The Thirteenth Apostle (42 page)

The novelist follows his investigation up to the point that history has reached. He then imagines what history would have become,
if
… But he must do so in strict coherence with preceding events. If what he writes is not
real
, it must be
realistic
. Historical fiction does not create an entirely new world, as science fiction does: it imagines what the world could have become, if a minuscule grain of sand had oriented history – as we know it – along a different path. It must be plausible hypothesis, coherent with what we know from other sources.

That is how I constructed
The Thirteenth Apostle
. We know for a fact that this man existed. Did he write an epistle to tell his truth about Jesus the Nazorean? There is no trace of such a letter, but he
could have
written one, which
could have
been
transmitted to us, as it was the case for many other works left behind by the founders of Christianity.

What would have been the content of such an epistle? Obviously we can't tell, but a good knowledge of first-century history allows us to imagine it.

Fiction, then, is an extension of history. Like a flower bud opening out and blossoming, the hidden facet of world events is revealed at the novelist's touch. He makes us imagine, but also pushes open new doors, possibly for a new generation of scholars to go through one day. I have attempted to give body, voice, sensitivity to this man whose memory the primitive Church sought to annihilate at all costs.
The shadow of the thirteenth apostle
looms over my novel, and beyond his that of another man, Jesus the Nazorean, whom he had loved more than anyone else, of whom he had been the most intimate and loyal disciple.

At least, that's what he claims.

Twelve Apostles?

The literature we possess on Jesus – the man, his personality and the events which led to his crucifixion – is remarkably vast and detailed. We know a great deal more about him than about most of the great figures of antiquity.
¹
His death, for example, is precisely dated 7th April 30
AD
,
²
a Friday, at three in the afternoon: such a degree of precision is most rare for this period. We know its official reasons, as well as the true reasons hidden within the texts. The events of the final weeks of his life unfold in front of our eyes as in a film, orchestrated by four more or less scrupulous directors.

This literature – the New Testament – was written in stages, over a period which began around 50 ad and ended around 100
AD
. The New Testament itself is not a historical document, but a
polemical
, even
political
one. It was written during a time when the Church was establishing itself, transforming Jesus into God and inventing a legitimacy for itself in relation to the Judaism it had derived from and the other religions of the Roman Empire.

The choice of twelve men among those who were following him can be traced back to Jesus himself. Why this number? Because it was immediately recognizable for the Jewish crowds of the time: twelve, like the twelve sons of Jacob, ancestors of the twelve tribes of mythical Israel. It is interesting to note that Jesus never once gives them the title of “apostle”, nor even that of “disciple”.
³
In his lifetime he simply called them “the Twelve”,
⁴
and it is only later that the expression “twelve apostles” starts to appear in texts.
⁵

In fact, the title of apostle became a kind of trademark within the Church. Composing his Acts of the Apostles between 80 and 90
AD
, Luke describes the choice of the twelfth apostle who will replace Judas, who died in mysterious and tragic circumstances. For the election of the replacement there is only one criterion: he must be chosen from among those “who have been with us the whole time the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from John's baptism to the time when Jesus was taken up from us”.

That is to say from the time of his leaving the desert until his death.

This condition alone is enough to validate the candidacy for the title of apostle and the authority that comes with it.
⁶
This title is so honorific that Paul of Tarsus – even though he had not known Jesus and therefore not fulfilled the essential condition – would later acquire it by force, in order to feel better equipped in the fierce conflict which would pit him against the legitimate apostles.

But for the barons of the Church, there cannot be more than twelve apostles. Not one more.

A Thirteenth Apostle?

The crucial moment then is when Jesus emerges from his desert solitude, after a long period of meditation. Before this experience he had been a pious Jew among many; afterwards he becomes a different man, filled with a new-found sense of charisma and the promise of a new world. It is at this precise moment that five men meet him. The so-called gospel of St John provides an astonishing account of this meeting:

One of the two
: who is the other disciple, the one who tells the story? He is an apostle, since he has met Jesus as he left the desert, and will follow him to the end. Along with Andrew, he is even the first one to have met him, and will be the last to see him – on the cross. Despite this, he will never appear on the official lists of the
apostles. Nor in any other New Testament text, except the fourth gospel, of which he is the initiator.

This man who could have – more than anyone else – laid claim to the title of apostle, refers to himself as the
beloved disciple of Jesus
. This is the man whom I refer to as the
thirteenth apostle
, without being able to name him, since even his very name has been cancelled from memory.

He reappears at the beginning of the final week of Jesus's life in Jerusalem and describes the dramatic events of this period so vividly, warmly and precisely that he must have been an eyewitness. But before investigating this account, we must go back and recapitulate what we know about this man.

The Rediscovery of a Suppressed Eyewitness

In the 1980s Raymond E. Brown, a Catholic scholar, officially recognized that the
beloved disciple
was definitely a thirteenth apostle, distinct from St John the Evangelist: “It is evident that the
disciple beloved by Jesus
was a historical figure and a companion of Jesus.”
⁸

This unknown witness, a kind of “man in the iron mask” of the primitive Church, appears eight times in the text of the fourth gospel, either explicitly or in unequivocal allusions. Chapter 21 for example describes Peter and six other disciples' short stay around the lake of Galilee, where they had fled to after the crucifixion. The author gives us the following names: “Simon Peter, Thomas (called Didymus), Nathanael from Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and
two other disciples
”.
⁹
Who are those two other disciples? A bit further in text, one of the two emerges from anonymity: “Peter turned and saw that the disciple whom Jesus loved was following them.”
¹⁰

That's him again:
the thirteenth apostle
, and in this scene he is explicitly distinguished from the apostle John, the son of Zebedee, whom tradition labels “the Evangelist”.

When Jesus and the four others leave John the Baptist to return to Galilee, the thirteenth apostle does not join them but goes back to Jerusalem, where he lives. He knows the city well; his descriptions in the fourth gospel are exact, colourful and have been confirmed by archaeological excavations. He possesses a house there, situated not far from that of the high priest Caiaphas and in the wealthy western quarter, heavily protected by the Jewish police.
¹¹
As all the villas in the neighbourhood, his is vast and contains, on the first floor, a large “upper room”. This is the room in which Jesus will take his last supper, and where the terrorized disciples will hide after the crucifixion of their master, before leaving for Galilee. Some of them will find refuge there again on their return to Jerusalem several weeks later. And it is also there that the miracle of the Pentecost will occur fifty days after Passover.

The thirteenth apostle therefore takes the risk of housing the accomplices of a crucified man, a huge favour to the apostles, with whom he is still on good terms.

But this mutual understanding was not to last long: as we have seen, his name and his very existence have been erased from the New Testament entirely, apart from his narrative in the fourth gospel. When Paul makes three “official visits” to Jerusalem (in 39, 48 and 52 ad), he provides the details of his meetings with the “columns”, i.e. those who matter in the nascent Church: the
beloved disciple
is mentioned nowhere, either directly or by allusion. Has he already disappeared from Jerusalem, has he already taken refuge in the silence that has been imposed on him?

If the apostles have pursued him in their hatred of him to the point of annihilating his legacy, he likewise does not think highly
of them at all: it has been noted that in the fourth gospel the word
apostolos
is never used to refer to the Twelve. Almost as if he had wanted to deny them their official label of authority, he for whom Jesus is the only
apostolos
of God. He describes himself as
mathetes
, a disciple in the Greek philosophical tradition.

A Respectable Local Figure

He is wealthy and owns a large household: it is one of his servants even who discreetly ushers the
rabbi
and his followers into the western quarter, where their Galilean accent and scrawny appearance would have made them immediately noticeable. Jesus has carefully prepared his clandestine entry into the city; a signal has been agreed upon between himself and his friend, and he warns his disciples:

The anonymous
owner
is the thirteenth apostle, who is treated here as the stranger he has become for the official Church, when this gospel was written forty years after the fact.

And this short passage is the
only
one in which the shadow of this man briefly appears in the Synoptic Gospels:
¹³
the apostles overlooked this detail in their bid to cancel him from history – the water carrier, the servant of the
owner
who was one of theirs, their brother, before saving their lives. Forty years later he has become a stranger to them, an enemy to be mentioned fleetingly.

This detail is authenticated by those who report it – because they cannot do otherwise. It shows that a trusting, friendly, intimate relationship had been established between Jesus and him, which must have incurred fierce jealousy on the part of the Twelve.

He is not only wealthy, but also well connected. He has free access to the palace of his neighbour Caiaphas, the highest authority in Israel. The staff there recognize him immediately and let him come and go as he pleases: a regular visitor, as opposed to Peter, who does not dare to enter and stays outside.

Still no name: but the “
another disciple
” is him – just as on the banks of the Jordan, as on the shore of the lake of Galilee.

And it is he who will introduce Jesus to the State Councillor Nicodemus, the landowner Lazarus and Joseph of Arimathea, who will provide a temporary tomb for Jesus. All of these notables would not have been part of Jesus's social sphere in Jerusalem and he would not have been able to meet them without his friend as an intermediary. They will all play a crucial role in Jesus's final days and they are mentioned
only
in John's gospel. Another testimony to the privileged link which united the Galilean and the man from Jerusalem.

Essenian or Nazorean?

One thing is certain: the thirteenth apostle is, at the moment he first encounters Jesus, a disciple of John the Baptist, like the
four Galileans he seems to be consorting with: only the enthusiasm generated by the Baptist's teaching could have temporarily brought closer men from such different social backgrounds as the rich worthy from Jerusalem and the four poor fishermen.

They are therefore all five of them Baptists.

The Baptist movement was a loose collective born out of rejection of the Temple, its cult, its corrupt hierarchy, its compromises with money, power and the Roman occupier. The Baptists had replaced the Temple's sacrificial ritual by immersions into water, which provided internal purification, and were done more or less frequently. The most famous Baptists were the Essenians, who spread all over Israel. Some scholars believe that St John the Baptist had been a member of an Essenian community – perhaps that of Qumran – before leading the life of a hermit on the banks of the Jordan.

So, was the thirteenth apostle not only a Baptist – because he followed St John – but also an Essenian? One cannot prove it conclusively, but numerous clues in the fourth gospel point towards a strong Essenian influence. When in my novel I make him out to be a non-ordained Essenian I am going beyond the strict facts of history, but without straying from the domain of plausibility.