14 April 2006

Gospel Truth

There are three things you are not supposed to talk about in the Wardroom. Ships are small places, and the topics of great emotion, the most visceral ones, should be reserved for venues where the participants can walk away and not let offense fester, as it can within steel walls.

So I should stay away from sex, politics and religion.

The first is unfortunately ubiquitous, the second is impossible, and we appear to be fighting a war over the last, or some aspect of it. Plus, the good stories appear to be about all three, at least on some level. Besides, it is Good Friday today, and there is a puzzle in the Revealed Mystery.

Holy Week is a great one for walking in Washington. The season has turned and it is temperate on the city streets. The Cherry blossoms have passed, but others remain in purple and alabaster hues. The Victorian row houses of Kalaroma and Dupont are dotted with yellow in the little gardens beside their steep wrought-iron steps.

A few blocks from the Bus Station is Ford's Theater, where President Lincoln was murdered on Good Friday one hundred and forty-one years ago. The story of that day is as fresh here as it was then, though it is seen through a sepia light.

We were at the Circle a few days ago, near the statue of Admiral Dupont, and had the choice of taking the Metro or walking back to the office or strolling south into the commercial district to get back to the office. We chose to walk, and wander through the Mayflower Hotel and pretend we were conventioneers.

The brass fixtures gleamed on the white marble floors of the Grand Concourse, and we fit right in with our badges on lanyards around our necks. We were not challenged when we used the restrooms, or enjoyed the snowy white hand-towels.

Emerging from the rear entrance, across the street from the bronze wolves that flank the entrance to the Defenders of Wildlife Building, there were banners advertising a new exhibition at the National Geographic Society Headquarters.

Given the choice between being early for a conference call, and seeing something new, we crossed the street and went north up the block to the Geographic. The Kimonos of the last authentic Geisha were on display, and a gallery with pages from the original Gospel of Judas Iscariot, the betrayer of Christ the King.

It was the middle afternoon, and there was no line. That is a fine time to tour a popular exhibition. Once, on a mid-week afternoon I was able to walk into the Ronald Reagan World Trade Building and see Hitler's military cap and baton, on travel from the Russian Central Army Museum, just like that.

On the weekends, the line was reported to be hours long.

The Geographic had done a nice job on the exhibit, though it was a small one. There were several story-boards that explained the context of the Gospel, and the complex story of its discovery and travels around the world. Restoration of the crumbling papyrus codex was a painstaking effort, explained in a video.

We were able to lean over the display cases and look at pages frozen in glass plates, the characters on the brown pages still legible after nearly two millennia. They were written, according to the Geographic, as far from the Crucifixion as I am from the murder of President Lincoln.

There is controversy about the Gospel, of course, though this week it seems to be about ownership, rather than provenance. The story told by the betrayer of Christ appears to be that the treachery was actually an inside job, a tactic to deliver the Redeemer to the hands of his enemies to reveal a higher truth.

A confidence shared between the Son of God and a beloved disciple.

It is not depicted that way in the four Gospels I know from the New Testament. I am not devout, but I understand orthodoxy. My first personal Bible was a present from my Great Aunt. It has a zipper that closes the volume tight against the elements, and the Word of God is in red typeface so you can't miss it.

It is the version chartered by King James, long ago, and I prefer that translation to the others that have followed.

But I will confess that I have strayed far from my upbringing, and not thought about orthodoxy or the history of the good book much down through the years.

One morning a few years ago, I was reading the Post, and discovered a controversy about the provenance of an ossuary that may have contained the bones of James, the brother of the Christ.

For some reason that astounded me. Scholars assured me it was consistent with the story in the Good Book, and there was an explanation for how Mary's son had blood kin. He was the son of man and God, after all.

Then came a wider discussion of the Gnostic Gospels, and alternate stories of the biblical times. And finally Dan Brown, whose wild tale of the Holy Grail was such a page-turning success, even if it is alleged that he stole his ideas from earlier scholars.

He alleged the most astonishing thing about the Christ and Mary Magdalene. It is one of the worst best-sellers I have ever read, though I must say, I turned the pages.

Walking away from the Geographic, I thought about the Gospel of Judas, what it meant, and why it appeared now. The day was magnificent, and even the homeless in the park across the street seemed relaxed, confident that the cutting winds were finally gone.

I was scrolling though the Internet later, multitasking during the conference phone call. I read that the Gospel of John, one of the four accepted Gospel's of the canon, has some inconsistencies in language that suggests there were revisions to the original text.

Scholars seemed to agree on that, though there was no agreement as to why, or if I should make a marginal note in my red-letter edition that the Gospel might have originally featured a more prominent role for the Magdalene.

They say there may have been some tension between Mary and Peter, the Rock of the early Church, that had to be cleaned up later.

I will certainly never have any insight into that. The Authorities will have to sort it out and tell me what to think.

Copyright 2006 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

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