The Breath of God (21 page)

Grant felt the blood rise to his head. The pastor had just used the occasion of the first public discussion on the Issa texts to plug his own book! Grant opened his mouth to respond with a few historical examples of the influences of earlier religions on the development of the writings of the Bible, such as the flood story in the Epic of Gilgamesh that was centuries
older
than the similar Noah story in Genesis, or the liberal borrowing of Canaanite characterizations of God in the early Hebrew conceptions of their own deity. In his mind the Issa texts were no different. After all, Grant thought,
religions were created by humans to serve our insecurities and explain our existence, and these creations never occurred in a vacuum
. But then another idea came to him.

“Reverend,” Grant asked, “I take it you consider yourself to be an expert on the Bible?”

“Son, I've been studying scripture since you were in diapers.”

“Then maybe you can point out for us where it describes what Jesus was doing between the ages of twelve and twenty-nine.”

Brady opened his mouth to respond, closed it again, and then glared at him. He said, “Jesus grew up with his family in Nazareth, learning to be a carpenter like his father, Joseph.”

“But the Bible doesn't actually say that. Does it, Reverend?” Grant relaxed the hands that had gripped his thighs moments before. “Actually, the Bible is completely silent about those years of his life, isn't it?”

A quiet murmur spread through the audience.

Brady's face reddened, but his voice remained steady. “The Bible is silent on those years because nothing noteworthy happened. But the Good Book is very clear on the most important fact: Jesus was born to the Virgin Mary, as the Son of God, which is why he had no need to travel afar to become inspired. But then you probably don't believe in the virgin birth either. Do you, son?”

“I understand that his birth stories were written in an age when people had little understanding of the science of reproduction.” Grant gestured again with his hands as he spoke. He was on familiar territory now. “The woman was seen only as a vessel for the man's seed and not as a contributor to the child's genetic makeup. Now, Reverend, in the Gospels, isn't Jesus referred to as both the Son of God and the Son of Man?”

“Those terms aren't mutually exclusive.”

“Yet you refer to him exclusively as the Son of God, but he only refers to himself that way six times, and that's usually after someone else uses the term first. On the other hand, Jesus calls himself the Son of Man
eighty-five times
. Shouldn't we be emphasizing the humanity of Jesus: the man he was in history, the influences that led him to his ministry?”

Brady folded his arms across his chest. “Jesus was a man, yes, but he was the incarnation of God himself, sent here to save us.”

Grant leaned forward on the table, angling his body toward both Brady and the audience. “Caesar Augustus was regularly referred to as a son of God and
as a divine ruler, as were Alexander the Great and King David. Roman mythology, derived from the Greeks, had many stories of gods impregnating women. For example, Heracles, or Hercules, was born from a mortal woman but fathered by the god Zeus—a story the New Testament authors would've known.”

“Nonsense,” Brady sneered. “I think we all know the difference between the word of God and the silly stories of a pagan people.”

“Do we?” Grant asked. “You're aware, I assume, that the oldest writings in the New Testament, Paul's letters and Mark's gospel, never mention the virgin birth?”

“Of course I am.”

“Right, the story only appears in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, written some eighty years after this miraculous birth supposedly took place, when the authors, who never themselves met Jesus, were trying to establish a community of followers. Oh, and the details of the birth story itself vary significantly in those two gospels.”

Brady raised his hand, as if to silence him. “A tired argument from the nonbelievers. Look, each New Testament author merely focused on different aspects of Jesus' life. Just because one author chose to concentrate on different facts than the others doesn't mean anything.”

“Or if they chose to omit Jesus' travels during the missing twenty years?” Grant added.

“That's not my point!” Brady raised his voice for the first time. “You're twisting my words.”

“Well, Reverend,” Dawson interjected smoothly, “isn't Mr. Matthews just demonstrating that because the Bible contains gaps in the story of Jesus' life, as well as tales about him that some could interpret as mythology, then—”

“Mythology?” Brady boomed. “What you both fail to comprehend is that these other stories—be they pagan, Hindu, or Buddhist in origin—are irrelevant because the Bible is the only writing that contains the actual word of God!” He snatched his book from the table and shook it over his head as if he were brandishing a Bible. “I explain it all here.”

“I'm sorry”—Grant leaned into his microphone—“but that's too convenient for me. The Bible is one hundred percent accurate, and any evidence suggesting otherwise is Satan at work?”

“Finally, we agree on something,” Brady quipped. Scattered laughter from around the audience returned him to his more relaxed demeanor.

“How can you say that?” Grant asked.

“I can say that, young man, because I have faith. Faith that the Bible is the absolute and inerrant word of God. I know that
faith
is anathema to you academic types, but faith guides my life. Faith lets me sleep soundly at night, knowing that God takes care of me.”

“Having faith in God is one thing, but taking the Bible literally as the only and infallible way God has spoken to the world just doesn't—”

“It may not make sense to you,” Brady smoothly interrupted, causing Grant to shoot a quick glance at Dawson, “because you've closed your eyes to the truth. You come to the Bible with your preconceptions of the way the world should be. You either accept the Bible as is, or you don't. It's really that simple.”

“Reverend,” Dawson said, “how do you know the Bible is the one and only literal word of God?”

Without missing a beat, he responded, “Paul, in the first chapter of Galatians, verses eight and nine, wrote, ‘Though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any gospel unto you than that which we preached unto you, let him be accursed.'”

“Can't you see your argument is completely circular?” Grant said. “You say the Bible is accurate because it's the word of God, and you believe that it's the word of God because it says so in the Bible. You rely on the document itself for its own authenticity.”

A look of irritation crossed Brady's face, but he spoke again in a measured tone, “No, son, I'm relying on my faith.”

“So every word in the Bible concerning Jesus is one hundred percent true and accurate?”

“Now, you said something intelligent.” Brady displayed his gleaming teeth. “But you forgot to add that it is also complete. If God had wanted us to have other information about Jesus, he would have guided the authors to include it.”

Grant shook his head. Arguing with Brady was like a distant echo of his adolescence. “The Bible must be read in the context of the age in which it was
written,” he pursued. “During biblical times, earthquakes, droughts, floods, and windstorms were all believed to be caused by angry gods, not by changing weather patterns. People had no concept of microbiology, of germs. Disease was seen as God's punishment for the sinful. Schizophrenia and other mental diseases were not viewed as imbalances of brain chemistry but as possession by demons who must be cast out.”

Brady raised his voice. “I've seen people with my own eyes who've been healed from these physical diseases by their faith in Jesus.”

“Doctors would call that the placebo effect,” Grant said. “Isn't that why new drugs undergo double-blind research studies? If you give a sugar pill to a sick person and tell them it's medicine, they'll get better merely because they believe they are being healed.”

Brady's ingratiating smile was still plastered on his face, but now Grant thought it looked strained. Small beads of sweat were starting to form along his well-coiffed hairline. He was human after all.

“Maybe in your world you can convert everything to a scientific theory or a mathematical formula. But I don't want to live in a world where God becomes an equation. I see miracles every day in the lives of people who have accepted Christ. The proof is not just in the Good Book, it surrounds us today.”

“But even today, voodoo doctors in Haiti and medicine men in Africa are revered in their cultures because they perform healings similar to those you claim Jesus performed.”

Brady pulled a pale blue handkerchief from the inside pocket of his jacket and wiped his brow. Replacing the cloth in his pocket, he took a long drink from his water glass, the first time he'd touched it the entire night. His voice turned venomous. “What you seek is the lust for knowledge of that which should be left unknown. You desire another bite of the apple.”

A murmur spread through the crowd at Brady's last comment. Dawson raised his hands to quiet them. Grant knew he'd rattled the reverend.

Dawson cleared his throat and leaned into his microphone. “So, Mr. Matthews, your point is that the New Testament was never meant to be either a complete history or a scientific text about Jesus?”

“Precisely.” The words rolled off Grant's tongue. He could feel his peers in the audience drinking in each of his arguments. He realized that he'd stressed over Brady for nothing. “Leaving aside both the missing years and the scientific problems, the Gospels also contradict each other about the details of Jesus' life. In John, for example, Jesus' ministry lasts three years; in the other Gospels it only lasts one. In John, Jesus cleanses the Temple in Jerusalem in the beginning of his ministry, but in the others, he does so at the end of his ministry. Even the details of the resurrection differ significantly from gospel to gospel.”

Grant expected the reverend to jump on his last comment, but instead he bent over and searched through the leather satchel by his chair. When he removed a file folder and began to flip through the pages, Grant taunted him, “So which gospel is correct, Reverend?”

Tim reached underneath his shirt sleeve and began to scratch. The burning on his arms almost matched the fire in his chest. How could this guy treat the reverend with such disrespect? At that moment, Tim regretted not having pulled the trigger when he stood over Matthews's sleeping body a few nights earlier. Then he thought of the bombing at the CDC and its less-than-spectacular effects. Surveying the unbelievers in the audience, he realized a bomb in this auditorium would have yielded a more satisfactory result.

Blasphemy
, he thought,
every word out of the grad student's mouth is blasphemy
. Jesus wasn't a man; he was God. That's what Tim had learned as a child and what he knew was true. It had to be true. You don't worship a man; that was idolatry. Tim vividly recalled the reverend's description of God's fate for blasphemers. Tim wanted nothing more than to kill Matthews at that very moment.

Watching the audience's pleasure in the reverend's obvious discomfort, he thought how he'd predicted this reaction in his email to the reverend and Jennings. Tim saw things that others were too dense to comprehend. From the moment he came across the web posting about these hateful Issa texts, Tim heard the calling. The voice he heard was one he'd been waiting his whole life to hear: the voice of Jesus leading him to his destiny.

He removed his hand from his arm and attended to his forehead. Hooking his thumbnail under a piece of loose skin just over his eyebrow, he pulled the prize away and allowed it to drop to the floor. The itching subsided.

For the first time in his life, he understood his purpose—his larger part in God's plan. And now he had supporters much more powerful than that doofus Johnny. He would achieve the redemption and recognition he'd prayed for. Erasing the photographs was just the first step.