"Why, yes, of course," Duncan answered. "It would give us a detailed, day-by-day account of the ministry of Our Lord."

"It would do more than that, my son," his father said. "It would give us the first eyewitness account of Him. It would provide the proof that there really was a man named Jesus."

"But, I don't-I can't…"

"What your father says is true," the archbishop said. "Aside from these few pages of manuscript we have, there is nothing that could be used to prove the historicity of Jesus. There do exist a few bits of writing that could be grasped at to prove there was such a man, but they are all suspect. Either outright hoaxes and forgeries or interpolations, perhaps performed by scriptorium monks who should have had better sense, who allowed devotion to run ahead of honesty. We of the faith do not need the proof; Holy Church does not doubt His existence for a moment, but our belief is based on faith, not on anything like proof. It is a thing we do not talk about. We are faced with so many infidels and pagans that it would be unwise to talk about it. We ourselves do not need such proof, if proof it is, that lies in the manuscript, but Mother Church could use it to convince those who do not share our faith."

"It would end, as well," Duncan's father said, "some of the doubt and skepticism in the Church itself."

"But it might be a hoax, you say."

"It could be," the archbishop said. "We're inclined to think it's not. But Father Jonathan, our man at the abbey, does not have the expertise to rule it out. What we need is a scholar who knows his Aramaic, who has spent years in the study of the language, the changes that have come about in it, and when they came about. It is a language that over the fifteen hundred years it was in use had many dialectical forms. A modern dialect of it is spoken still in some small corners of the eastern world, but the modern form differs greatly from that used in the time of Jesus, and even the form that Jesus used could have been considerably different than the dialect that was used a hundred miles away."