Markowitz stirred for a moment and then sat up. I poured another cup of wine and insisted he drink it, though in hindsight that might have been a mistake. His face turned green and he rushed over to the chamber pot.
He didn’t even try to return to the bed, so Lavon took a blanket and spread it out on the floor. Then, he helped Markowitz turn over on his side and then draped another one over his chest and legs.
“We’ll just let him sleep it off,” he said.
Markowitz’s well being, though, wasn’t Lavon’s main worry. He turned to Bryson with a question.
“I have to ask you again, Dr. Bryson: what, exactly, did you intend to accomplish here?”
The Professor eyed him as if he were an exceptionally slow student.
“I’ve already told you: I intend to clear up a controversy; in light of Christianity’s impact over the past two thousand years, perhaps the most important issue of all time.”
“Yes, but once you have the evidence, the video, what are you planning to do with it?”
That seemed obvious. I sat back, wondering where this was heading.
I suppose the Professor thought the same way. He grew irritated.
“For most of its existence, mankind has wallowed in ignorance and superstition. Now that technology has given us the ability to replace blind faith with objective knowledge, I would be remiss in my obligation, both as a scientist and a member of the human race, not to share my findings with the world.”
He paused for a moment. “Whichever way it turns out, though I admit I have my own hypothesis. You can’t fault me for that.”
“No; no I don’t,” Lavon replied. “Your objectivity as a scientist is commendable; but that’s not what’s troubling me. In terms of its ultimate persuasive value to the world, it’s not a question of what the video will show; it’s a matter of authenticating that video.”
Bryson shifted uncomfortably.
“Take your Kennedy tape, for example.”
“What about it?”
Lavon stood up, walked toward the window, and patted the meleke limestone blocks.
“Given the incontrovertible evidence that we are in fact here, in first century Jerusalem, I have no trouble accepting the fact that you went back to Dallas as your wife described.
“The problem is, to a viewer without our level of background knowledge, your Kennedy footage could just as easily be something that an eighth grader cobbled together with a cheap laptop and some off-the-shelf editing software. How do you expect that to prove anything?”
Bryson hemmed and hawed but didn’t really answer.
Lavon pressed on. “Let’s say you took that video to one of those conspiracy conventions. There, in the middle of all the exhibitors with their ‘secret evidence’ about Lyndon Johnson, Fidel Castro, the New Orleans mafia, and little green men from outer space, you present what you describe as iron clad proof that the Warren Commission got it right, that Lee Harvey Oswald did, in fact, act alone.”
“You’d be laughed out of the building,” I said. “And those who didn’t laugh would assume that you’re an infiltrator, a part of the conspiracy, another cog in the vast machine the US government has created to hide the truth from the unwashed multitudes.”
“Exactly,” said Lavon. “Now multiply this phenomenon a thousand fold. Whatever your camera ends up recording, it won’t change anyone’s mind, one way or the other. You’re smart enough to know that.”
Now, my curiosity was piqued. I had not thought about it in this way before.
Bryson didn’t say anything, which got my mind turning.
“You have another plan,” I said.
He didn’t respond immediately, so I repeated my question.
“Yes,” he finally admitted. “Juliet and I recognized your point early on. Once I make the initial recording and get the lay of the land, the next step will be to set up a viewing platform, so that others may witness the truth for themselves.”
I sat back in my chair and took another slug of wine. This was insane.
Lavon was even more blunt.
“Have you completely lost your mind?” he said.
He gestured toward Markowitz.
“Just look at us! One man in our party barely escaped being flogged to death a few hours ago. Our female colleague is facing God knows what sort of degradation at the hands of Herod and we can’t do a thing about it. And the three of us, though safe for the moment, have no idea when, or if, we’ll ever be able to go home.”
“I understand your concerns,” said Bryson, “but it was never our intention to open this world to the masses. We planned to invite only professional historians and other subject-matter experts, under carefully supervised and controlled circumstances.”
Lavon rolled his eyes. “How on earth are you ever going to ensure control? Forget about us and just look at yourself. This was going to be easy. You planned to come here and record a few hours of video — what could be simpler? But then you plunked yourself directly into the middle of a skirmish you could not possibly have known about ahead of time.”
“That was bad luck, to be sure.”
“That’s the point,” I said. “You’re always going to overlook something that turns out to be important. It’s the same thing your wife said about that trading algorithm Jonah Markowitz paid you to develop: there are too many variables. You’re guaranteed to get blindsided somewhere.”
“No, I’m not,” said Bryson. “Once we’ve scouted the area, we’ll know who will be where, and when. After that, we’ll be like that guy in Groundhog Day who knew precisely when the waitress would drop the plates. We’ll be able to steer clear of any danger.”
I wasn’t sure about the we part, but chose not to comment.
And that wasn’t the half of it. Even if his historians came back to the first century, saw what Bryson expected them to see, and published their findings in the most prestigious academic journals, Aunt Mildred in Kansas was never going to take the word of some liberal Commie Harvard egghead. The whole thing would reek of yet another left-wing plot to destroy America from within.
On the other hand, if the good professor’s guests saw what they did not expect to see, would they publish their findings, or would they dismiss their observations as an optical illusion, or a mind trick of some sort driven by the subtle shifting of the brain’s neural connections as a result of quantum transformation?
For the moment, though, I decided it was best to keep such thoughts to myself. Lavon wasn’t finished.
“And when one of your experts decides to run off and have a closer look, like our friend here did in the Temple?” he asked. “What then? Or are you going to keep them chained to their observation posts the entire time they’re here?”
Bryson shook his head, flummoxed with his inability to make lesser mortals comprehend a seemingly straightforward concept.
Lavon, though, didn’t let up. “There’s one more thing that I can’t figure out, Professor: how did you know when to come back?”
Bryson acted surprised. “All four Gospels record that Jesus died on the Friday before Passover, do they not?”
“Nice try.”
We both laughed, though I wasn’t entirely sure why.
“You are correct in that Jesus died on a Friday,” Lavon continued. “But the question remains: which Friday, and which Passover?”
Bryson cast the archaeologist an exasperated glance, but didn’t otherwise respond.
“You see,” said Lavon, “this is the odd thing: we’re talking about the most significant event in recorded human history; but no one knows for sure, within a decade, as to when it actually occurred.”
This was news to me.
“A decade?” I said.
Lavon explained. “Pilate governed Judea from 26 to 36 AD, which gives us a ten or eleven year window. That’s really all modern scholars can be certain about.”
“There are no other clues in the Gospels?” I asked.
“None that are very helpful,” replied Lavon. “Luke says that Jesus was about thirty years old when he started his ministry, but that was just the author’s way of saying he was a mature adult and thus worthy of being taken seriously, not that he was 30 x 365 1/4 days old.”
“Not some young hothead, then,” I said.
“Right. Luke also ties the beginning of Jesus’s ministry to the ‘fifteenth year of the emperor Tiberius,’ but historians continue to debate whether that count should start when Augustus died, or when Tiberius became co-emperor with his elderly stepfather a few years earlier. No one really knows for sure.”
This not knowing was becoming a common theme. We both turned our attention to the Professor, waiting for him to explain.
“As you’re surely aware,” said Bryson, “Passover always occurs on the same day of the year in the Jewish calendar, the 15th of Nisan. That date, though, varies from year to year in our Gregorian calendar due to the differences between a lunar and a solar reference point.”
“Yes, just like Easter,” said Lavon. “Go on.”
“During Pilate’s term as governor, the 15th of Nisan never occurred on a Monday, Wednesday or Friday. I also concluded that Tuesday was too far removed to match the Gospel accounts.”
Lavon nodded. “I would agree.”
“Fortunately, that allowed me to eliminate five of the eleven possible candidates: the years 28, 31, 32, 34 and 35. Also, since the Gospels specifically state that Jesus died before the Passover, I could scratch the two years it fell on a Thursday as well — 27 and 30.”
“That still leaves four possibilities,” I said. “How did you narrow them down?”
“From my reading of the Gospels, the most plausible day was a Saturday, which coincided with the Sabbath.”
“That would still give you multiple options,” said Lavon. “I’ve read decent arguments for all three.”
“Yes: 26, 33 and 36,” said Bryson. “From a probability standpoint, though, I ruled out 26 as too early, and 36 as too late. That left 33 …”
“Which is obviously wrong,” I said. “I thought you said this was the year 29.”
“It is.”
“So when is the Passover this year?” I asked.
Lavon began laughing. “Sunday.”
“What’s so funny about that?” I asked.
“It means their days are mixed up this month,” he replied.
“You see; if this is the correct year — and everything we’ve seen so far tells us it is — then something is out of kilter. Under Jewish law, the Passover carried restrictions similar to those of the Sabbath. No one could do any work, which means that if the Passover were truly on Sunday, the women could not have gone to the tomb with the spices to anoint Jesus’s body that morning.”
Now, I was really confused, and a glance at Bryson told me I wasn’t the only one.
Lavon continued. “A Jewish month begins when the first sliver of the moon appears following a new moon. In modern times, this is calculated mathematically so there is no question when a month starts. But Jewish astronomers didn’t do that until the fourth century. Before then, they did it the old-fashioned way: somebody — actually two somebodies — climbed up on the roof and had a look. If they agreed, the new month began.”
“What if it was cloudy?” I asked.
“You’re getting the picture. A particular month could be off by a day, as this one obviously is.”
Bryson stared ahead blankly.
“You didn’t know that, Professor?” said Lavon. “All the more reason I asked my original question: how did you pick this year? Or did you just flip a coin?”
“No, I didn’t flip a coin. The year 29 was the most plausible candidate left once I ruled out 33.”
“How did you manage to do that?” I asked.
He just looked down at the floor and didn’t reply.
“You’ve been here before,” Lavon said.
“No, not here. Despite what you think, I was not completely unaware of the dangers I could encounter in this world.”
“Then what did you do? Where did you go?” I asked.
“Nazareth,” he finally admitted. “I thought it would be safer. The Bible implies that it was a dusty, insignificant little village, which is what it turned out to be. I only needed to be on the ground a few minutes — just long enough to find out whether anyone knew of Jesus’ whereabouts. I didn’t think it would be as hazardous as Jerusalem.”
I couldn’t argue with the logic, though I was struggling to believe his story, in spite of our current situation.
“How did you communicate?” I asked.
“I found a Biblical scholar in Washington. I paid him to write for me that ‘I seek Jesus, son of Mary and Joseph, the carpenter’ in both ancient Greek and Aramaic. I went back before the Passover in the year 33 and showed my note to an old man.”
“And?”
“He just shrugged. He pointed up to the sky, and then to the east, toward the desert, as if he had heard so many crazy stories that he had no idea which ones could be true. That told me what I needed to know: whatever happened, it had occurred before the year 33.”
“Makes sense,” said Lavon.
“Here’s something even you can appreciate,” said Bryson. “The man must have been a carpenter by trade. After he took my note, he led me to his shop and gestured like he wanted to sell me a table. I don’t think he cared anything about religion at all. What seemed to excite him the most was that one of his competitors was no longer in business.”