Having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first … It was to the gospel of St Luke, fellow physician, that I first turned when I climbed back into bed, trying to find some reason to disbelieve Scanlon.
Why are ye troubled? And why do thoughts arise in your hearts? Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself; handle me, and see; for a spirit Hath not flesb and bones, as ye see me have …
I read through St Luke’s obituary, then (always methodical) through the other three novelettes that sandwiched it. Four versions of the Adventures of Jesus Christ.
I’ve never had a problem with the notion of an historical Jesus: his outline is dimly visible even through the wildest escapades, urban legends, and magic tricks. I’d read through my father’s books as a girl — Jewish history, early Christian history, the Roman writers: Tacitus and others. I read everything I could get my eyes on in those days. I never thought to doubt the fact of Christ. I needed to read no further than Matthew 1: 2–16.
And Abraham begat Isaac, and Isaac begat Judas, and Judas begat Phares and Phares begat Esrom, and …
I could set this down obsessively, list the next thirty generations until the begetting of Joseph, husband of Mary, but the point is clear: if anything can be trusted, it is Jewish records, the Jewish registry of births, marriages and deaths. Cities rose and fell about them, plagues came and went, whole tribes vanished under fire and brimstone, but the scribes kept scribbling. This was, this is, the true religion of the Jews: the Word.
And the alleged death, nailed to a cross? No problem believing in this either: a common enough cause of death. The road toll of Roman antiquity. The gospels might quibble over the exact date (before or after Passover?) but what did it matter? Once the existence of the man was accepted, Scanlon’s project no longer seemed quite so outrageous: no more outrageous than isolating DNA strands from a bottled dodo foot, or from the leathery skin of a stuffed Tasmanian Tiger.
A thought that leaves me wondering — later, setting this down — just how thick I could be at the time? How much else could be hidden in full view, thrust under my nose?
Some thoughts, it seemed, were still too blasphemous to actually think, even for my delinquent mind.