The Galilean Secret: A Novel (16 page)

Jerusalem

Thursday, April 4

IF KARIM HAD KNOWN WHAT AWAITED HIM AT JERUSALEM INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HE WOULDN’T HAVE COME. Being on campus reminded him of Birzeit University in Ramallah, fifteen kilometers away. Although Birzeit didn’t have JIU’s modern sculptures, meandering stone walkways and mix of old and new buildings, it had the same energetic, inquisitive students.

He missed them.

Missed what they had learned together.

What they had taught him.

Birzeit had shown him how different he was from his father and the PPA. So different that he couldn’t stay. Karim suspected that a phone call from Ahmed Marzouqa had sent Abdul Fattah to Augusta Victoria Hospital to bring him back. Fortunately, Brother Gregory had lost Abdul in Jerusalem traffic and returned Karim safely to the monastery.

A wave of foreboding settled over him. He couldn’t have imagined where his life would lead him after dropping out. Nor could he have guessed that he would find an ancient scroll, meet a beautiful Israeli peace activist and begin a quest for the truth about the relationship between Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene.

Now he couldn’t turn back.

He was walking between Rachel and Professor Deborah Stottlemeyer, a distinguished scholar of the New Testament and early Christian origins. He and Rachel had met with the professor briefly in her office to seek an expert opinion on Jesus’ relationship with his leading woman disciple. Professor Stottlemeyer had invited them to continue the conversation over lunch in the student center.

Karim kept his gaze trained on the walkway’s large stone rectangles so that Rachel wouldn’t see the turmoil in his eyes. His developing interest in her gnawed at him like hunger pangs during Ramadan. The interest had begun as a subtle attraction, a spontaneous stirring of the heart that came and went. Now the stirring had deepened in a way that caught him by surprise.

As they had walked the campus prior to their meeting with the professor, surrounded by old stone buildings as well as contemporary glass and steel designs, Rachel told him more about her father. He had worked at this university, not as a member of the faculty or administration, but as a custodian. “My acceptance to medical school fulfilled his dream of a better life for me,” she said. “I only wish he could have lived to see me graduate.”

Karim had wrapped an arm around her as they walked in silence, and then she asked about his mother. When he spoke of her dying too young to share in his educational achievements, Rachel had met his gaze with teary eyes and said, “If we don’t help to heal this land, who will?” In that moment he felt a shift occur in his heart, moving him from attraction to something deeper—something he wasn’t sure he was ready to embrace. He didn’t want to love an Israeli woman but found himself drawn to her. Since that earlier conversation, the struggle had been exhausting him; he needed to think about something else.

Turning to Professor Stottlemeyer, Karim asked, “Is it possible that Jesus had anything more than a friendship with Mary Magdalene?”

The professor adjusted her horn-rimmed glasses and ran a hand through her short red hair. “Like most scholars, I’ve wrestled with this question. The New Testament suggests that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were very close. According to the Gospel of Luke, he cast seven demons out of her. She stayed with him at the cross and led the other women to the tomb on Easter morning. In the Gospel of John, the risen Jesus even appears to her individually and calls her by name.”

Karim missed some of the professor’s answer because he was thinking about Rachel and her obvious love for her father. He understood, because he’d had the same deep love for his mother, who suffered for opposing his father’s militant Islam. Rachel’s voice startled Karim out of his reverie when she said to the professor, “Where do novelists and filmmakers get the idea that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were lovers or even husband and wife?”

The slightly overweight professor chuckled. “Speculation. In the sixth century, Pope Gregory the Great said that Mary Magdalene was the ‘sinful woman’ who anointed Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. Gregory got this idea from John’s gospel, where the ‘sinful woman’ is called ‘Mary,’ but the word ‘Magdalene’ isn’t in the text. The novel and film
The Last Temptation of Christ
show Jesus being tempted to have sex with this woman, but no credible New Testament scholar believes that Pope Gregory was right. Mary Magdalene wasn’t a prostitute. She and the ‘sinful woman’ who anointed Jesus are two different people.”

Karim kept walking in spite of the odd sensation inside of him— excited queasiness mixed with withering dread. He had felt the queasiness at Birzeit when dating Mira Ansari, but she was Palestinian. The short-lived romance had never filled him with dread.

He thought of the Jesus letter and remembered something that Brother Gregory had told him. “What about the idea that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married and had a child?”

“That idea is wildly speculative.” Professor Stottlemeyer dodged a student who had her nose in a book. “Writers who promote it look outside the New Testament for evidence, but not much exists. They draw on what are called the ‘Gnostic Gospels’ for support.”

Rachel stopped, causing Karim and the professor to do likewise. “What do you mean by ‘Gnostic’?”

“The Greek word
gnosis
means knowledge,” Professor Stottlemeyer said. “Members of gnostic groups believed that spiritual enlightenment required secret knowledge. Many gnostic gospels were discovered in Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in 1945. Mary Magdalene appears in some of them. She’s also the only woman who has a gospel named for her. The Gospel of Mary was discovered in 1896 and purchased in Cairo. But in none of these sources is she called the wife of Jesus.”

“So if there’s no evidence, why does the idea persist?” Karim asked. Professor Stottlemeyer turned serious. “Perhaps because of the human yearning for the divine feminine. If Jesus was the Son of God and Mary Magdalene was his wife, then she, too, becomes a divine figure.”

The professor started to walk again and climbed the few stairs that led onto the plaza in front of the student center. “Some of these authors use the Gnostic Gospel of Philip as evidence. Philip describes Mary Magdalene as the ‘companion’ of Jesus but not his wife. The verse says that he kissed her often, but the manuscript is damaged, so we don’t know
where
or
how
he kissed her.”

The professor’s words stopped Karim cold. It struck him that the popularity of some American novels and films about Jesus and Mary Magdalene stemmed in part from their focus on forbidden love. He couldn’t imagine the esteemed prophet Jesus doing anything forbidden. But for Karim the subject was more than a theme—it held ramifications for him. Jewish tradition forbade Rachel to marry outside her religion. If she defied her family and became involved with a Muslim, Ezra and her mother would hold a mock funeral and declare her dead.

Karim’s father would treat him similarly if he were to marry a Jewish woman. His relationship with Rachel seemed doomed from the outset. And yet he couldn’t deny the stirrings of his heart. He calmed himself by thinking about Jesus’ radical vision of love as set forth in his powerful letter. If the letter were genuine, it not only disproved the theory that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married but also made the idea appear quaint and outdated.

Karim had slowed, and when he looked ahead, he saw Rachel motioning for him to catch up. He hurried toward the two women. As he got to the glass doors that led into the student center, Karim asked the professor, “Have you ever heard of a letter that Jesus wrote?”

She laughed dismissively. “Heavens no.”

Karim pushed the door open for her. “Is there any reason he couldn’t have written one?”

“If you’re asking whether Jesus could read and write, the answer is yes. In the Gospel of Luke he reads during a synagogue service, and in John, he writes in the sand when defending an adulterous woman.” She paused thoughtfully before going on. “His ability to quote scripture suggests that he studied with the rabbis; some scholars even speculate that he learned from the cynic philosophers in Sepphoris, near Nazareth. But as far as we know, he never wrote any letters.”

“But it’s not impossible that he did?” Karim followed the two women into the crowded dining room in the student center.

Professor Stottlemeyer shrugged. “Theoretically, no. But if Jesus had written a letter and the manuscript survived, believe me, we would know about it. The manuscript would be priceless—perhaps humanity’s greatest treasure—and if the writings of the New Testament have changed the world, I can’t imagine the impact that such a letter would have.” She set her briefcase down to stake her claim on one of the few available tables. “Let’s get our food and then we can chat some more.”

As the professor headed for the salad bar in the food service area, Karim led Rachel toward the grill. He wove a path through rows of rectangular tables, most of them with clusters of students gathered around. An occupant at one of the tables toward the center of the room caught his eye—a middle-aged man sitting with four or five students. Thinking that the man’s profile looked familiar, Karim stopped Rachel and moved closer to get a better view.

With his tweed jacket and tan slacks, the man appeared to be dressed as the stereotypical professor, but what raised Karim’s curiosity was the man’s sandy hair and wire-rimmed glasses. When a blonde-haired girl stood to leave his table, the man extended a hand to say good-bye. In that moment Karim recognized him. He turned his back and carefully directed Rachel where to look. “Do you see that man? He’s the one who attacked me at Qumran.”

“Are you certain?” Rachel asked.

Karim didn’t answer but kept his back turned to the man, waited for the blonde student to pass and then fell in step beside her. “Excuse me,” he said. “Could you tell me the name of the man who was at your table?”

The athletic-looking girl barely altered her pace. “Professor Robert Kenyon. He teaches archaeology.”

Rachel caught up to Karim. “Who is he and how can you be sure he’s the right man?”

“He’s an archaeologist named Kenyon. When a man attacks you with a trowel, you don’t forget his face.” Karim took her arm, turned his face away from Kenyon and he steered Rachel toward the salad bar. “We can’t stay for lunch. We have to tell Professor Stottlemeyer that something came up.”

They intercepted the professor as she walked toward the table where she had left her briefcase. Karim began his explanation but someone interrupted, yelling, “Stop that man! He’s a thief!” He turned and saw Robert Kenyon running toward him from the center of the room. A hefty security guard in a navy blue uniform heard the commotion and started toward Karim.

Karim grabbed Rachel’s hand as Kenyon stumbled into a food cart, sending the dishes crashing, slowing him down. Karim and Rachel sprinted onto the plaza. They planned to swing around and head for her Jeep in the visitors’ lot, near the front entrance, on the other side of the student center. But with the guard radioing for help and pursuing them with Kenyon, they saw that they wouldn’t make it and decided to hide. Beyond the plaza lay three brick buildings. Karim squeezed Rachel’s hand and ran for the one on the left.

After sprinting down the path and entering the building, he nudged Rachel to the right, up the stairs. Several students were coming down, talking and laughing. Karim and Rachel took the stairs two at a time to pass them and ran down the corridor on the second floor, classes in session on either side. Halfway up the corridor they came to three doors marked with the names of professors.

The last door was open a crack. Karim heard footsteps on the stairs. He pulled Rachel inside the small office and closed and locked the door. The air smelled of warm candle wax. Karim scanned the cubicle-like office and saw a half-burned candle on the tidy wooden desktop. The candle was in a brass holder beside an open Bible.

Rachel squeezed his arm. “I know that professor back there, the one in the classroom on the left.”

Karim had glanced at the two professors in the classrooms across from each other. The one on the left wore the black beard and suit of an orthodox Jew. “Who is he?”

“His name is Itzak Kaufman. I’ve mentioned him to you before.”

“Your brother’s friend?”

“Yes. He’s the outspoken Zionist who teaches political science.”

“Did he see you?”

“I don’t think so.”