“Well, Constantine’s name is on it, so it must be significant. But what about that date? Constantine died in 337, but this is from 1088, and we have many materials from the eleventh century.”
“That’s 1088 AUC, Shannon. Ab urbe condita -from the founding of the city.”
“Rome, of course-founded 753 BC!” Shannon recalled. “Okay, so our date is 1088 minus 753 or… AD 335?”
“Right. And that’s exactly when Eusebius says Constantine commissioned him to do this.”
“So this could be the real thing, Jon?”
He slowly shook his head. “I’d hate to be premature, but yes, it could well be.” He broke into a great smile. “It’s well known that Constantine had commissioned Eusebius to prepare fifty elegant copies of Scripture, but none of them has ever been found. And just look at the layout: four handsome columns of beautiful Greek lettering on each page of vellum, just like the Codex Sinaiticus, which dates only a bit later.”
Jon paged further in growing excitement. “Aside from the Sinaiticus, we have only two other codices from that time: the Vaticanus and the Alexandrinus. This is… this could be… well, I’m not given to superlatives. Let’s just say that this might be a… a simply stupendous find. Depending on what the text says, this could… well, it could be a discovery far more important than even the Dead Sea Scrolls! How in the world, Shannon, do you have such off-the-wall great luck, such over-the-top serendipity, that-?”
“Oh, Professor Weber,” said Brother Gregorios, who had just appeared in the doorway, “have you seen enough of our tattered collection?”
“Yes, thank you, good brother.” Then he whispered to Shannon, “Just put this back exactly where you found it.”
On the way back to the hotel, Jon unpacked his strategy. “We had no time to get into the text, Shannon, so telling anyone there what we found would have been totally premature. And foolish! If the thing is authentic-and how in the world could it not be?-it will stun the entire scholarly world. Report it too early, and it would become a cause celebre and complicate any evaluation. We could even be denied further access to it.” If Jon had one questionable habit, it was his proclivity to overexplain things to people, born of many years’ teaching university undergrads, who, in fact, needed his careful reiteration of what might have seemed obvious.
The moment they returned to the Hilton, Jon headed for his laptop, found the folder on the early church fathers, and opened a work by Eusebius called Vita Constantini – The Life of Constantine. He paged through the document until he came to chapters 36 and 37, where he read aloud, for Shannon’s benefit, the dated though colorful translation from The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church. It began with Eusebius’s transcription of Constantine’s own letter, written from Constantinople to Eusebius in Caesarea. VICTOR CONSTANTINUS, MAXIMUS AUGUSTUS to Eusebius, It happens, through the favoring providence of God, our Savior, that great numbers have united themselves to the most holy church in the city which is called by my name. It seems, therefore, highly requisite, since that city is rapidly advancing in prosperity in all other respects, that the number of churches should also be increased. Do you, therefore, receive with all readiness my determination on this behalf. I have thought it expedient to instruct your Prudence to order fifty copies of the sacred Scriptures, the provision and use of which you know to be most needful for the instruction of the Church, to be written on prepared parchment in a legible manner, and in a convenient, portable form, by professional transcribers thoroughly practiced in their art. The procurator of the diocese has also received instructions by letter from our Clemency to be careful to furnish all things necessary for the preparation of such copies; and it will be for you to take special care that they be completed with as little delay as possible. You have authority also, in virtue of this letter, to use two of the public carriages for their conveyance, by which arrangement the copies when fairly written will most easily be forwarded for my personal inspection; and one of the deacons of your church may be entrusted with this service, who, on his arrival here, shall experience my liberality. God preserve you, beloved brother.
Jon looked up from the screen in jubilation. “What you found was written on parchment, Shannon. You found one of the fifty. Scholars have been looking for that edition since the early centuries of the church!”
“Yes, but don’t the ‘Scriptures’ ordered by Constantine include the Old Testament? I just found the New.”
“Well, they were supposed to be portable, so they were most likely in two volumes, exactly as the title ‘Book Two’ implies. Anyhow, in the next lines, Eusebius tells how he responded to the emperor’s letter.” Such were the emperor’s commands, which were followed by the immediate execution of the work itself, which we sent him in magnificent and elaborately bound volumes of a threefold and fourfold form. This fact is attested by another letter, which the emperor wrote in acknowledgment…
“‘Threefold and fourfold form’? Whatever can that mean?” Jon wondered.
“Maybe three or four columns of writing per page?” Shannon suggested.
“Why not? Excellent, Shannon! What we saw were four columns per page, and remember how carefully the calfskin cover had originally been tooled? That’s it! That’s one of them!”
Shannon smiled, but her reserve showed that she wasn’t quite ready to celebrate. She shook her head and asked, “But why would they put something so incredibly valuable as that in their junk room?”
“Well, who knows when it landed there? We’ll try to find out. But probably they did it for some stupidly simple reason, such as a missing back cover. That room was full of mangled books.”
“Okay, Jon, let your mind roam. What, finally, is the ‘world-shaking’ importance here? Might it not be simply an early edition of the New Testament that we all know? And if so, what’s the big deal?”
“You know the rule, Shannon: the earlier, the more authoritative. The Bible has come down to us with thousands of tiny variations. None of them amount to a hill of beans, despite sensationalizing claims to the contrary. But now textual scholars will have a tremendous new source to work with in getting us the best possible reading of what the biblical writers actually wrote. And who knows what else we might find in the text? For openers, even issues regarding the Canon come into play here: what books are included in that early New Testament, and which are left out?”
Shannon quickly found Jon’s enthusiasm contagious and said, in a beaming smile, “I bet you’ll have trouble sleeping tonight!”
“You bet, and for the next two nights, my darling, since the debate is tomorrow. But after that, I’m loading up our cameras with freshly charged batteries to photograph every last inch of that incredible document.”
In a great bound, Jon now leaped to the mini fridge in their suite, hauled out a bottle of Dom Perignon, popped the cork, and filled two glasses with bubbly. “I know this is too traditional, sweetheart, but… a toast to Shannon Jennings Weber, amazing archaeologist, scintillating scholar, dauntless discoverer of precious codices, and magnificent mate! By the way, we’ll both have trouble sleeping tonight!”
The night before the debate was indeed rather sleepless for Jon, and not only because he and Shannon were celebrating God’s magnificent gift of marital love-itself a proof of his existence. He was also chagrined to realize that instead of fighting nervous concern over the forthcoming debate, his mind was focused on the ancient codex Shannon had discovered. It was almost as if he had told himself, “Let’s get this debate thing out of the way so I can finally read what’s in that document!”