They had missed the 11 p.m. news, of course. But during the morning drive back to Weston, they heard it all on the car radio. In the name of Allah, the Iranian clergy had declared an official fatwa on American professor Jonathan Weber of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Muslim faithful were duty-bound to seek him out for apprehension, trial, judgment, and condemnation. And the penalty for insulting the Prophet, as Professor Weber had done? Death.
Jon and Shannon’s new roles as moving targets? Not a felicitous feeling. Jon was quiet, but he seemed to be checking the rearview mirror more often than usual, while Shannon found herself scanning each approaching vehicle with uncharacteristic scrutiny.
Jon finally broke the silence. “Well, it’s much too soon for anyone to try anything, sweetheart.”
“Oh, that’s some consolation,” she replied with a bite. “But in a short time, it’ll be open season on the Webers. So much for the joy you promised in our wedded life!”
“Think you made a mistake, Shannon?” His eyebrows were a pair of arches.
She put on her best imitation of a frown. “Well, it wouldn’t be the first time.” Then she whispered, “Oh, Jon, despite the crazy twists and turns life has taken since I met you, it’s a mistake I’d make again and again and again!” She reached over and squeezed his knee.
After crossing the bridge at the Cape Cod Canal, they headed northwest on I-495 toward the Boston suburbs. It was a luminous spring morning, the air nicely scrubbed from a shower the night before. But then an intrusion. Jon noticed it first in his left outer mirror: a dark green Cadillac Escalade was following their silver Buick LaCrosse, and it seemed to stay behind them, even when he slowed down to encourage passing.
He tromped on the accelerator to eighty miles per hour, and the distance between the two cars lengthened. But the Escalade suddenly sped up in order to reach its apparently chosen perch just behind their car.
Shannon knew what was happening without his saying a word. She peered back anxiously and exclaimed, “Jon! They’re wearing turbans—all four of them!”
Jon quickly looked back and saw that Shannon was right. An icy stab of terror rippled inside him. “It’s just not possible that anyone would try to act on the fatwa this soon, is it?”
“Who knows? Maybe we’ve been followed.”
“Stay cool. I have a plan.” Jon started slowing down to 50 mph, then 40 and even 35. The Escalade slowed also.
“Jon, have you lost your mind?” she wondered.
“Strategy, dear. I may even stop the car. But the moment they also stop and get out, I’ll floor it. Just hang on and keep your head down.”
His plan came to nothing. Suddenly the Escalade sped past them, four turbaned heads so busy in conversation that they didn’t even notice Jon and Shannon.
Jon broke out laughing. “We’re bloody fools, Shannon. They were Sikhs, not Muslims! It’s Sikhs who wear turbans.”
“Well, cut us some slack, Jon. A death threat is enough to turn anyone a little paranoid.”
When they arrived in Weston, they expected to find a security gate across their street, police patrolling the area, and angry neighbors wanting to know why they and their families were being imprisoned. But they saw nothing of the kind. The shady little lane was the same picture of tranquility they had left.
“Obviously, security hasn’t arrived yet,” Shannon observed.
Jon pressed the garage door opener and drove in. Just as he was inserting the house key into the lock, a man appeared out of nowhere and said, “Sorry to startle you, Professor and Mrs. Weber. Jim Behnke, FBI.” He flashed his credentials. “Do you mind if I join you inside to explain our security arrangements?”
Over coffee and rolls in the kitchen, Behnke laid it all out. “We’ve set up an electronic fence around your entire property—invisible, of course—that will alert us to any attempts at intrusion. Now, do you see that aging blue Dodge van parked across the street?” He pointed. “It’s really an electronic base with communications and radar. It will monitor everything in the area, including your phone calls. But just call this number first every time you need privacy, and we’ll tune out.” He handed them a card, then continued. “Anyone ringing your doorbell will be under the tightest surveillance. But don’t worry; we won’t bother the mailman or delivery people.”
The briefing went on for some time. Finally Behnke gave transponders to both Jon and Shannon with panic buttons to press in case of emergency.
“But what happens when we leave the house?” Shannon wondered.
“We’ll also install GPDs—global positioning devices—on both your cars so we can track your locations at all times.”
“Will we be tailed . . . followed?” Jon asked.
“Perhaps. But if so, you’ll never know it.”
As Behnke prepared to leave, Jon had one more question. “Okay, let’s imagine a worst-case scenario: what if they come here in force—more than one or two people?”
Behnke pointed out the kitchen window facing the backyard. “You have a pretty dense grove of trees behind your place. It rather conveniently hides our manpower at the western edge of your property. Not to worry!”
“Thanks, Mr. Behnke,” Shannon said. “We were concerned that our neighborhood would be disrupted.”
“Your neighbors won’t even know we’re here, Mrs. Weber.”
Maybe life could return to something resembling normalcy after all, they dared to hope. But one nagging concern remained: were their summer plans ruined? Both were determined to have the finest scholars in Greece examine what Shannon had discovered at Pella.
They decided to postpone their visit to Pella because Father Athanasius had written that, after an exhaustive search of their library, no other vellum sheets matching Shannon’s had been discovered. In place of Pella, they decided to visit Turkey along with Greece. Both were gorgeous peninsulas thrusting themselves into the sapphire Mediterranean. Both were scattered with scenic mountains and lakes, rimmed with golden beaches, and surrounded by Aegean islands boasting homes of gleaming white with roofs of royal blue. That’s what the tourist brochures promised, and yet there was so much more there.
Greece and Asia Minor were the cradles of classical civilization in the ancient world, both lands still studded with ruins of temples, colonnades, theaters, baths, aqueducts, and even latrines from antiquity. “People living in Greece and Asia Minor two and three millennia ago gave us more of our present culture than any other civilization,” Professor Weber reminded his classes again and again.
Yet there was still more. The Aegean world was also the second cradle of Christianity. It was here that St. Paul did most of his missions work, where many of the earliest church fathers held forth, where the first churches were built and the first creeds formulated. And perhaps most importantly, it was here that the earliest New Testament Scriptures were written. This was what most intrigued Jonathan Weber and the ICO that he had founded.
The Institute of Christian Origins, based in Cambridge, was a think tank for discovery rather than—as was so much of recent theology—a scholarly rehashing of evidence raked over many times in the past. Their symposia dealt with cutting-edge findings from the ancient world that impinged on Jesus of Nazareth and the church that he founded. Membership in the ICO—by invitation only—was an honor roll of many of the most prestigious scholars in the world, men and women not only with expertise in their specialties but with the flexibility and courage to draw unpopular conclusions, if necessary. They regularly had to blow a shrill whistle on the increasing fakery and fraud pseudoarchaeologists were foisting on the public, such as claims that wheels from the ancient Egyptian chariots in the Exodus account had been found at the bottom of the Red Sea. Similar targets were mistranslations of the vaunted Judas Gospel or wild claims regarding the so-called Jesus Family Tomb at Talpiot in south Jerusalem. And as for Noah’s ark, the ICO reminded the public that Noah must certainly have built a fleet rather than just one ship, since it had now been “discovered” twenty-one times in the last century!
At the most recent symposium of the ICO in April, Jon had told his colleagues, “So often we assume that any fresh information on Jesus and early Christianity will come from archaeological discoveries. And while that’s true enough, it’s not the whole truth. Perhaps we’ve overlooked another major source of potential evidence, and I’m sure you all know where I’m heading: manuscripts! Ancient manuscripts, wherever they might be found—whether via archaeological digs, hiding in medieval and even modern libraries, or lurking in neglected monastery archives.
“But here’s an important difference between these two sources: things not yet unearthed will hardly change over the millennia, but manuscripts will change. They’ll deteriorate. Papyrus and parchment will age, rot, and crumble. Rats and worms will diet on them; water and dampness corrode them; fires consume them. Looters may steal them for sale on the black market, or they can be destroyed during war or by natural disasters, like floods and earthquakes.
“Hard artifacts will wait patiently until they’re uncovered—maybe decades, centuries from now—but manuscripts are impatient. In their case, we have a time factor on our hands. We discover them, or they die.”
Shouts of “Hear, hear!” and “Right on!” accompanied much nodding among the thirty-eight world-class scholars seated around the huge conference table at the ICO headquarters on Brattle Street in Cambridge. There were twenty-six men and twelve women at that particular conclave, at least a quarter of them from Europe, Africa, and the Far East.
“Tell them about biblical manuscripts alone, Dick,” Jon said.
Richard Ferris was the general secretary for the Institute of Christian Origins, a lanky scholar whose crew cut seemed to remove a decade from his actual age. “Well, you all know the numbers and how our list of New Testament manuscripts has exploded across the years. For the King James translators in 1611, only six basic manuscripts were available, but by 1870, two thousand had been discovered for the Revised Version translators. Today, however, we have about 5,700 manuscripts in whole or in part. And of course, as we have to tell the public again and again, through textual research and criticism of all these manuscripts, we get more and more exact versions of what was originally written by the New Testament authors. That’s the good news.
“But the bad news Dr. Weber has already expressed. There are more manuscripts out there, and if we don’t find them in time, the world will have lost some priceless treasures. And it’s not just discovery. Some of these manuscripts have already been ‘discovered,’ as it were, but they’ve not been photographed, cataloged, or even examined. For example, Dr. Daniel Wallace, executive director of the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts, recently sent a team to Albania to photograph ancient manuscripts in its national archive. They found no less than forty-five New Testament manuscripts that had never been photographed before—an incredible cache of documents in one of the least-likely places in the world! In fact, he estimates that maybe a thousand Greek New Testament manuscripts are still out there, yet to be discovered.” He paused to let the tidings mellow.
Heinz von Schwendener, New Testament professor at Yale, raised his pen and added, “And I’ll bet there could be more than a thousand in the long run. Okay, my colleagues, what’s our role in all this? How can the ICO contribute?”
“Glad you asked, Heinz,” Jon said. “In fact, I’m a little surprised that a Yalie is still awake to hear all this.”
“It’s only you Harvards that put me to sleep, Jon.”
Amid chuckling over the inevitable Harvard-Yale banter, Jon smiled and continued. “Here’s what I envision: an effort—hopefully an international effort—to search out every known library or archive of ancient manuscripts in the world and photograph all early unphotographed biblical manuscripts contained therein. We’d then do further examination of the most ancient and important of those manuscripts as well.”
“Sounds like a task for several lifetimes, Jon,” said Sally Humiston of Berkeley’s archaeology department, “and requiring resources far beyond ours.”
“Exactly, Sal. I’ve been discussing this with the leadership at the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts. They’d be delighted to cooperate with us in this endeavor, and we’ve sketched the following procedure.”
Jon switched on his PowerPoint presentation and directed his colleagues’ attention to the large screen behind him.
“First, we must reach a consensus on the most feasible modus operandi. This would determine the dos and don’ts in terms of searching out locations of libraries and archives with ancient biblical manuscripts, how to approach the respective authorities at each and secure permissions to photograph, and the like.
“Next, I recommend that we work up an overall comprehensive plan for the project, including the initial target collections. Then we would be ready to approach appropriate foundations for funding as well as recruiting scholars and photographic teams to do the job.”
“But haven’t many of the collections been microfilmed already?” Brendan Rutledge wanted to know. He was Princeton’s prime theologian.
“Yes, but many of them ought to be redone. Microfilming is really passé with our new technology. We’ll use digital photography instead, which is much better in every way. Here, check out the difference for yourselves.”
Jon passed out photocopies that showed two views of a leaf from the fourth-century Codex Vaticanus, one of the earliest uncial biblical manuscripts. To the left was a regular microfilmed version, and to the right a digital version. There simply was no comparison. In terms of clarity, ease of decipherment, even shadings in the lettering, the latter was far superior.
“Beyond that,” Jon continued, “at critical passages, we’ll also use multispectral imaging to check for text that’s faded, altered, or even erased. Manuscript copyists have been known to make mistakes.” A titter of laughter followed the last comment, since it seemed that nearly all ancient manuscripts had their share of errors, most of them quite minor.
A drone of discussion followed—not in challenge or objection, Jon was delighted to note, but in affirmation and enthusiasm. Suggestions and ideas rattled off the walls; scholar candidates were suggested, names of foundations offered.
At the close of the conference, Jon announced, “In order to practice what I preach, my wife Shannon and I want to participate in the project by targeting libraries and archives in Greece and Turkey—not all of them, obviously, but several that we think may be promising candidates. We plan to fly off just after the close of the spring semester.”
Those, of course, were the plans before the translation catastrophe struck. Now, it seemed their summer would be grotesquely transformed from the research and travel they had planned into a sickening scenario of looking behind themselves at potential danger—imagined or real—their lives hostage to the whim of some fanatic. Curse the translation error! Curse the fanaticism that could augment a tiny publishing miscue into world riots and bloodshed!
Some relief, however, came swiftly. The American and Canadian television networks had announced the error in translation earlier, and the BBC, Deutsche Welle, and the French, Italian, and Spanish networks soon followed. Jon and Shannon were greatly heartened when the ghastly riots on their TV were replaced by interviews with spokesmen for Islamic councils in the western European countries who announced that this had all been a mistake after all, that Professor Weber had apologized for it, and that the offending effigies and signs had now been removed.
“But I didn’t ‘apologize’ for it,” Jon objected. “I regretted it. There’s a difference.”
“Half a loaf is better than none, Jon,” Shannon reminded him.
Jon nodded slowly. “At this point I should be grateful for small favors. But why hasn’t Al Jazeera come clean on this? That’s the most-watched TV network in Muslim countries, so for their world, I’m still a blasphemous villain.”
But it was Al Jazeera that might rescue their summer after all—not intentionally, of course—and television rivalry seemed partially responsible. The Abu Dhabi television channel in the United Arab Emirates broke the news on the translation error to the Arab world, and Qatar Television immediately followed suit. Rather than be upstaged, Al Jazeera, perhaps in compensation for its late coverage, did an entire half-hour special on the typographical error in Jon’s book and how it had happened. They even had footage of the typesetter at his computer inside the editorial offices of the Cairo publisher, who blamed Osman al-Ghazali for the error, followed by footage of Osman in Cambridge blaming the typesetter. The program concluded with close-ups of the corrected text in the second printing of Jon’s book. Islam was now the greatest challenge to Christianity, not the greatest evil.
Sunni Muslims across the Islamic world—that broad band of latitude from Morocco to Indonesia—soon responded, almost with pride, at the corrected reading that showed their powerful counterpoise to Christianity. Still, Jon was hardly home free. The Shiites were silent. Although they represented only 16 percent of world Islam, it was the Shiite clergy in Iran who had placed the fatwa on his head. That fatwa had not been lifted.
Jon discussed the matter with Osman. They had been in continual phone contact over the past two days. Predictably, the translator took some credit for Al Jazeera’s finally announcing the error, but he also took the wind out of his own sails by confiding his surmise as to their delay.
By dragging their feet in announcing the error-cum-correction, he told Jon, the Sunni Al Jazeera got the Shiites to make fools of themselves with their instant fatwa. “There’s just no end to the rivalry between Sunnis and Shiites.”
“You really think the grand ayatollah and his Iranian clergy are embarrassed by the fatwa?” Jon asked.
“Not embarrassed. More like mortified, I’m sure. In fact, I’ll bet that they’ll never even mention this again.”
“What! Not even to lift the fatwa?”
“Probably not. That would look like they’d made a mistake. And of course, they did! But it’s the same reason Rushdie’s fatwa was never lifted.”
“So I have to live the rest of my life with this hanging over my head?”
“Welcome to the club, Jon. Since I converted from Islam to Christianity, I’d also face a sentence of death in almost any Muslim country if I returned. But I think you can put away the worry beads. Salman Rushdie lives, as you may have noticed, and I understand that VOA and Al Arabiya have also been giving full coverage to the truth in their Farsi broadcasts. Truth will win, even in Iran.”
Jon was neither entirely convinced nor consoled.