“Look at the upper right corner, Jon.”
“Hey, it’s starting to part!” He aimed the steam jet to this vulnerable spot, opening it further. “Yessss…,” he crooned.
Slowly, and with admirable cooperation, the two pages started parting from one another, providing additional avenues for the steam to penetrate.
“Fabulous! It’s working.”
Soon the pages separated entirely. Jon quickly scanned the material for any damage, but while the uncial lettering was damp and even wet at places, the ink had not run. Evidently, a deposit of ink that had clung to its parchment for seventeen centuries was not going to be deterred by a little steam.
“Thank God!” Jon whispered. Triumphantly he put a paper towel under both parted pages and then small weights at the edges of the pages to keep them open. “Let’s go get some coffee, sweetheart,” he said. “We can’t do a thing until these pages dry.”
And they did remember to unplug the hot plate.
When they returned, the pages had dried, but just to make certain, they inserted paper towels between the now-parted pages to absorb any remaining moisture. Matthew and Mark were now ready for photographing. Starting at the beginning, they photographed each page digitally, then with film, and finally with ultraviolet and infrared light to detect whether any of the vellum had been used previously and erased-a palimpsest. While this was unlikely in view of Constantine’s commission, they would overlook nothing.
This consumed the rest of the day and might even have been deemed tedious were it not for the critical importance of the codex for future New Testament manuscript research. When they had finished, around 4 p.m., Matthew and Mark had surrendered their texts. Tomorrow, Luke, John, and perhaps Acts would hopefully do the same.
Under any other circumstances, Jon and Shannon would have spent the evening at one of the more prominent night spots in Istanbul-or perhaps on a dinner cruise along the Bosporus. In view of their enthralling project, however, they hardly felt deprived at the lack of time for such comparatively frivolous pursuits. They excused Ferris and al-Ghazali for that purpose. Instead, it was time to “view the rushes” of the day’s shooting-to borrow a phrase from Hollywood. Jon had brought along his Eberhard Nestle Greek New Testament-the latest edition of which contained the optimal readings of the ancient Greek manuscripts in attempting to provide the most exact version of what Matthew and the others had originally written down.
Jon found remarkable correlations between the readings in the codex and the latest Nestle edition. Again and again, as he plowed through Matthew’s text, he would comment, “Right on!… Yes… Three cheers for textual scholarship!” Still, there were a few interesting variations in the Constantinian text. “Future editions of Nestle will have to take these into account,” he told Shannon.
“Provided that all this is authentic,” she cautioned.
“Right. But I’ll bet my very life that it is.”
After their catered dinner, Jon said he was particularly concerned as to how well the adhering pages would show up in the photography after their steam treatment. Filling his laptop screen with the now-liberated last page of Mark’s Gospel, Jon said, “Look, Shannon, no difference from the others. They all reproduced very nicely.”
Then she noticed a growing frown on the face of her husband. He was staring so intently at the screen of his laptop that she wondered if some electronic genie might be hypnotizing him.
“What’s wrong, Jon?”
“Something’s… very strange here. We’re at Mark’s last chapter, but it should end with… with about a half of one column, not three.” Jon hauled out his Nestle and compared it with the codex. Then he seized a pen and began translating the three extra columns of the codex.
Shannon realized he’d be busy for a while, so she rinsed out the coffeemaker and put on a fresh pot to brew. She suspected it would be another late night. But who was complaining?
She glanced at Jon to see how he was progressing. He must be getting tired, poor guy. His hand seemed to be trembling as he wrote feverishly on the notepad beside his computer.
“Honey, would you like some coffee?”
Jon seemed to be in a trance as he responded oddly, “What time is it, Shannon?”
“Nine thirty. Why do you ask?”
“Remember that time well.” He put down his pen and turned in his chair to look at her. With an obvious tremor in his voice, he said slowly, “Seventeen centuries of New Testament scholarship will change from this point on, darling. You will not believe what we have here!”
“What? What is it?”
He shook his head as if trying to clear his thoughts. “This seems to be… seems to be nothing less than… the lost ending of Mark, the incredible, mind-boggling lost ending of Mark!”
“No way. What are you talking about?” Shannon knew that Mark could not possibly have ended his Gospel account with the downer clause “And they [the women] said nothing to any one, for they were afraid,” while describing the glorious resurrection of Jesus. And yet that was how the Sinaiticus, the Vaticanus, the Alexandrinus, and many other early manuscripts ended. It had been the greatest problem in New Testament scholarship for many centuries. To be sure, later hands added their versions after Mark 16:8. The King James Bible, for example, and many later versions included verses 9 through 20, but these were not in the earliest Greek manuscripts. The problem was even more acute in that Mark was probably the earliest evangelist to report the Resurrection.
Jon sat down and clasped his head in both hands. “Eusebius must have found a very early manuscript of Mark that had the complete text!”
Shannon stared in wonderment at her husband. “This is simply beyond belief, Jon! What in the world does the text say?”
Jon seemed to be in another world, from which he was returned by Shannon’s question. “The text? Oh yes, the text…”
For the next three hours, Jon pored over the new material and wrote out sentence after sentence in translation, occasionally consulting the Arndt-Gingrich-Danker Lexicon of the New Testament, which he had brought along on disk. Finally he banged his fist on the desk, and with a great “YES!” he stood and said, with contrived pomposity, “Please take your seat, madam. You are about to hear words that the Christian world has not seen or heard since a generation or two after Jesus himself.
“This, of course, is a rough translation, which we’ll improve later on. It picks up after Mark 16:8, where the women flee from the Resurrection tomb and quote, ‘said nothing to any one, for they were afraid’-that puzzling and totally unsatisfactory ending. Now, however, read how Mark really continued his Gospel immediately after that verse.” He handed her his translation: But immediately Jesus met them on the way and said, “Greetings!” In great joy, they rushed to him and fell down on their knees and worshiped him. And Jesus said, “Don’t be afraid. I told you that I would rise from the dead, just as the prophets had predicted. And now you must take heart and tell the brethren to go to Galilee, where I will meet them at the mountain where I was transfigured before their eyes.” And then they saw him no more. In glad exultation, they immediately rushed to tell the eleven disciples what they had seen. At first they did not believe the women but thought that their words were idle tales. But then Jesus himself appeared to them in the room where they were hiding in Jerusalem for fear of the Jews. He criticized them for their unbelief and showed from Scripture that he would indeed rise from the grave. He even ate something before their eyes to show that he was not a spirit, as they had feared. Then he left them again. In great joy, the eleven immediately went to the mountain in Galilee where Jesus had directed them. Again Jesus appeared to them and said, “Go and make disciples of all people in all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. You must also teach them to obey all my commandments, for I will be with you always.” Again he left them but reappeared to them and the other believers for forty days after he rose from the dead. At last, in Jerusalem, where they had returned, Jesus again reminded them that they, as his witnesses, were to proclaim repentance and forgiveness of sins in his name to all nations. Then he led them out of the city to the Mount of Olives near Bethany, where he ascended into the heaven from which he had come. And the disciples returned to Jerusalem with great joy, telling the good news to all, and awaiting the blessing of the Holy Spirit.