Cross bones

19

FIVE-TWENTY A.M.OUTSIDE MY WINDOW THE TREETOPS WEREblack, the mosque’s minaret just a hard shadow across the street. I’d been jarred awake by its loudspeaker sounding the call tofajr, morning prayer.

God is great, the muezzin coaxed in Arabic. Prayer is better than sleep.

I wasn’t so sure. I felt sluggish and disconnected, like a patient clawing out of anesthesia.

The mechanical wailing ended. Birdsong filled the void. A barking dog. The thunk of a car door.

I lay in bed, gripped by a shapeless sense that tragedy loomed not far off. What? When?

I watched my room ooze from silver to pink as I listened to traffic sounds merge and strengthen. I prodded my unconscious. Why the uneasiness?

Jet lag? Fear for my safety? Guilt over Morissonneau?

Whoa. There was a burrow I hadn’t poked. I’d visited the monastery, four days later Morissonneau was a body on a path. Had my actions triggered the priest’s death? Should I have known I was placing him in danger?

HadI placed Morissonneau in danger?

What the hellwas this skeleton?

In part, my anxiety grew from the fact that others seemed to know what I did not.

Blotnik. Friedman. Even Jake appeared to be holding back.

Especially Jake? Did my friend have an agenda he wasn’t sharing? I didn’t really believe that.

And holding back on what?

The James ossuary for one thing. Everyone was skittering around the subject. I vowed to crack that mystery today.

I felt better. I was taking action. Or at least planning to take action.

At six I rose, showered, and descended to the restaurant, hoping Ryan had also awakened early. I also hoped he’d reconciled to the fact that I was in 304 and he was down the hall in 307.

We’d discussed sleeping arrangements before leaving Montreal. I’d insisted on separate rooms, arguing that we were traveling to Israel on official business. Ryan had objected, saying no one would know. I’d suggested it would be fun to sneak back and forth. Ryan had disagreed. I’d prevailed.

Ryan was seated at a table, scowling at something on his plate.

“Why would anyone serve olives for breakfast?” Ryan’s tone suggested he was more jet-lagged than I.

“You don’t like olives?”

“After fiveP. M. ” Ryan sidelined the offending fruit and dug into a mound of eggs the size of Mount Rushmore. “In gin.”

Deducing that congenial conversation would not be forthcoming, I focused on my hummus and cheese.

“You and Friedman are off to see Kaplan?” I asked when Rushmore had been reduced to a hummock.

Ryan nodded then checked his watch.

“Masada Max is going to Blotnik?” he asked.

“Yes. But I promised Jake I’d meet with him before contacting anyone else. He’ll be here any minute, then we’ll head over to the IAA.”

Knocking back his coffee, Ryan stood and aimed a finger at me. “Be careful out there, soldier.”

I snapped two fingers to my forehead. “Roger that.”

Ryan returned salute and strode from the room.

Jake arrived at seven wearing jeans, a sleeveless camouflage jacket, and a blue Hawaiian shirt open over a white T. Quite a fashion statement on a shave-headed, six-foot-sixer with hedgerow brows.

“You brought boots?” Jake asked, dropping into the chair Ryan had vacated.

“To meet with Blotnik?”

“I want you to see something.”

“I’m here to deliver a skeleton, Jake.”

“First I need for you to see this.”

“First I need for you to tell me what the hell’s going on.”

Jake nodded.

“Today.” It came out louder than I intended. Or not.

“I’ll explain on the way.”

“Starting with this ossuary?”

Two men passed speaking Arabic. Jake watched until they disappeared through the low stone arch leading from the restaurant.

“Can you lock the bones in your room safe?” Jake’s voice was barely above a whisper.

I shook my head. “Too small.”

“Bring them.”

“This better be good,” I said, tossing my napkin onto my plate.

Jake pointed at my feet.

“Boots.”

Driving across the city, Jake told me the strange story of the James ossuary.

“No one disputes the authenticity of the box. It’s the inscription that’s in question. The IAA declared it a fake. Others say the ‘brother of Jesus’ part is legit, but claim the words ‘James, son of Joseph’ were added later. Others believe the opposite, that the Jesus phrase was added later. Still others think the Jesus phrase was forged.”

“Why?”

“To goose the ossuary’s value on the antiquities market.”

“Didn’t an IAA committee dissect every aspect of the thing?”

“Yeah. Right. First of all, there were two subcommittees. One looked at writing and content. The other looked at materials. The writing and content subcommittee contained one expert on ancient Hebrew writing, but other equally qualified epigraphers dispute her conclusions.”

“An epigrapher is a specialist in analyzing and dating script?”

“Correct. Get this. One genius on the committee pointed to variations in handwriting and in thickness and depth of the lettering as proof of forgery. I won’t bore you with detail, but variation is exactly what you’d expect on a nonmechanically incised inscription. Uniform lettering would be a dead giveaway of a fake. And the mixing of formal and cursive script is a well-known phenomenon in ancient engraving.

“Another issue was misspelling. Joseph was spelledYWSP, and James was spelledY’OB. One committee member said Joseph should have beenYHWSP, and that theY’OB spelling of James had never been found on any Second Temple period ossuary.”

“The Second Temple period is the time of Jesus.”

Jake nodded. “I did my own survey. The James ossuary’s spelling appeared in more than ten percent of the Joseph inscriptions I located. I found five occurrences of the name James. Three, a majority, had the same spelling as that on the James ossuary.”

“Was the committee unaware of the existence of these other inscriptions?”

“You tell me.”

Jake’s eyes kept shifting to the traffic around us.

“Incidentally, the committee included not a single New Testament scholar or historian of early Christianity.”

“What about the oxygen isotope analysis?” I asked.

Jake’s eyes cut to me. “You’ve done some homework.”

“Just some Web surfing.”

“The oxygen isotope analysis was ordered by the materials subcommittee. It showed no patina deep down in the letters, but picked up a grayish chalk-and-water paste that shouldn’t have been there. The committee concluded that the paste had been applied intentionally to imitate weathering. But it’s not that simple.”

Jake readjusted the rear and side-view mirrors.

“Turns out the patina on the ‘Jesus’ part of the inscription is identical to the overall patina on the box. In ancient Aramaic, Jesus would have been the last word inscribed. So if that word’s legit, and even some members of the IAA now agree that it is, then I think the whole inscription must be legit. Think about it. Why would an ossuary be inscribed with just the words ‘brother of someone’? It doesn’t make sense.”

“How do you explain the paste?”

“Scrubbing could have removed the patina down in the letters. And it could have altered the chemical composition of the patina by creating carbonate particles. The ossuary’s owner said the thing had been cleaned repeatedly over the years.”

“Who’s the owner?”

“An Israeli antiquities collector named Oded Golan. Golan says he was told at the time of his purchase that the ossuary came from a tomb in Silwan.” Jake jabbed a thumb at my window. “We’re on the outskirts of Silwan now.”

Again, Jake scanned the cars ahead and behind. His nervousness was making me edgy.

“Problem is the ossuary’s not recorded as an archaeologically excavated artifact from Silwan or from anywhere else in Israel.”

“You think it was looted.”

“Gee. You think?” Jake’s voice dripped sarcasm. “Golan claims he’s had the ossuary more than thirty years, making it legal, since antiquities acquired before 1978 are fair game.”

“You don’t believe him?”

“Golan’s reported to have floated a price tag of two million U.S. for the thing.” Jake snorted. “What do you think?”

I thought it was a lot of money.

Jake pointed through the windshield at a hill rising steeply off the shoulder of the road.

“The Mount of Olives. We’ve come around the east side, and now we’re skirting the southern edge.”

Jake turned left onto a small street lined with sand-colored low-rises, many decorated with crudely drawn planes or cars, indicating an occupant had made hajj to Mecca. Boys chased balls. Dogs worked patterns around the boys. Women shook rugs, lugged groceries, swept stoops. Men conversed on rusted lawn chairs.

My mind flashed an image of the Palestinians parked outside l’Abbaye Sainte-Marie-des-Neiges. I told Jake about them, and paraphrased some of the things Morissonneau had said.

Jake opened his mouth, reconsidered, closed it.

“What?” I asked.

“Not possible.”

“What’s not possible?”

“Nothing.”

“What is it you’re not telling me?”

All I got was a head shake.

The predawn premonition of tragedy rolled over in my brainpan.

Jake made another turn and pulled into a clearing behind the village. Ahead and to the left, stone stairs descended to what appeared to be a school. Boys stood, sat, or pushed and shoved on the steps.

“Is Morissonneau’s death related to-” To what? I had no idea what we were doing. “To those men?” A sweep of my hand took in the hockey bag, the village, and the valley below. “To this?”

“Forget Muslims. Muslims don’t give a rat’s ass about Masada or Jesus. Islam views Jesus not as a divinity, but as a holy man.”

“A prophet like Abraham or Moses?”

“A messiah, even. According to Muslims, Jesus didn’t die on the cross, he was taken alive to heaven, from where he will return.”

That sounded familiar.

“What about Allah’s Holy Warriors? The radical fringe?”

“What about them?”

“Wouldn’t the jihadists love to lay their hands on the bones of Jesus?”

“Why?”

“To ransack Christianity.”

A blackbird swooped to earth as we parked. We both watched it hop through garbage, wings half-spread, as though uncertain whether to stay or go.

Jake remained silent.

“I have a bad feeling about Morissonneau’s death,” I said.

“Don’t look to Muslims.”

“Who would you look to?”

“Seriously?” Jake turned to me.

I nodded.

“The Vatican.”

I couldn’t help laughing. “You sound like a character inThe Da Vinci Code. ”

Jake didn’t say anything.

Outside my window, the bird pecked roadkill. I thought of Poe. The thought was not uplifting.

“I’m listening,” I said, settling back.

“You’re a product of Catholic schooling?”

“I am.”

“Nuns teach the New Testament?”

“They were hall of fame on guilt, but bush league on scripture.”

“The good sisters teach you Jesus had siblings?”

“No.”

“Of course not. That’s why the James ossuary’s got the pope’s panties in a twist.”

The metaphor was jarring.

“The RC Church has a hard-on for virgin birth.”

I didn’t even want to think about that one.

“And it’s stupid. The New Testament is full of references to Jesus’ siblings. Matthew 13:55: ‘Is not his mother called Mary and his brethren, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas?’ Mark 6:3 repeats the same thing. In Galatians 1:19, Paul refers to his meeting with ‘James the Lord’s brother.’ Matthew 13:56 and Mark 6:3 both indicate that Jesus had sisters.”

“Don’t some biblical scholars interpret these as references to half-siblings, maybe born to a previous wife of Joseph before his marriage to Mary?”

“Both Matthew 1:25 and Luke 2:7 state that Jesus was Mary’s first-born son, though that does not rule out prior children of Joseph. But it’s not just the Bible that refers to Jesus’ siblings. The historian Josephus talks of ‘the brother of Jesus-who was called Christ-whose name was James.’”

Jake was on a roll.

“In Jesus’ time, virginity after marriage would have been unthinkable, a violation of Jewish law. It just wasn’t done.”

“So James and the others might have been later children of Mary.”

“Matthew’s gospel plainly states that, after Jesus was born, Josephknew Mary.” Jake came down hard on the word “knew.” “And Matthew wasn’t talking handshakes and cookies. He used the word in the biblical sense.

“Though Joseph isn’t the only candidate for Daddy of Jesus’ siblings. Once Jesus grows up, Joseph totally disappears. You never hear about the guy.”

“So Mary might have remarried?”

“If Joseph died or left, it would have been expected.”

I understood the dilemma for the Catholic Church.

“Whether by Joseph or by some other man, the implication is that Mary gave birth to other children. And one of them was James. So if the James ossuary is real, it throws into question the whole concept of perpetual virginity, and perhaps, by association, the concept of virgin birth.”

Another Jake snort.

“ Saint Jerome and his cronies cooked that one up in the fourth century. Jesus’ pal Mary Magdalene became a prostitute. Jesus’ mother became a virgin. Good women don’t have sex. Bad women do. The idea appealed to the misogynist male ego. The concept became dogma, and the Vatican ’s been championing it ever since.”

“So if the James ossuary is real, and the box actually belonged to Jesus’ brother, the Vatican has some explaining to do.”

“You bet. The idea of Mary as a mama is a mega-problem for the Vatican. Hell, even if the box means only that Joseph had other kids, that’s still a problem. It suggests that Joseph impregnated his wives. And, again, the Vatican ’s credibility is screwed.”

The blackbird had been joined by others. For a few moments I watched them squabble over carrion rights.

Okay. The James ossuary blew the lid on Mary’s virginity. I could see how the Vatican would be concerned about that. I could see how Christian or Muslim radicals might want to get their hands on the box. Same argument Morissonneau had presented. Save the faith. Wreck the faith. But how did the ossuary link to the Masada skeleton? Or did it? Had the two finds coincidentally surfaced at the same time?

“What does the James ossuary have to do with Morissonneau’s skeleton?”

Jake hesitated. “I’m not sure. Yet. But here’s an interesting sidebar. Oded Golan worked as a volunteer at Masada.”

“For Yigael Yadin?” I asked.

Jake nodded, again checked his surroundings. I wanted to probe the connection between Max and the James ossuary, but Jake gave me no chance.

“Let’s go.”

“Where?” I asked.

“The Jesus family tomb.”