"Luke has the birth attended by poor shepherds, Matthew by kings from afar. John and Mark are silent on the subject. But then, your Gospels weren't contemporaneous accounts. They were written anywhere from sixty years after the crucifixion to nearly a century later, probably taken from other accounts. Hardly an assurance of accuracy.
"At any rate, no one tells us much about Christ's early life other than a single account of a young man arguing with elders in the temple. When we next see Christ, he is at a wedding in Cana, a very fancy wedding where so much wine is consumed, more has to be brought in. Or created. The first miracle."
Leb inspected Lang's barely touched tea. "Don't like it?"
"I was so interested in what you were saying, I forgot about it." The 'professor smiled. "Perhaps you are a capable lawyer, Lang, but a very poor liar."
"Okay, so it's a little… unusual."
Leb poured the contents of Lang's cup into his own. "An acquired taste. Now, we were talking about…?"
"The wedding at Cana."
"Oh yes. Not only is there copious amounts of wine, but Christ and the hostess order servants about. Unlikely someone would presume to command another's domestics, so we could conclude it was Christ's wedding and a rather big affair at that, not the marriage of peasant stock but of aristocracy.
"I also think it's worth remembering that Matthew's Christ 'comes not to bring peace but with a sword.' " Lang sat up in his chair. "I hadn't realized the Gospels were so different." Leb snorted. " 'Different'? They're in irreconcilable conflict! I can imagine the reason why the early Christian church chose those four diverse versions of the life of Christ."
''And that would be?"
"Because the others available were either more diverse or mentioned something the Church didn't want known." ''Any idea what?" Lang was fairly certain the man had a very clear idea.
Leb held up a conspiratorial finger, a professor in the midst of a lecture. "Let's continue and see if we can't reach the same conclusions together.
"We know Christ spent a great deal of time traveling with supporters and lecturing to crowds. I submit the Gospels' version of what he had to say is less than accurate."
He held up a hand to stop Lang's question. "Let's move on to the end of his ministry, to that Passover where he was charged as a criminal and crucified. First, as you as a scholar of ancient history know, crucifixion was punishment reserved for subversives, enemies of the State."
"But wasn't a thief crucified next to Christ?"
"So we're told. But I submit, the Gospels were written for a Greco-Roman audience, not Jews. Even back then, the stubbornness of Jews in their religion was a given. Facts were changed so it appeared the Jews were responsible for the death of the Messiah, a fiction from which we Jews have suffered for two millennia. Who might or might not have died next to Christ is mere speculation with a strong editorial slant. Witness: The council of Jewish elders, the Sanhedrin, supposedly originally condemned Christ on that Friday night. In other words, the most respected Jews in Jerusalem broke Sabbat by meeting after sunset on a Friday in flagrant violation of Jewish law. Not only that, those men had the absolute power to condemn a man to death by stoning.
"In short, had the Jews wanted Christ dead, they were perfectly capable of executing Him themselves.
"Further, as you no doubt know, someone who had earned Roman enmity wasn't usually buried but left to rot on his cross as a reminder to others who might harbor seditious thoughts."
Lang sat still, considering what he had just heard. "So, Leb, it's your guess that Christ's message wasn't all peace and love?"
The professor shrugged apologetically. "I have no hard facts, of course, but I can make the following surmises if I may…"
"Please."
"First, Christ was of royal blood, if not the direct heir to the throne of all the Jews. Second, he came along when the Roman province of Judea was seething with a rebellion barely under the surface, one that, in fact, broke out shortly after his death. Third, his message was sufficiently disturbing to the colonial powers that he was tried for treason and executed, his actual title on the cross. Finally, his followers saw an opportunity to press their leader into the Messianic mold, thereby aggrandizing themselves. No matter what evidence finally surfaced, the Church wasn't going to back down: Christ was the long-promised son of God who ruled through His Holy Church. To admit he was basically a revolutionary was unthinkable. Think more Lenin than Gandhi. The early Church fathers cocked us a snook."
Lang was certain he misunderstood. "Cocked us a…?"
"Snook. Cocked a snook. I'm sorry. British idiom. You would say pulled the wool over our eyes."
The barrier of a common language. Lang considered this and what might have been contained in the library at Montsegur. "But there's no evidence of any of this."
Leb shook his head wearily at an argument he had heard many times. "Of course not. If there ever had been, it would have long been destroyed. For that matter, there's no contemporaneous record of Christ, either."
Indictment.
King of the Jews.
Rebel.
"An absence of proof," the professor added, "is not proof of absence."
Lang smiled. "How very Zen."
Leb nodded. "The university also has a curriculum in Buddhist studies."
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Atlanta, Georgia
Rectory, Church of the Immaculate Conception
Two hours later
Lang was drinking his second cup of coffee in hopes of cleansing his palate of the professor's tea. Outside Francis's office, the Mercedes's theft alarm was again howling, unstoppable but at least muted by the thick brick walls. He had just finished summarizing his meeting with Dr. Greenberg.
Francis took a legal pad from a drawer in his green metal, government-issue-type desk and began to copy the inscription. "Okay, let's put the English over each Latin word."
Lang watched.
Imperator Emperor (nominative case)
Iulian Julian (nominative case) accusat – accusation/indictment (case unknown) rebillis rebel (genitive case) rexus king (genitive case) iudeaium Jews (genitive case) iubit commands (first person singular, present tense) regi palace (case unknown) unus one (genitive case) dEI god (genitive case) sepelit buried/entombed (third person passive?)
The priest reversed the pad and held it up. ''Allowing for the fact the Romans had no articles, a, an, or the, I make it to be 'The Emperor Julian commands or orders.' "
Lang nodded. "Yeah, but orders what? Without the ending, I'm not sure if he's ordering someone be indicted or something be done with the physical indictment."
Francis drew a line between two of the words. "If he's ordering someone, presumably the King of the Jews, to be indicted, he's three centuries late. Let's assume the inscription is supposed to make some sort of sense."
Lang leaned forward. "Okay. What's being done in/to/with the palace? Without the ending, we don't know."
Francis used a Bic pen as a pointer. "I think we can assume the palace doesn't possess something, leaving the nominative, dative, objective, or ablative cases. There's no verb that could apply; palaces don't order, nor are they entombed. That would leave…"
There was a knock at the door and a woman's steel-gray-haired head popped around the corner like a jack-in-the-box. "Father, you have only five minutes before Eventide service." She saw Lang. "Oh, pardon me. I didn't know you had company."
She disappeared behind the door. Francis stood, smiling. "Mrs. Pratt. Been the Church secretary forever. If she didn't know you were in here, it's the first thing she's missed since Sherman left this as the only building in town he didn't torch. I've got souls to save. We'll have to finish this later."