The Scroll of Alphaeus
In retrospect I realize that I had been horribly gullible, embarrassingly so.
But then we all were.
We desperately needed something to believe in, something beyond ourselves, something from a different time and space.
Our Former President languished under house arrest in his now bunkered estate in Florida. Levees encircled his enclave, holding back the threat of inundation due to the rising ocean levels. His followers, camped atop those levees, were prevented from entering the opulent grounds by a high fence and rolls of razor wire. Tabloids carried stories of the Former President walking there, but these were often disputed because the photo proof was grainy and indistinct. Still, many needed to believe he could yet be the savior to make their land great again.
But as a nation we could no longer believe in politics. And with that sad state, we also could no longer believe in the church. Too many leaders had been besotted by sex scandals and the financial exploitation of their believers. Where spirituality hung on in the traditional black churches of the South, white militia encircled the buildings on Sunday mornings so jubilation would not break out.
Universities had narrowed their programs of study to suit the corporate donors funding them. Libraries and bookstores replaced classic and writerly fiction with approved titles created by ideologically constrained Artificial Intelligence programs. Grade schools replaced interpersonal skills training with instruction on cohort monitoring.
But of all our losses, the greatest was the loss of belief in American Exceptionalism. We were no longer a shining city on a hill but a tattered billboard beside the potholed highway of capitalism. The profit motive that once ennobled our nation had given way to obscene wealth held by faceless mega-corporations in off-shore numbered companies. We could no longer believe in the steady hand of free market profit. We now needed an actual prophet, one espousing an ideology of hope.
And so when Marcus Son of James, formerly named Jimmy Marcowycz, came along we were vulnerable.
Jimmy had been one of the undistinguished masses. Before the small Bible College where he’d taught was shuttered by disinterest, he’d been nothing of note. He would have remained in obscurity had he not discovered the earthenware urn containing the Scroll of Alphaeus.
The story of that scroll would become our legend. The wisdom, charisma, and hope of Marcus Son of James would become our salvation as a nation.
Truly, it has been a great legend arising from a humble beginning: the story of a man walking his dog.
Jimmy’s best friend was Regis, a Great Pyrenees, a dog of magnificent bearing and luscious white fur. Regis had proved himself a watchful beast, sensitive to anything out of place. He had taken it upon himself to insure the squirrels populating the trees on his daily walks with his master were confined to their proper branches. It was a task that had him constantly looking upwards, his nose in the air.
It was with that nose in the air that Regis detected the divine scent wafting from the entrance of a recently opened cave. It was not a karst formed cave of eroded limestone. It was the protected cave of an ancient visitation, one that would become the hope of America.
I made my own pilgrimage to the Cave of Alphaeus. Rumor had it that a movement was coming to be, the following of a charismatic preacher in the Appalachians. People were camping out at the site of a cave, mesmerized by the teachings. Eager to get anecdotal color for my sociology lectures at the university, I invested a couple of hundred dollars to put gas in my parents’ aging Winnebago and went to investigate.
The briefing for recent arrivals came late on that first afternoon. Marcus Son of James greeted us in person. Eloquent in manner he kept us spellbound with his banter. His eyes sparkled with humor and compassion. We were held in his thrall.
Detecting my mind being suspended by the trance of his speech, I started a video recording on my iPhone to capture what Marcus said that momentous day.
“Friends.
“You are standing at the site of a small earthquake, not much more than a tremor, brought on by Appalachian fracking. But with that subtle movement of the earth, the entrance to a cave opened. It was a cave that had been tightly shut for nearly two millennia. Regis, my trusted companion, detected the fragrance of the newly opened cave and led me to its entrance. Once my eyes had adjusted to the dim light within the cave, I spotted an earthenware urn. Above it floated the watchful spirit of Alphaeus. Alphaeus revealed himself to be the Guardian of the Scroll, a scroll contained within that urn.
“There in the entry to the cave I was struck dumb, left wordless for forty days and forty nights. While I was in that state of divine stasis, Alphaeus shared with me both the miracle of his presence and the illuminating content of the scroll. It is that story I tell you today.
“I believe this is a story that will bring each of you to a personal encounter with divine presence as it has for me. But more than that, this story will bring our nation back to belief. We can be transformed into a peaceful and gracious people through the power of this story.
Marcus paused, reached down to scratch Regis on the side of his massive snout. Then, sure all eyes were on him, he went on to recount the tale.
“Alphaeus lived at the time of Jesus, a scribe in the temple of Jerusalem. He was the father of James the Lesser, who would later become one of Jesus’ disciples, and was a maternal uncle of Jesus himself.
“Alphaeus had the divine privilege to be present when Jesus entered the temple as a twelve-year-old boy. As a scribe he secretly recorded Jesus’ words spoken there. Those words, written on ancient papyrus, are preserved on a scroll within this Appalachian cave. That account, written at the very time of Jesus’ childhood visit to the temple, would later become the source material for Luke’s Gospel as it is written in our current New Testament.
“But the story told in the Alphaeus Scroll bears little resemblance to the one in the Gospel we have traditionally accepted. The version in the Gospel of Luke had been altered through decades of verbal retellings. It came to be interpreted as a fulfillment of ancient Hebrew prophecy, thus causing the story to be changed. In contrast, the original account by Alphaeus, as contained in this scroll, is a literal transcription. The early wisdom and spirit of his nephew are preserved on the scroll, words spoken by a mere child coming to grasp His divine purpose. They are the true words of the Child Christ.
“Alphaeus duly recorded successive stories of Jesus’ early life. There are many of these: Jesus mended the broken wing of a bird with the stroke of his hand; He miraculously filled a well for a dry village in Nazareth; through the power of His gaze, He stilled a poisonous asp before it struck in a courtyard where children played; and, He sat with lepers to give comfort but never became infected Himself. These events, as recorded in the Alphaeus Scroll, foretold Jesus’ nature even before He had been baptized by John. Each was an act of compassion to ease the harshness of this world. Each was a miracle by an unassuming presence.
“Upon the death of Jesus, Alphaeus made a second copy of the scroll so he would have one to disseminate and one to keep. The second copy passed through many hands over the next decades, was re-written multiple times. It eventually became a source document for apocryphal gospels as well as those contained in our current Bible.
“That was the journey of the second copy of the Scroll of Alphaeus. But what, you ask, became of the original? That is the story we are able to tell today.
“When Alphaeus lost control of the copy as it passed from one group of believers to the next, he feared it might end up being destroyed. The Pharisees were invested in the suppression of what they considered to be false messiahs. The impending genocide of the Jews by the Romans was drawing nigh. But Alphaeus worried that his copy of the scroll, if discovered, would also be destroyed. The true words and deeds of Jesus could be lost despite his care and caution.
“And so Alphaeus prayed. He prayed his original scroll would be taken to a land safe from religious and political persecution. And, in transit, it would be provided with a guardian.
“On the day of Jesus’ Ascension into Heaven, as is recorded in the Book of Acts, Alphaeus’ prayers were answered. The spirit of Alphaeus and his scroll were spirited away to a new world.”
Here Marcus Son of James stopped, all eyes fixed on him.
“Spirited away to this very cave, sealed within against the elements for two millennia.”
Marcus paused again to insure our rapt attention.
“With the recent movement in the bowels of the earth, the Scroll of Alphaeus, fragile with age, has brought the historical Jesus of Nazareth to life again.”
“And I, Marcus Son of James, the Present Day Guardian of the Scroll, together with the Spirit of Alphaeus, herald to you this newly revealed Jesus. A fresh Jesus. The true Jesus as He lived and breathed.”
I had carefully watched Marcus as he told the story. At one point Marcus reached down to scratch the deep fur on Regis’ shoulders. At that moment a pair of wings emerged from Regis’ back, briefly unfurling over him and then tucking back in. I was elevated by this momentary reveal of the dog’s true nature.
Back in the Winnebago that evening, I looked for the unfurling on the video. Alas, it wasn’t there. Someone had walked in front of me, blocking the view of my iPhone camera at the crucial moment. Yet, those angelic wings atop the mighty beast remained clear in my mind.
I slept deeply, receiving profound dreams. The bed in my parents’ Winnebago felt more luxurious and comforting than I had remembered it to be. The autumn air, perfumed by the divine presence wafting from the cave, wrapped me in a sense of peace. Even the barking of Regis through the night provided a sense security for my rest.
Out at dawn the next morning I came upon Marcus and Regis. Marcus was speaking to an assistant. He motioned for me to wait for him, that we would walk together. I crouched down to dig my fingers into Regis’s fur, searching for the wings tucked in there. While I waited, Marcus and his assistant discussed the logistics of tending to the needs of the assembling crowd: the need of honey-wagons to pump out waste water tanks from the RVs; the need for fruits and vegetables and all manner of fresh breads and barbecue meats to be brought in for those assembled; the tricky issue of security as some may come who, due to flaws of character, would not be true believers.
Listening I was carried along by the gentleness of spirit and the practicality of concern that Marcus exhibited as he tended to the details.
Then he said, “let’s walk.”
I dearly wish I could now share the exact words of our conversation but I cannot. The night before I had come to the realization that my phone tethered me to a tawdry, temporal world. It was a tether I was then ready to release. Without my phone I had no means to record our conversation.
As we walked together, Marcus shared more of the content of the scroll, speaking as though he was reading from it there with me. The exchange between us was not so much that of knowledge but of wisdom. Jesus had preached the calm of kindness rather than the calamity of greed, the celebration of diversity rather than the suffocation of prejudice and fear.
Marcus was gentle with me as I questioned him from my own curiosity, questions I would later be horrified that I had the audacity to ask. His answers imbued me with the grace of patience. I accepted all he said as a matter of truth, a redefining of how things could be, the futility of doubt and the assurance of now knowing.
When I got back to the Winnebago a team of men were parking the recreational vehicles that had arrived overnight. Women were welcoming the newcomers. The scent of coffee caffeinated the air, earthy dark and sweet. Campers were coming to life around fold-out tables set for breakfast. There was the gentle strumming of guitars and the gleeful warble of harmonicas.
A village was arising there, encircling the entrance to the cave.
As dearly I as would’ve wished to stay, I felt urgency to return to the university, an urgency propelled by Marcus in our talk. This miracle that had happened on American soil, a miracle that could elevate our nation again, needed to be proclaimed. I could be its messenger. Marcus’ last words to me were a Biblical reference, one I could not place but would remember to look up later: Hebrews Chapter 11 Verse 1.
Alas, I was unable to extricate my parent’s Winnebago. Too many incoming RVs were blocking me in. I left the keys with Stan, the fellow from the fifth-wheel trailer parked beside me. He could open our family Winnebago for some other soul who needed a place to sleep. On the dinette table I left sufficient cash to refill the propane tank. I would make my way to the nearest train station in the van sent off to fetch provisions for the gathering crowd.
As I rode the train back to Boston doubts began to gather. The discussions of the morning with Marcus gradually reassembled in my mind. With the clatter of the wheels over the track my capacity for critical thought returned.
I had little against which to judge the emerging tale of a historical Jesus as revealed in the Scroll of Alphaeus. Certainly, there was the Sunday School Jesus of my childhood. But the Jesus Marcus had recounted from the scroll seemed to have greater dimension and depth.
However, a detail from Marcus’ account of a story on the scroll bothered me. Perhaps I wasn’t remembering it correctly. Marcus had said that Jesus’ complexion was as white and translucent as the finest porcelain, neither swarthy nor dark. It troubled me as a contemporaneous description of the historical Jesus.
On the train I powered up my cellphone and googled the history of porcelain. Marcus must have misspoke, meant alabaster rather than porcelain. Porcelain did not come to be until hundreds of years later in the Orient. It was a comparison that scribe Alphaeus could never have made.
The niggle of doubt strengthened within me.
I googled Alphaeus as an historical figure. There was no record of him being scribe but he was mentioned as the father of one, or perhaps two, of Jesus’ disciples. He could very well have been present in the temple when Jesus visited that day. I read snippets of the various apocryphal gospels, of Peter and Bartholomew and James, each with their own peculiarities. Their stories entwined with what Marcus had shared from the Scroll of Alphaeus. The revelations of the scroll seemed to be confirmed.
Then the crucial realization hit.
Marcus had mentioned the need to preserve the physical integrity of the scroll, to keep it sealed in the urn for fear of deterioration if it was exposed to the elements. The sacred urn was never to be opened, the integrity of the papyrus was never to be violated by samples taken for carbon dating.
Even Marcus had not opened the urn, this on the caution of its ancient guardian, the hovering Spirit of Alphaeus. And thus it dawned on me that Marcus had never actually seen the scroll. Marcus only knew of its content from the forty days and forty nights of instruction received from the Alphaeus spirit. And now Marcus, as the Present Day Guardian, insisted that no other person would see it either.
There could be no confirmation of the content of the scroll, or even its existence inside that urn.
As the train pulled into Boston’s Back Bay station I tried to figure out how to tell my parents’ I’d left the keys to their Winnebago in the care of a stranger.
All this would’ve been inconsequential had not the Alphaeus scroll captured the imagination of our nation.
Fracking had propelled a subsequent earthquake, closing the cave forever. It was feared that the urn inside had been crushed. Only the story of its contents would carry on.
But that story gave our nation something to believe in. America would take its place as the home of the true, literal, historically accurate, story of Jesus. Our nation could become the shining city on the hill again, exceptional through a spiritual gift sent to it two millennia before. The Appalachians would become a new Holy Land, fracking and all.
Pastors and a new breed of evangelists rushed to the feet of Marcus Son of James to hear his ever increasing recollections from his forty days and forty nights.
Of course, the academics decried the lack of proof of the authenticity of the scroll, the lack of opportunity to study the ancient writing themselves. University Boards of Directors moved to quell the concern they raised. The need for myth was more important to the American people than methods of critical thought. Rogue professors who would have seeded doubt were reassigned to purely administrative tasks or granted early and full retirement. The preachers could carry on.
There is a footnote to the legend.
Regis lived a long life until he was taken into the heavens by powerful wings emerging from the thick white fur on his back.
Or so the story goes.
In retrospect I realize that I had been horribly gullible, embarrassingly so.
But then we all were.
We desperately needed something to believe in, something beyond ourselves, something from a different time and space.
Our Former President languished under house arrest in his now bunkered estate in Florida. Levees encircled his enclave, holding back the threat of inundation due to the rising ocean levels. His followers, camped atop those levees, were prevented from entering the opulent grounds by a high fence and rolls of razor wire. Tabloids carried stories of the Former President walking there, but these were often disputed because the photo proof was grainy and indistinct. Still, many needed to believe he could yet be the savior to make their land great again.
But as a nation we could no longer believe in politics. And with that sad state, we also could no longer believe in the church. Too many leaders had been besotted by sex scandals and the financial exploitation of their believers. Where spirituality hung on in the traditional black churches of the South, white militia encircled the buildings on Sunday mornings so jubilation would not break out.
Universities had narrowed their programs of study to suit the corporate donors funding them. Libraries and bookstores replaced classic and writerly fiction with approved titles created by ideologically constrained Artificial Intelligence programs. Grade schools replaced interpersonal skills training with instruction on cohort monitoring.
But of all our losses, the greatest was the loss of belief in American Exceptionalism. We were no longer a shining city on a hill but a tattered billboard beside the potholed highway of capitalism. The profit motive that once ennobled our nation had given way to obscene wealth held by faceless mega-corporations in off-shore numbered companies. We could no longer believe in the steady hand of free market profit. We now needed an actual prophet, one espousing an ideology of hope.
And so when Marcus Son of James, formerly named Jimmy Marcowycz, came along we were vulnerable.
Jimmy had been one of the undistinguished masses. Before the small Bible College where he’d taught was shuttered by disinterest, he’d been nothing of note. He would have remained in obscurity had he not discovered the earthenware urn containing the Scroll of Alphaeus.
The story of that scroll would become our legend. The wisdom, charisma, and hope of Marcus Son of James would become our salvation as a nation.
Truly, it has been a great legend arising from a humble beginning: the story of a man walking his dog.
Jimmy’s best friend was Regis, a Great Pyrenees, a dog of magnificent bearing and luscious white fur. Regis had proved himself a watchful beast, sensitive to anything out of place. He had taken it upon himself to insure the squirrels populating the trees on his daily walks with his master were confined to their proper branches. It was a task that had him constantly looking upwards, his nose in the air.
It was with that nose in the air that Regis detected the divine scent wafting from the entrance of a recently opened cave. It was not a karst formed cave of eroded limestone. It was the protected cave of an ancient visitation, one that would become the hope of America.
I made my own pilgrimage to the Cave of Alphaeus. Rumor had it that a movement was coming to be, the following of a charismatic preacher in the Appalachians. People were camping out at the site of a cave, mesmerized by the teachings. Eager to get anecdotal color for my sociology lectures at the university, I invested a couple of hundred dollars to put gas in my parents’ aging Winnebago and went to investigate.
The briefing for recent arrivals came late on that first afternoon. Marcus Son of James greeted us in person. Eloquent in manner he kept us spellbound with his banter. His eyes sparkled with humor and compassion. We were held in his thrall.
Detecting my mind being suspended by the trance of his speech, I started a video recording on my iPhone to capture what Marcus said that momentous day.
“Friends.
“You are standing at the site of a small earthquake, not much more than a tremor, brought on by Appalachian fracking. But with that subtle movement of the earth, the entrance to a cave opened. It was a cave that had been tightly shut for nearly two millennia. Regis, my trusted companion, detected the fragrance of the newly opened cave and led me to its entrance. Once my eyes had adjusted to the dim light within the cave, I spotted an earthenware urn. Above it floated the watchful spirit of Alphaeus. Alphaeus revealed himself to be the Guardian of the Scroll, a scroll contained within that urn.
“There in the entry to the cave I was struck dumb, left wordless for forty days and forty nights. While I was in that state of divine stasis, Alphaeus shared with me both the miracle of his presence and the illuminating content of the scroll. It is that story I tell you today.
“I believe this is a story that will bring each of you to a personal encounter with divine presence as it has for me. But more than that, this story will bring our nation back to belief. We can be transformed into a peaceful and gracious people through the power of this story.
Marcus paused, reached down to scratch Regis on the side of his massive snout. Then, sure all eyes were on him, he went on to recount the tale.
“Alphaeus lived at the time of Jesus, a scribe in the temple of Jerusalem. He was the father of James the Lesser, who would later become one of Jesus’ disciples, and was a maternal uncle of Jesus himself.
“Alphaeus had the divine privilege to be present when Jesus entered the temple as a twelve-year-old boy. As a scribe he secretly recorded Jesus’ words spoken there. Those words, written on ancient papyrus, are preserved on a scroll within this Appalachian cave. That account, written at the very time of Jesus’ childhood visit to the temple, would later become the source material for Luke’s Gospel as it is written in our current New Testament.
“But the story told in the Alphaeus Scroll bears little resemblance to the one in the Gospel we have traditionally accepted. The version in the Gospel of Luke had been altered through decades of verbal retellings. It came to be interpreted as a fulfillment of ancient Hebrew prophecy, thus causing the story to be changed. In contrast, the original account by Alphaeus, as contained in this scroll, is a literal transcription. The early wisdom and spirit of his nephew are preserved on the scroll, words spoken by a mere child coming to grasp His divine purpose. They are the true words of the Child Christ.
“Alphaeus duly recorded successive stories of Jesus’ early life. There are many of these: Jesus mended the broken wing of a bird with the stroke of his hand; He miraculously filled a well for a dry village in Nazareth; through the power of His gaze, He stilled a poisonous asp before it struck in a courtyard where children played; and, He sat with lepers to give comfort but never became infected Himself. These events, as recorded in the Alphaeus Scroll, foretold Jesus’ nature even before He had been baptized by John. Each was an act of compassion to ease the harshness of this world. Each was a miracle by an unassuming presence.
“Upon the death of Jesus, Alphaeus made a second copy of the scroll so he would have one to disseminate and one to keep. The second copy passed through many hands over the next decades, was re-written multiple times. It eventually became a source document for apocryphal gospels as well as those contained in our current Bible.
“That was the journey of the second copy of the Scroll of Alphaeus. But what, you ask, became of the original? That is the story we are able to tell today.
“When Alphaeus lost control of the copy as it passed from one group of believers to the next, he feared it might end up being destroyed. The Pharisees were invested in the suppression of what they considered to be false messiahs. The impending genocide of the Jews by the Romans was drawing nigh. But Alphaeus worried that his copy of the scroll, if discovered, would also be destroyed. The true words and deeds of Jesus could be lost despite his care and caution.
“And so Alphaeus prayed. He prayed his original scroll would be taken to a land safe from religious and political persecution. And, in transit, it would be provided with a guardian.
“On the day of Jesus’ Ascension into Heaven, as is recorded in the Book of Acts, Alphaeus’ prayers were answered. The spirit of Alphaeus and his scroll were spirited away to a new world.”
Here Marcus Son of James stopped, all eyes fixed on him.
“Spirited away to this very cave, sealed within against the elements for two millennia.”
Marcus paused again to insure our rapt attention.
“With the recent movement in the bowels of the earth, the Scroll of Alphaeus, fragile with age, has brought the historical Jesus of Nazareth to life again.”
“And I, Marcus Son of James, the Present Day Guardian of the Scroll, together with the Spirit of Alphaeus, herald to you this newly revealed Jesus. A fresh Jesus. The true Jesus as He lived and breathed.”
I had carefully watched Marcus as he told the story. At one point Marcus reached down to scratch the deep fur on Regis’ shoulders. At that moment a pair of wings emerged from Regis’ back, briefly unfurling over him and then tucking back in. I was elevated by this momentary reveal of the dog’s true nature.
Back in the Winnebago that evening, I looked for the unfurling on the video. Alas, it wasn’t there. Someone had walked in front of me, blocking the view of my iPhone camera at the crucial moment. Yet, those angelic wings atop the mighty beast remained clear in my mind.
I slept deeply, receiving profound dreams. The bed in my parents’ Winnebago felt more luxurious and comforting than I had remembered it to be. The autumn air, perfumed by the divine presence wafting from the cave, wrapped me in a sense of peace. Even the barking of Regis through the night provided a sense security for my rest.
Out at dawn the next morning I came upon Marcus and Regis. Marcus was speaking to an assistant. He motioned for me to wait for him, that we would walk together. I crouched down to dig my fingers into Regis’s fur, searching for the wings tucked in there. While I waited, Marcus and his assistant discussed the logistics of tending to the needs of the assembling crowd: the need of honey-wagons to pump out waste water tanks from the RVs; the need for fruits and vegetables and all manner of fresh breads and barbecue meats to be brought in for those assembled; the tricky issue of security as some may come who, due to flaws of character, would not be true believers.
Listening I was carried along by the gentleness of spirit and the practicality of concern that Marcus exhibited as he tended to the details.
Then he said, “let’s walk.”
I dearly wish I could now share the exact words of our conversation but I cannot. The night before I had come to the realization that my phone tethered me to a tawdry, temporal world. It was a tether I was then ready to release. Without my phone I had no means to record our conversation.
As we walked together, Marcus shared more of the content of the scroll, speaking as though he was reading from it there with me. The exchange between us was not so much that of knowledge but of wisdom. Jesus had preached the calm of kindness rather than the calamity of greed, the celebration of diversity rather than the suffocation of prejudice and fear.
Marcus was gentle with me as I questioned him from my own curiosity, questions I would later be horrified that I had the audacity to ask. His answers imbued me with the grace of patience. I accepted all he said as a matter of truth, a redefining of how things could be, the futility of doubt and the assurance of now knowing.
When I got back to the Winnebago a team of men were parking the recreational vehicles that had arrived overnight. Women were welcoming the newcomers. The scent of coffee caffeinated the air, earthy dark and sweet. Campers were coming to life around fold-out tables set for breakfast. There was the gentle strumming of guitars and the gleeful warble of harmonicas.
A village was arising there, encircling the entrance to the cave.
As dearly I as would’ve wished to stay, I felt urgency to return to the university, an urgency propelled by Marcus in our talk. This miracle that had happened on American soil, a miracle that could elevate our nation again, needed to be proclaimed. I could be its messenger. Marcus’ last words to me were a Biblical reference, one I could not place but would remember to look up later: Hebrews Chapter 11 Verse 1.
Alas, I was unable to extricate my parent’s Winnebago. Too many incoming RVs were blocking me in. I left the keys with Stan, the fellow from the fifth-wheel trailer parked beside me. He could open our family Winnebago for some other soul who needed a place to sleep. On the dinette table I left sufficient cash to refill the propane tank. I would make my way to the nearest train station in the van sent off to fetch provisions for the gathering crowd.
As I rode the train back to Boston doubts began to gather. The discussions of the morning with Marcus gradually reassembled in my mind. With the clatter of the wheels over the track my capacity for critical thought returned.
I had little against which to judge the emerging tale of a historical Jesus as revealed in the Scroll of Alphaeus. Certainly, there was the Sunday School Jesus of my childhood. But the Jesus Marcus had recounted from the scroll seemed to have greater dimension and depth.
However, a detail from Marcus’ account of a story on the scroll bothered me. Perhaps I wasn’t remembering it correctly. Marcus had said that Jesus’ complexion was as white and translucent as the finest porcelain, neither swarthy nor dark. It troubled me as a contemporaneous description of the historical Jesus.
On the train I powered up my cellphone and googled the history of porcelain. Marcus must have misspoke, meant alabaster rather than porcelain. Porcelain did not come to be until hundreds of years later in the Orient. It was a comparison that scribe Alphaeus could never have made.
The niggle of doubt strengthened within me.
I googled Alphaeus as an historical figure. There was no record of him being scribe but he was mentioned as the father of one, or perhaps two, of Jesus’ disciples. He could very well have been present in the temple when Jesus visited that day. I read snippets of the various apocryphal gospels, of Peter and Bartholomew and James, each with their own peculiarities. Their stories entwined with what Marcus had shared from the Scroll of Alphaeus. The revelations of the scroll seemed to be confirmed.
Then the crucial realization hit.
Marcus had mentioned the need to preserve the physical integrity of the scroll, to keep it sealed in the urn for fear of deterioration if it was exposed to the elements. The sacred urn was never to be opened, the integrity of the papyrus was never to be violated by samples taken for carbon dating.
Even Marcus had not opened the urn, this on the caution of its ancient guardian, the hovering Spirit of Alphaeus. And thus it dawned on me that Marcus had never actually seen the scroll. Marcus only knew of its content from the forty days and forty nights of instruction received from the Alphaeus spirit. And now Marcus, as the Present Day Guardian, insisted that no other person would see it either.
There could be no confirmation of the content of the scroll, or even its existence inside that urn.
As the train pulled into Boston’s Back Bay station I tried to figure out how to tell my parents’ I’d left the keys to their Winnebago in the care of a stranger.
All this would’ve been inconsequential had not the Alphaeus scroll captured the imagination of our nation.
Fracking had propelled a subsequent earthquake, closing the cave forever. It was feared that the urn inside had been crushed. Only the story of its contents would carry on.
But that story gave our nation something to believe in. America would take its place as the home of the true, literal, historically accurate, story of Jesus. Our nation could become the shining city on the hill again, exceptional through a spiritual gift sent to it two millennia before. The Appalachians would become a new Holy Land, fracking and all.
Pastors and a new breed of evangelists rushed to the feet of Marcus Son of James to hear his ever increasing recollections from his forty days and forty nights.
Of course, the academics decried the lack of proof of the authenticity of the scroll, the lack of opportunity to study the ancient writing themselves. University Boards of Directors moved to quell the concern they raised. The need for myth was more important to the American people than methods of critical thought. Rogue professors who would have seeded doubt were reassigned to purely administrative tasks or granted early and full retirement. The preachers could carry on.
There is a footnote to the legend.
Regis lived a long life until he was taken into the heavens by powerful wings emerging from the thick white fur on his back.
Or so the story goes.