Paul Maier - The Constantine Codex

After a moment of sepulchral silence, boisterous applause broke out at the conference tables. Edwin Yamauchi of Oxford exclaimed, “Good heavens! Scholars have been searching for one of those ever since textual scholarship began with Erasmus in the sixteenth century! Please tell us you have the entire Bible here.”

“Wish I could, Ed. But here’s a consolation prize: how about the entire… New… Testament?”

Bedlam took over the chamber. There was cheering and roaring and raucous celebration. Jon finally had to remonstrate, tongue in cheek, “Tsk, tsk, my colleagues. As critical scholars, aren’t we supposed to be cool and dispassionate about this?”

When the chuckling ceased, Jon continued. “Well, my friends, all future editions of the Greek New Testament will have to take this manuscript into account.” He flashed page after page of the beautiful four columns of Greek on vellum. “Obviously, we now have one of the great uncial codices of the New Testament, which is clearly the equal-if not the superior-of the Sinaiticus, the Vaticanus, and the Alexandrinus.”

“Oh, that’s for sure,” Brendan Rutledge said. “I think this, not the Sinaiticus, could well be the new aleph!” He referred to the “a” symbol designating the first and greatest uncial text.

“Now jest a cotton-pickin’ minute,” called out Jesse Trumbull of New Orleans Baptist Seminary. “We’ve all heard the expression, ‘This is too good to be true,’ and then that lit’rally is the case: not true! Professor Weber has shown us some mighty intriguin’ material here, but it’s only slides and images-not the actual document itself. Now I’m sure he doesn’t mean to trick us, but aren’t we all critical scholars here? Why do we fall all over ourselves to assume that this is authentic and then go hollerin’ and cheerin’ and carryin’ on? Remember Bernard Madoff? He was the best in the business when it came to Wall Street-until they found out that he was only the biggest Ponzi around. Hey, I’m not sayin’ that Jon’s any Madoff, and all this may be right as rain, but don’t we have to ask the good professor about the codex itself and its whereabouts?”

“Yes, I think we do,” Jon responded, smiling. “And I’m so glad you brought this up, Jesse. Shannon and I were also somewhat skeptical at first, but when we photographed page after page after page, we realized that this could not possibly be forged. Still, we plan to do appropriate authenticity testing of the codex itself as soon as we can. And in answer to your question about its location, we left it with the Ecumenical Patriarch in Istanbul, since it is the property of the Eastern Orthodox Church. To be sure, we gave him some firm suggestions as to optimal security arrangements and preservation of that extraordinary document.”

“Well, I’m happy to hear that,” Trumbull replied.

“Have you read it all yet, Jon?” Sally Humiston wondered.

“‘Checked it all out’ might be the best answer, though I have read some parts in much greater detail than others. The material reflects the same general manuscript tradition as the Sinaiticus, but with several very important differences: our codex, for example, does not include the Epistle of Barnabas or Shepherd of Hermas as does the Sinaiticus.”

“What does it include?” Mac MacAdam asked.

“Simply and happily, all twenty-seven books of our canonical New Testament-no more, no less.” Then he caught himself and added, “No, sorry. I misspoke.”

“You did?” Mac persisted. “Would you care to unpack that?”

Jon paused for several moments, then said, “Well, I guess it’s time to unload another little surprise for you.” He pressed a button on his laptop and flashed more columns of beautiful, uncial Greek onto the screen. It was the last chapter of Mark. “Here we have the last chapter of Mark from the codex,” he added.

For some time, the room was silent, since the Greek lettering, while clear, was very difficult to decipher in its run-together form.

“Anyone notice anything amiss?” Jon finally asked.

The eagle eye of Trina Vandersteen suddenly picked it up. “Hold it!” she said. “There’s too much material there-it should be only eight verses’ worth, no? You’ve got-what?-looks like almost three times that much text.”

Jon nodded, letting the implications slowly sink in.

Von Schwendener suddenly exploded. “Omigosh! Give us a break, Jon. You’re not going to tell us that… that this is the lost ending of Mark, are you?”

Quietly he replied, “You’ve got it, Heinz.”

A wild potpourri of surprise and awe filled the room, supposedly staid scholars ripping off their glasses or putting them on-depending on their ocular needs-as they tried to scan the text more closely.

Several minutes later, Jon announced, “I’m passing out my rough translation of the lost ending, although I’m sure one of the committees to come out of this group will do a better job.”

Silence reigned as each read the words Mark had actually written at the close of his Gospel. Scholars joined other scholars sitting nearby in a sudden buzz of discussion that picked up tempo and intensity.

Brendan Rutledge spoke up first. “Tends to support the Synoptic hypothesis, doesn’t it?”

Jon smiled at this and winked at Shannon.

Daniel Wallace, from the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts, raised his hand. “Thanks, Jon, for inviting our group to this historic occasion. And I don’t use that adjective lightly, since there’s no question but that this codex, if authentic, is the greatest find in centuries of textual scholarship. Our group has dreamed of coming across a text like this, yet we dismissed it as wishful thinking. We were wrong! Now, what do you propose as a modus operandi for this discovery?”

“Thanks, Dan! I was coming to that.” Jon distributed another handout. “I propose that we establish a ‘Mark 16 Blue Ribbon Task Force’ and charge it with items listed on what I’ve just distributed.”

The conferees read: • Compare the uncial lettering of the new material in this manuscript with the Markan text immediately preceding it. This will determine if another ancient hand tried to supply the ending, as happened subsequently in later texts. • Do a complete linguistic analysis of these verses, again comparing them with the grammar and syntax in the rest of the Markan text. • Provide an authoritative translation of these final verses into English. (Other translations can follow later.) • Write an official commentary on these verses, explaining how Mark’s ending had originally been lost-if true-and the significance of these verses for Synoptic scholarship and especially in the reportage of the resurrection of Jesus.

The silence was quickly broken. “Hear, hear!” “Good plan!” “Let’s do it” and other affirmatives welled up from both tables. Just before lunch, the ICO and CSNTM had even appointed twenty of their finest New Testament scholars to the task force. To these, Jon handed out enhanced digital images of all pages of Mark’s Gospel in the codex.

“Just remember, good colleagues,” Jon cautioned, “every last page of the codex is now copyrighted-my Harvard colleague Alan Dershowitz prepared an airtight instrument for us-so don’t run off to publishers and try to get rich on Mark!”

Jon was smiling and the rest chuckled, but amid the mirth the message was quite loud and quite clear.

Not one person in the group recalled, a year later, what they had eaten for their catered lunch. They were less diners and more a buzzing beehive of excitement over the codex.

Sitting adjacent from Jon and Shannon, von Schwendener asked, “Anything important for this afternoon, Jon? Or can we wrap it up early? I’d like to catch the four o’clock train for New Haven.”