WILL CHAMBERS SAT AT THE DEFENSE COUNSEL table in the courtroom of Judge Jeremiah Kaye, waiting for the judge to enter for the continuation of the jury trial. As Will sat and pondered the events of the last few days, he fingered a coin in his right hand. He was thinking about Jerusalem. And something that Nathan had asked him.
After Nathan had dropped off Will and Dr. Giovanni at the airport in Tel Aviv, Will had reached through the window of the freshly dented black Mercedes and shaken his hand, thanking him for everything.
“Is there anything else you can tell me about yourself?” Will had asked.
Nathan had smiled and handed him a card that read, “Art & Artifacts—Nathan Goldwaithe, Proprietor,” with an address and telephone in the Old City of Jerusalem. “This is all you need to know,” he had said with a smile.
Then Nathan had reached in his pocket and pulled out a coin.
“I think I’d like to give this to you. Do you mind my asking—are you a Christian?”
Will had thought for a minute. Then he had said, “Let’s just say, right now I’m standing at Stephen’s Gate, looking through at the Via Dolorosa on the other side.”
“Okay, my friend,” Nathan had said laughing, “as a businessman I try to be sensitive to all my customers. And I get the feeling that you are going to be back here again. So here is a little sample—free of charge.”
He had handed a small, dark coin to Will. After studying it for a few seconds Will had thought he could see the image of a face—a man with a beard—perhaps, but the image was indistinct.
“This is a coin from the Byzantine period, just a few hundred years after Jesus is said to have walked the streets of Jerusalem. But don’t get too excited—it’s really not that valuable. I’ve got a number of these. The unique thing about this coin is that it has one of the first images of Jesus that appeared on any coin.”
Will had looked again at the visage on the coin. He had been able to see the long, bearded face, and the eyes, but the features had been rubbed down to what was now only a trace, a faint shadow of a likeness.
“It’s been worn down, of course, over a millennium-and-a-half. So, you’ll have to fill in the rest of the features, imagine how Jesus appeared, on your own.”
After Will had reached back through the window to shake his hand again, Nathan had said, “Shalom,” and sped off.
Will’s mind snapped back to the present as the door of Judge Kaye’s chambers suddenly opened and Judge Kaye entered with his clerk.
Everyone in the room stood up. The judge placed the thick court file on the judicial bench in front of him.
“Any preliminaries before I call the jury back in for this morning’s testimony?”
Will glanced over at the empty seat next to him, where Angus MacCameron should have been sitting. When he had arrived back to his apartment from Jerusalem, he had called Fiona at the hospital in London. But MacCameron had not gotten better. In fact, he had suffered a stroke in the hospital and was in and out of consciousness.
Judge Kaye noticed the absence of Will’s client.
“Mr. Chambers, is your client going to be joining us?”
“Your honor, Reverend MacCameron is seriously ill.”
The judge paused for a second. Will was hoping that he would not press for any more information. If he did, Will would be required to disclose it.
“Well,” the judge said, “give him our best, and we hope he can join us as soon as possible. Any objections, Mr. Sherman, to the defendant not being in the courtroom?”
Sherman was more than pleased for the defense case to proceed in the absence of the defendant himself. Dr. Reichstad sat expressionless next to him.
Will stood up and addressed one more preliminary matter. “Your Honor, I have a matter of great importance. I wish to give notice of the discovery of the missing fragment—7QC—just a few days ago in the British Museum.”
Sherman leaped to his feet. Reichstad was standing next to him, trying to argue something in Sherman’s ear.
“This is absolutely incredible, Your Honor!” Sherman exclaimed. “How can we possibly rebut this evidence after we have already rested our case?”
“Would you explain, Mr. Chambers, exactly how you came upon this 7QC fragment in the last few days?”
Will proceeded to explain in detail the search that he and MacCameron had conducted at the British Museum.
“What do you contend that this 7QC says? How does it affect the credibility of Dr. Reichstad’s interpretation of 7QA?” Judge Kaye asked.
“It proves, conclusively, that what Reverend MacCameron said in his article about Dr. Reichstad was the truth, Your Honor. 7QC completely changes the meaning of the sentences in 7QA. I have a diagram here of what all three fragments say together, now that we have all the pieces.”
Sherman howled out an objection that the court should not even see, let alone consider admitting such prejudicial evidence.
Judge Kaye quickly dispatched Sherman’s objection and told Will to put up the chart.
Will placed on the easel the blow-up of all three pieces joined together. He also put up his translation diagram, which read this way:
“Your Honor, we are prepared to show that all three fragments, when taken together, clearly refer, not to the burial of Jesus, but in fact to the burial of Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the religious ruling body called the Sanhedrin, and a secret follower of Jesus.”
Dr. Reichstad stood up and in a commanding voice declared, “This interpretation is clearly a hoax. Besides, Your Honor, I can clearly think of a way that this is really describing Jesus as the ‘honorable counselor’ who was buried. So this changes nothing.”
“Oh, there may be a hoax, Your Honor,” Will countered, “but it does not lie with us. Dr. Giovanni is here to testify that the only reference in the Bible to an ‘honorable counselor,’ is a reference to Joseph of Arimathea in the Gospel of Mark, chapter fifteen, verse forty-three. Another translation of the two Greek words in 7QC for ‘honorable counselor’ would be ‘prominent member of the council.’ It would be an utter absurdity to contend that Jesus was a member of the same religious council that condemned him to death!”
Sherman again rose to his feet, arguing that if this evidence of 7QC was going to come into the case, then Dr. Reichstad should be able to introduce the evidence of the discovery of the corpse of Jesus in the tomb at Stephen’s Gate over the weekend, exactly where 7QB said it was.
But Will was unflustered.
“Your Honor, Dr. Giovanni and I were present at that excavation. She was a witness to an inscription on a stone ossuary. That is a bone box the Jewish people would use a year or more after the initial burial. They would return and deposit the bones in that box for permanent burial.
“There was an ossuary in that tomb. And this is the inscription that was clearly written on its front, in both Aramaic and Greek:
Joseph of Arimathea
honorable counselor
and
disciple of the risen Lord Jesus
“Your Honor, this tomb by Stephen’s Gate that Dr. Reichstad has excavated is the second tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, and clearly contains his corpse. The bone box proves that. And all the fragments, when read logically and together, show that. The first tomb of Joseph was the one that was used for the burial of Jesus, and it is empty.”
“We found proof of the crown of thorns next to the corpse!” Reichstad shot out.
“Of course,” Will replied. “Joseph of Arimathea took possession of the body of Jesus after the crucifixion and made all the burial arrangements. It is logical that he also came into possession of the crown of thorns. And his friends obviously buried it with Joseph when he died, in honor of his loyalty to Jesus.”
“This is exactly what I didn’t want to happen,” the judge shot out. “I am not going to turn this courtroom into a theological or archaeological discussion of last week’s news. By the way,” and with that the judge pulled out three newspapers and fanned them out for all to see, “three national newspapers all reported yesterday, on page one, the ‘discovery of the corpse of Jesus of Nazareth.’ Now we are going to have to deal with the issue of that publicity possibly tainting the jury. But before I rule, I think I am going to have to listen to Dr. Giovanni’s testimony on all of these issues, in the exclusion of the jury.”
As Will looked out into the courtroom to summon Dr. Giovanni to the witness stand, he noticed Jack Hornby sitting attentively.
But now, Jack had moved forward to the front row of benches, right behind Will Chambers’ defense table.