A Letter of Mary - Laurie R. King [6]
"You see why the experts denied it, then?"
"That is obvious, but—"
"But why do I doubt them?"
"You couldn't seriously think—"
"Oh, but I do. It is not impossible. I agree it's unlikely, but if you leave aside all preconceived notions of what leadership could have been in the first century, it's not at all impossible. I've been poking my nose into manuscripts like this for half a century, and though it's somewhat out of my period, I'm sorry, this does not smell like a recent forgery or a crusader's wife's dream."
It finally got through to me that she was indeed serious. I stared at her, aghast and spluttering.
"Would you two kindly let me in on this?" interrupted Holmes with admirable patience. I turned to him.
"Just look at how it starts, Holmes."
"You translate it, please. I have worked hard to forget what Greek I once knew."
I looked at the treacherous words, mistrusting my eyes, but they remained the same. Stained and worn, they were, but legible.
"It appears to be a letter," I said slowly, "from a woman named Mariam, or Mary. She refers to herself as an apostle of Joshua, or Jesus, the 'Anointed One,' and it is addressed to her sister, in the town of Magdala."
THREE
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Holmes busied himself with his pipe, his lips twitching slightly, his eyes sparkling like those of Miss Ruskin.
"I see," was his only comment.
"But it's not possible—" I began.
Miss Ruskin firmly cut me off. "It is quite possible. If you read your Greek Testament carefully, ignoring later exclusive definitions of the word apostle, it becomes obvious that Mary the Magdalene was indeed an apostle, and in fact she was even sent (which is, after all, what the verb apostellein means) to the other— the male— apostles with the news of their Master's resurrection. As late as the twelfth century, she was referred to as 'the apostle to the apostles.' That she fades from view in the Greek Testament itself does not necessarily mean too much. If she remained in Jerusalem as a member of the church there, which after all was regarded as merely one more of Judaism's odder sects, all trace of her could easily have disappeared with the city's destruction in the year 70. If she were still alive then, she would have been an old woman, as she could hardly have been less than twenty when Jesus was put to death around the year 30— but impossible? I would hesitate to use that word, Miss Russell, indeed I would."
I drew several deep breaths and tried to compose my thoughts.
"Miss Ruskin, if there is any chance that this is authentic, it has no place in my hands. I'm no expert in Greek or first-century documents. I'm not even a Christian."
"I told you, it's already been seen by the two foremost experts in the field, and they have both rejected it. You want to send a copy to someone else, that's fine. Send it to anyone you can think of. Publish it in The Times, if it makes you happy. But, keep the thing itself, would you? It's mine, and I like the idea of your having it. If you don't feel comfortable with it, lend it to the BM. They'll throw it in a corner for a few centuries until it rots, I suppose, but perhaps some deserving student will uncover it and get a D Phil out of it. Meanwhile, play with it for a while, and as I said, let me know what you come up with. It's yours now. I've done what I could for Mariam."
I allowed the little conundrum to curl itself up and then placed it thoughtfully back into its box with the