The Scroll Seekers: Who Created the New Testament?

By W. Milton Timmons

This historical novel recounts the second-century adventures of the patriarch Bishop Irenaeus, from the little Roman colony of Lugdunum, as he collects and evaluates all the scrolls that would eventually become the New Testament.
An enormous amount of research on the origins of the Bible has accumulated over the last few decades, and the purpose of this book is to bring that material to life through dramatization.
The skeptical philosopher Demetrios and the four bodyguards are fictitious. But Irenaeus and his book Against Heresy, the status of the church, the details of Roman life, and all the scrolls collected by our characters are factual.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Dec 7, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524652715

W. Milton Timmons

W. Milton Timmons holds a PhD in communications from the University of Southern California and has taught all aspects of speech, drama, radio, TV, film, and journalism for thirty years. He was head of the Motion Picture Department at Los Angeles Valley College for twenty-two years and, before that, was head of the Broadcasting Department at Sam Houston State University in Texas. He is the author of several books, including Orientation to Cinema; Everything About the Bible That You Never Had Time to Look Up; 2084 - A Tale of Post America; and the philosophical novel, Regarding an Angel’s Flight. Since his retirement from teaching, he has devoted his time to researching and writing scholarly books.

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© 2016 A Novel by W. Milton Timmons. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 01/04/2017

ISBN: 978-1-5246-5272-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-5270-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-5271-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016919873

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Scripture quotations are taken from the New American Bible, published by the Catholic Book Publishing Company of New York. It was first published in 1970, with imprimatur by Patrick Cardinal O’Boyle, DD, Archbishop of Washington, D.C. The revised New Testament portion, however, was approved by James A. Hickey, S.T.D., J.C.D., Archbishop of Washington, D.C. in 1986.

Contents

Foreword

Voyage One: To Roma

Voyage Two: To Athens

Voyage Three: To Ephesus

Voyage Four: To Antioch

Voyage Five: To Alexandria

Voyage Six: Into History

Epilog By The Translator

Acknowledgements

FOREWORD

In all good historical novels a few fictional characters are invented to play out a story against a background of accurate facts.

In our case Demetrios and the four bodyguards are fictitious. But Irenaeus and his book, the status of the Church, and all the scrolls collected by our characters, are factual.

The Catholic Encyclopedia says: "Just how the tetramorph (i.e. four-part gospel) was welded into unity and given to the Church, is a matter of conjecture.

This conjecture is what our book explores.

Readers are urged to research for themselves the vast literature of biblical scholarship that has accumulated over the last few centuries, and this literature is now freely available on the internet.

The lesser known book titles and the descriptions of their content are based on The Apocryphal New Testament by Montague Rhodes James, published by Oxford University in 1924. Other titles related to the Jewish Scriptures are based on The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha published by Princeton University in 1983. Most of those books can now be read in their entirety at www.earlychristianwritings.com.

My book Everything About the Bible that You Never had Time to Look Up has a complete bibliography of all the research sources I used for it.

Why include those apocryphal titles in this book? Because those are all the documents that Irenaeus had to sort through at the time he wrote his book Against Heresy. He was the one who decided which scrolls were true and which were false. It wasn’t until 397 AD at the Council of Carthage that the Catholic Church finally endorsed his selection and separated the extant books into those which would be included in the New Testament as canonical and which were to be relegated as apocryphal. Nevertheless, many of those apocryphal books still provide the basis for certain doctrines and even appear in some Bibles.

Milt Timmons

VOYAGE ONE: TO ROMA

A middle-aged man carrying an oil lamp entered a small dark room in ancient Roma [Note: Now Rome]. He was a tall handsome man with curly gray hair and a neatly trimmed beard. He put the lamp on a table and hung his faded and threadbare green toga on a peg. Then, wearing only a plain white tunic, he sat at the table and unrolled a scroll of fresh parchment. He paused to think for a moment, then dipping his quill into a cup of ink, he began to write:

Roma: 955 AUC

The Memoirs of Cato Demetrios.

(Translated from Latin into contemporary English by

W. Milton Timmons, PhD)

[Translator’s Note: 955 AUC stands for ab urb condita, which means after the founding of the city of Roma. That would be 202 AD according to later Christian calendars]

My name is Cato Demetrios. I was born in Athens 52 years ago. My father was a successful tradesman who was able to send me to the Academy to study philosophy. My mother was captured as a child in Germania and sold to my grandfather as a servant. But when she grew up my father set her free and married her. We had a comfortable home life and I was very involved with sports. I was able to compete successfully in most of the Olympic Games. But my father insisted that I should concentrate on learning a trade. I studied history and languages so I could go traveling as a translator. My parents wanted me to become a teacher in Athens. But I was too restless just to sit at home. When I heard that the little Christian Church needed someone of my skills to go to the Gallic frontier, I joined the church and volunteered because it sounded like fun and I needed a job. I had no idea what these Christians believed. They were not even sure, themselves, exactly what they believed. But as a student of philosophy, I was curious.

The biggest adventure in my life started a little over twenty years ago, and I decided I should write it all down for posterity. I kept a journal during those years in Lugdunum, and this memoir is largely based on those notes, as I look back and comment on them from today’s perspective. Our journeys were pretty important to the burgeoning young church. So this document may even have some value to future historians.

Everyday conversation throughout the Empire is Latin, and I assume future historians will be still Romans, so I’m writing this memoir in Latin, although the documents we collected, and that I was asked to copy and translate, are all in Greek.

I might as well start at the beginning. By the year 930 AUC [Note: 177 AD] the Roman Empire was ruled by the Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius, whom I greatly admired. After the string of debacles with emperors like Caligula and Nero, people were delighted to have someone who ruled rationally and humanely for a change. Unfortunately, by this time Marcus was getting old and feeble, so he appointed his nineteen-year-old son Commodus as co-emperor – who eventually turned out to be not much better than Nero.

Marcus himself was quite tolerant of the numerous religions within the empire. And I think it was Commodus who cracked down on the Christians, perhaps without the permission, or even the knowledge, of his father.

I was 27 when I first arrived in Roma. The Tiber River had flooded much of the city and the surrounding farms, leaving the starving population in turmoil. From a distance, the Seven Hills of Roma looked a bit like seven islands in the middle of a lake.

A smallpox epidemic had also swept through Italia and all of the western provinces killing every third person, creating a sense of doom throughout the city.

I was introduced to the bishop of Roma, a fellow named Eleuterus, who was what some Christians called The Pope – by which they mean the Papa, or Father of the Church. I guess that’s because, since Roma is the capital of the empire, therefore the bishop of Roma would be the ruler of the church – and all the other bishops are supposed to do as he says. But that’s not an official title, it’s just a nickname used by some of his associates.

Eleuterus was a nice old man who carefully looked me over and decided I was tall enough and muscular enough for the job he had in mind. That surprised me because I thought I was being hired as a scribe and translator, but I later found out that I was also expected to be a general factotum, nursemaid, and bodyguard as well. The pope did ask how much experience I’d had as scribe and translator and I guess he was satisfied. Fortunately, he didn’t ask anything about my philosophical views; he just assumed I was a Christian since I had been recommended by the Bishop of Athens.

At any rate, the pope told me that there was an old priest named Irenaeus [Note: pronounced eye ruh NAY us] who needed help in rebuilding his church, which somebody had burned down. The bishop and staff had also been killed. Consequently Irenaeus suddenly found himself as the new bishop – without a building and without a workforce. And besides that, Irenaeus was getting on in years and had once broken a hip, causing him to walk with a limp and a staff. So he definitely needed help. This church, in the territory of Gaul, was in a rapidly growing colony called Lugdunum, located on the Rhone River. [Note: now called Lyon]

A few months before I arrived, Irenaeus had just returned to Lugdunum after a conference with the pope.

*     *     *

As Irenaeus crossed the Rhone River he was met with a ghastly sight. The home which had been used as a church lay in smoldering ruins! The bodies of priests, deacons, and slaves lay scattered among the ashes, burned beyond recognition. What had happened?

The attack had come in the middle of the night. Some said they thought it was Roman soldiers. But there was no proof of that. Was it mercenaries? Was it Gothic raiders, dressed as Romans? Was it starving peasants looting the church for treasure? Was it superstitious peasants who thought Christians had caused the plague? Was it some element of the Gnostics or the Montanists who were fighting for control of the church? Could the Gnostic leader Valentinus himself have ordered it?

In any case, the quiet little Greek scholar from Smyrna had suddenly found himself the new leader of the Roman church in Lugdunum – as well as the reluctant but de-facto paterfamilias to the late Bishop Pothinus’ live-in housekeeper and her brood of five rambunctious children. Whoever the raiders were had somehow allowed her to escape the fire with her children.

Irenaeus’ mission to Roma had concerned what to do about the cults of Montanism, Marcianism, and Gnosticism that were growing in popularity throughout the Rhone Valley and threatening the viability of the local church. Eleuterus had advised the priest to be patient, pray for guidance, and obey the wise council of Bishop Pothinus.

But now that Pothinus was dead – what should he do?

The first task was obviously to replace the clerical staff and try to rebuild some semblance of a meeting hall.

On the following Sunday Irenaeus conducted a solemn funeral for the fallen in the home of a wealthy parishioner, and a few days later he was installed as the new bishop under the rules for extraordinary circumstances. A more formal ceremony would be held in a few months.

Shortly thereafter he met with the leader of the largest local group of Montanists, a paunchy old man with a dirty and grizzled beard who called himself Simon.

Simon assured Irenaeus that no one in his group had anything to do with the attack on the church. What would we have to gain by that? he said We’re Christians, too. We only differ slightly in our theology. We’re both opposed to the pagans and the Gnostics.

"Then would you be willing to help us rebuild?

Help you in what way?

Manpower… financially.

And what would we have to gain?

"What would you want?

The power to make decisions regarding church policy.

I’m afraid we can’t allow that.

Why not?

Well, the Catholic Church doesn’t allow local churches to go off in all directions any way they please.

Says who?

The pope

Ah, but that’s where we differ. We don’t believe the bishop of Roma is the only person who speaks for God. We believe that everyone has the power to communicate with God directly. And that’s what our services are all about. Many of our members have the gift of prophecy. Our clergy then interprets these prophecies, which are subsequently used to influence church policy. You see, we are very active in the community in helping people with their problems, whereas you Catholics only seem to be intent in telling people what they can’t do. That’s why we’re becoming more popular than you are. Where do you get all these rules of ‘thou shalts and thou shalt nots,’ anyway?

They’re traditions… handed down from the apostles by word of mouth… from generation to generation.

You mean there’s nothing written down?

Well, we have a few documents that are said to have been written by eye-witnesses to Jesus.

So you preachers are just making this stuff up?

No more than you are, Irenaeus shot back with irritation.

And that ended the conversation.

There obviously would be no help from the Montanists.

Irenaeus dispatched a letter to the curia urgently requesting a replacement staff – as his parishioners continued to clear away the debris of the old building.

Lugdunum was a prosperous trading center. At the confluence of the Rhone and the Saone Rivers, which were navigable all the way from deep inland to the sea, Roma had built a paved road along the seacoast from Italia to Hispania, and had made Lugdunum the capital of Gaul. As the crown jewel of the province, Roma had built that quintessential symbol of Roman civilization: a bathhouse, where citizens were expected to assemble after work every day to cleanse themselves and socialize. This bathing ritual helped to promote the image of Romans as cleaner and more civilized than the tribes they conquered. During the days of the Republic the baths had been segregated by sex, but by the time of Marcus Aurelius, mixed bathing was common – a practice roundly condemned by the Catholic Church. To promote high culture among its provinces, Roma had also built a theater on the side of a steep hill to the west of the city, called the Fourviere.

It didn’t take long for the congregation to rebuild a church in the style of a private home, since Roman law prohibited buildings specifically designed as churches. But the interior was cleverly designed to allow for movement of partitions and rearrangement of furniture so that fairly large audiences could be seated comfortably. The secret tunnels which had allowed the housekeeper and her children to escape were cleared of debris. These tunnels opened behind rocks within a thicket of trees, allowing people to enter and leave the house without arousing suspicions about what might be happening in the house. After all, Irenaeus represented himself as a prosperous businessman with a store along the waterfront. As a trader, however, he didn’t actually make much money. His income mostly came from donations from his parishioners.

Demetrios arrived just in time to help rebuild the meeting house. Once the congregation was functioning again and Irenaeus had been accepted as the new paterfamilias of the former bishop’s household, it was finally time to meet with a leader of the Gnostics.

Demetrios was clean shaven in those days, and with the deep dimple in his chin, wavy black hair and muscular build, he set the hearts of all the young ladies aflutter. A small coterie of them was always competing for his attention. Irenaeus found his young assistant to be charming, resourceful and a very capable scribe – thus quickly promoting him to Deacon.

One morning the bishop roused Demetrios to help hitch two horses to the reda, which was a four-wheeled wagon with iron rims on the wheels, a seat, and a cloth top. It was a blustery day in late September and a cold mistral was already blowing through the Rhone Valley. Demetrios wrapped his dark