. We’ll gladly accept stipulation six.”
“Fine, then. We shall be happy to write your letter of introduction with the stipulations listed and send it by courier to… Where are you staying?”
“At the Grande Bretagne.”
“Excellent. It will be done.”
As they were standing to leave, Jon, in a carefully rehearsed afterthought, asked, “By the way, Your Beatitude, among the many fine textual scholars in the Church of Greece, who, in your estimation, is the foremost authority on early Greek orthography?”
“Classical Greek or koine?”
“ Koine. I should have specified that.”
“Ah, the language of the New Testament and the early church fathers. Well, this question is very easy to answer. Our outstanding authority here is Father Miltiades Papandriou at Oros Agiou.”
Jon concurred with a smile. “Had you replied with any other name, I would have asked you, ‘Why not Papandriou at Mount Athos?’”
“So then, you were only ‘testing me,’ as it were?” he asked. If Christodoulos had been frowning, it would have been a sure sign that Jon had stepped over the line. But the genial archbishop had a broad smile.
“No, it was just a case of reconfirmation. Father Miltiades is famed the world over for his ability to scan Greek lettering and slot it accurately into the nearest half century.”
“Probably the nearest quarter century or even decade!” the archbishop chuckled. “Do you plan to consult with Father Miltiades?”
Shannon quickly replied, “We’d be delighted to do that, Your Beatitude, if that were possible.”
Christodoulos shook his head sadly. “Unfortunately, Madame Weber, that is not possible. Not possible… for you,” he emphasized, then smiled. “But I can easily arrange it for your husband.”
“Oh, that’s right; do pardon my error!” she replied. “No female can enter the monastery enclave on Mount Athos!”
“Quite right, Madame Weber. Perhaps someday that will change, but that someday has not yet arrived. Shall I prepare a letter of introduction also for Father Miltiades, Professor Weber?”
“I would then be doubly grateful to you, Your Beatitude. We would also like his evaluation of a Greek text my wife found at Pella in Jordan some months ago.” The words were out before Jon quite realized what he was saying. What if the archbishop wanted to know more about that text? At least, thank God, he had not used the term manuscript.
“Kalos,” Christodoulos replied. “I shall do so and send the letter along with the other material.”
Jon breathed a sigh of relief and asked, “Do you think Father Miltiades will be amenable to my visit?”
The archbishop chuckled. “ Amenable? He will be grateful to me for sending him an internationally known scholar on the life of Christ, though he will not know he was denied a visit by this very lovely archaeologist who wished to accompany him.”
“You are very generous, Your Beatitude,” Shannon said with a shade of blush, “and we are deeply in your debt. Ef charisto.”
“ Parakalo, my friends. Parakalo.”
After a week in Athens getting approval for subsequent teams to photograph biblical manuscripts at the National Library and the University of Athens, Jon and Shannon revived the tourist aspect of their journey by renting a car and driving northward on Greece’s National Road 1 toward Thessalonica and Mount Athos. The “Holy Mountain” indeed, Athos had more monasteries per square mile than any place on earth.
While Shannon snoozed, Jon was ruminating to himself on the why of monasticism in almost every creed in the world, especially including Christianity. In the Old Testament, Elijah, Elisha, and the other great prophets each seemed to have had a desert experience-either alone or with like-minded followers. In the New, where did John the Baptist, the forerunner of Jesus, hold forth? In the wilds of Judea, of course, though near the Jordan for his baptisms. And Jesus himself? Forty days in the wilderness at the start of his ministry, the background for his famous temptation by Satan. St. Paul? Same story. Following his celebrated conversion on the Damascus Road, he spent almost the next three years in the Arabian desert, gearing up for his ministry.
The lure of the solitary tracts, the wilderness, the wastelands. And not just in Judeo-Christianity. Five centuries before the birth of Christ, an Indian prince named Siddhartha Gautama had left his wife and nine-year-old son for meditation in the forest to explore the meaning of life. And what was a forest, in terms of solitude, but a desert with many trees? He was there for seven years until he finally found the answer while sitting under the Bodhi tree and became the first “Buddha,” or “Enlightened One.” Zarathustra had had his wilderness experience as well, and the list went on and on.
Clearly, you couldn’t be a self-respecting religious luminary unless a desert experience was in your resume, Jon reflected. But why? Probably it was a case of clearer communication with God when one was in the wilds and far from the blandishments and seductions of life in the everyday world. Jon doubted that God spoke more loudly in the desert; it was just easier to hear him there.
Yet early Christianity was very outgoing and social, and for a time it had even seemed that it might be the first world religion without monks. Then, in the third century, a holy man by the name of Anthony fled into the Egyptian desert for a life of solitary contemplation, until the tour buses full of pilgrims, so to speak, arrived from Alexandria to see the holy hermit and the cave where he lived. Others, similarly inclined, sought out caves nearby and eventually monastic communities were born.
Except for anchorites like St. Simeon Stylites, who climbed atop a pole in Syria and sat there for the next thirty-plus years, monasteries were the rule thereafter. It remained only for St. Benedict, in the sixth century, to provide his famous threefold vow of poverty, chastity, and obedience to guide monasticism thenceforth.
But the monastic to whom Jon and his colleagues owed an incalculable debt was Cassiodorus, the sixth-century monk who had suggested that monasteries not only worship the Lord seven times a day and grow their own groceries, but also recopy ancient manuscripts so that priceless information from antiquity would not be lost. And so it was that monks in the medieval world preserved so much of the past tense of Western civilization.
Now they neared Kalambaka on the plains of Thessaly, beyond the halfway point to Thessalonica, where Jon left the main roads for an inevitable visit to Meteora. They had to take in Meteora, of course, and its series of monasteries that were perched precariously atop huge towers of rock. Quite aside from their role as tourist magnets, the monasteries were second in importance only to Mount Athos itself.