Shannon put down the translation and realized she’d been quietly weeping. She wiped her eyes, shaking her head back and forth in awe over what she had just read. Finally she said, “So that’s what happened after the record in Acts breaks off! Jon, this is just… fabulous new information-absolutely fabulous! But help me a bit with these new characters. Seneca I know, but who is that Tigellinus character?”
“Seneca and Tigellinus were the good and bad influences, respectively, in Nero’s life. Seneca tutored young Nero and really did a great job of running the Roman government for the first five years of Nero’s administration while that teenager was still growing up. But shortly after the events you just read, Seneca retired because Tigellinus, the nasty new prefect of the Praetorian guard, was gaining more and more influence over Nero. From then on, that walking glob of garbage pandered to Nero’s every whim and seduced him into the debauchery for which he would later become notorious.”
“Well, maybe that explains why Nero doesn’t seem to be the brutal monster here that we usually expect, even though his bias for Tigellinus was pretty disgusting. But in your translation, he seems almost ‘normal,’ shall we say?”
“Yes, he was. Exactly. Seneca ran Rome for Nero’s first five years-wrote his speeches, handled his appearances-and he did such a great job of it that the later emperor Trajan would claim that the quinquennium Neronis -the first five years of Nero-were the finest government Rome ever had. And Trajan was right: Seneca was also the great Stoic philosopher, you’ll recall.”
“And was he really Gallio’s brother?”
“Yep!”
“Why didn’t they have a common name, then?”
“Gallio’s original name was Annaeus Novatus, brother of Annaeus Seneca, but he was adopted by a wealthy, childless senator named Lucius Junius Gallio the Elder. The one who judged Paul was Gallio the Younger.”
“And Paul knew all that?”
“He must have, which probably is why he appealed to the tribunal of Nero in the first place. Paul had some kind of friend at court-the very brother of the man who had set him free in Corinth!”
Shannon grinned and nodded. “That Paul was a survivor. But one of the arguments raised on his behalf was that Christianity was not illegal. If so, then why did Nero persecute believers? He’s notorious for that.”
“This is AD 62, Shannon. The Great Fire of Rome didn’t ignite until July of 64, two years later. When Nero got blamed for that, he switched the blame to the Christians in order to save himself. Christianity was illegal only from that point on.”
“And that Flavius Sabinus person? Was he really mayor of Rome at that time? And a Christian?”
“‘Yes’ to the first, and ‘we’re not sure’ for the second. His mother-in-law was Christian, and his sons definitely were since one of them died as a martyr. But I haven’t told you yet who his brother was, have I?”
“No, but I didn’t ask.”
“Ask.”
“Okay, who was Sabinus’s brother?”
“Merely a fellow named Flavius Vespasian, the future emperor of Rome.”
She laughed. “Oh, Jon, this is unbelievable. That part of Second Acts pulls it all together, doesn’t it, like some kind of crossroads of the past.”
“Now you see why I’m just a wee bit excited over all this?” Then he stopped smiling and added, “It’s just… so sad that the church couldn’t have had this document over most of the past centuries.”
Three weeks later, Jon called to order the special session of the Institute of Christian Origins and welcomed twelve guest scholars from the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts. He also introduced Monsignor Kevin Sullivan, who had flown in from Rome. Under one roof, then, were many of the world’s finest experts on textual scholarship. Some had been on translation committees of such modern New Testament versions as the RSV, NRSV, TEB, NIV, Jerusalem Bible, ESV, NLT, and an alphabet soup of others. Almost all had managed to massage their schedules, simply canceling any impediments in view of the important announcement they suspected was awaiting them in Cambridge.
“Ladies and gentlemen-fellow scholars,” Jon opened, “I thank you all for disrupting previous plans in order to be present today. I hope you’ll find that effort more than rewarded. What I’ll announce shortly is something so unparalleled, so very extraordinary, that your critical faculties must immediately question these discoveries, and I actually look forward to any decent skepticism in that regard.”