The Resurrection File (30 page)

“Fine, Billy Joe. How about yourself?”

“Oh, I will tell you, my friend, I am Spirit-filled and blessed by the Lord!”

Highlighter was an old client of Will's. After Will had left the ACLU in New York out of disgust over its new policy of using federal racketeering laws against pro-lifers, he had joined the Law Project of the South as one of its civil rights trial lawyers. He had won a number of brilliant victories, but after only two years had found himself on the street again. The cause was simple: He had publicly insulted his legal director in an argument over a case.

The case had involved Reverend Highlighter. Against the direct orders of his boss, Will had agreed to represent the controversial and flamboyant evangelist. Brother Billy Joe ran a large church called The Church of the Golden Road in Nashville, Tennessee. He had been preaching a series of sermons against immorality that were televised on a local cable channel. And in each of the sermons he railed against the local district attorney, who had refused to prosecute prostitution, gambling, homosexual bathhouses, and other “vice” crimes in the greater Nashville area. Highlighter finished his series of sermons against public immorality by marching his congregation down to city hall. There he preached, in his typical athletic style, on the sidewalk right outside the prosecutor's office.

The district attorney happened to be running for re-election at the time, and he didn't care for the “hair-shirt exhortations,” as Billy Joe would call them. The prosecutor also didn't like being called the “Herod of Nashville.”

Unfortunately for Brother Billy Joe, that was about the time that a fire broke out one night in the sanctuary of the church and the whole property burned to the ground. But the building had been recently insured for a million dollars. When it was learned that the church had been considerably in debt at the time of the fire, the local prosecutor, who had managed to win re-election by only a dozen votes, saw his chance for revenge.

He wasted no time convening a grand jury and charging Highlighter with criminal arson. Brother Billy Joe, feeling that he was being unjustly persecuted in retaliation for the exercise of his First Amendment–protected right to verbally tar and feather the prosecutor from his pulpit, contacted Will Chambers.

This was the kind of thing Will Chambers relished. By then, the affair had attracted national attention, and Will's boss ordered him to withdraw from the case and accused him of being a glory hound and a grandstander. Will stayed with the case anyway. And when one newspaper reporter asked him if the rumors were true that his boss had disagreed with his decision to represent Highlighter, Chambers gave one of his classic self-destructive comebacks. According to newspaper reports he said,

Anyone who cannot see the clear First Amendment implications of this tragic and unjust case has one of two problems. Either he cannot read the clear language of the Constitution, or else he has suffered a serious head injury—the kind that makes you think you are a visitor to planet earth and your real home is somewhere outside our solar system.

Chambers' boss was not amused and Will was summarily fired. He continued representing Highlighter on his own, out of a local motel-room-turned-law-office. Will won an acquittal for Brother Billy Joe, and his victory made headlines around the country. But he paid a price. His liberal colleagues considered him a traitor of colossal proportions. Not only had he alienated himself from the ACLU, but now he was representing Bible-thumping fundamentalists like Highlighter.

Will hadn't spoken with Billy Joe in years. But the television evangelist wasted no time explaining why he called.

“Will, I was just at an evangelists' conference in Biloxi, Mississippi. And while I was there I heard via the grapevine about a case that I believe you have going on, involving a Harvard professor by the name of Albert Reichstad. And I was further informed that your case concerns that snake-oil piece of parlor-trick chicanery known as the 7QA fragment. Is this true?”

Will smiled. Brother Billy Joe had apparently not mellowed over the years.

“Yes. The case involves 7QA.”

“Well,” the preacher continued, “back when you vindicated me against the false charges of criminal arson I covenanted with the Lord. I told the Lord that if ever I could do something for you—consistent with the commands of Scripture—I would do it. Now the first and most important thing I could do for you is to introduce you to the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. In the years since we last talked, have you considered getting to know Jesus Christ in a personal way, Will, by accepting his finished work on the cross and inviting him into your heart?”

“Let's just say that I am looking into the person of Jesus as we speak.”

“Good. Very good. I will pray to that end,” Highlighter responded. “Now, secondly. I am, as you know, schooled in Bible exposition. If there is any way I can assist you in this highly important case, please let me know. I would be honored to be an expert witness for you. You know, I am also schooled in New Testament Greek. It is quite important, particularly if you are going to be disproving this preposterous 7QA hoax, to understand New Testament Greek—the language of the Gospels.”

Will thanked Brother Billy Joe for calling and indicated that if he needed him to assist he would certainly give him a call. Will knew that there was no way that he could use Brother Billy Joe as an expert witness. The reasons exceeded the number of fingers on both hands. Yet one of Highlighter's comments did seem important.

Will closed up the office. In the hallway he greeted Hattie as she was humming some vaguely familiar tune and pulling her rolling cart, mop, and bucket.

After leaving the office Will decided to take a detour over to the big bookstore that stayed open late. He wandered over to the religion section. After a few moments he located a Greek New Testament. He flipped through it and discovered that it contained an English translation of the New Testament side-by-side with the Greek. He also picked up an introductory text on New Testament Greek.

From the bookstore Will headed home to Generals' Hill. As he got out of his car and locked it up for the night, he stopped for a moment outside and smelled the powerful fragrance of boxwoods, and listened to the rustling trees of the surrounding woods. He did love this place. As he walked up to the towering columns on the front porch, he could hear Clarence barking joyously in the front room, waiting for him on the other side of the big front door.

33

I
T WAS EARLY IN THE MORNING
, and there was a warm mist in the air from the rain that had fallen the night before. From the back window in his kitchen Will looked out over the orchards and the acreage beyond. In an hour or so the fog would begin dissipating, but now it lay like a carpet of white vapor in the green rolling terrain past the orchards and all the way to the little creek that served as the boundary of his property. By the time the mist would lift, Will would already be on the train bound for New York City.

Will hugged the neck of his big golden retriever, grabbed his briefcase and raincoat, and strolled the eighth of a mile or so down the long tree-lined driveway to the county road. He had decided to leave his Corvette locked up at the house and take a cab down to the train station. By the time he reached the end of the driveway the cab was still nowhere in sight. Will glanced at the overcast morning sky, and then pulled out his cell phone and called his answering service. Only one call had come in, one from Angus MacCameron. In the final part of his message, MacCameron explained,

So, I have received your bill, Will. I do know the costs are going to mount in this case. Unfortunately, subscriptions to
Digging for Truth
have dropped drastically. We have serious budget problems. But I am sure the Lord will provide. I'm not quite sure how we are going to pay you from this point on…but don't worry. We'll figure something out. Thanks.

Will had learned early on in his legal career that, while justice may be equal, that doesn't mean it comes cheap. Tiny Heftland, through his work thus far in the case, had all but paid back the debt he owed to Will for past services. From this point on the meter would be running. They had hired
the voice expert to analyze the tape-recorded message from Richard Hunter. Will had sent a written demand for Sherman to get his client to turn over the original 7QA fragment so that Will's experts could evaluate it. Those experts would have to be paid.

And then there was Dr. Giovanni. If she agreed to testify for them, she would have to be paid. And there were depositions to pay for. And Will's time commitment on this case, which had already been considerable, was about to become enormous. Now there was a doubt as to whether his client was able to continue paying him.

As if that were not enough, the question of Sherman's quarter-of-a-million-dollar motion against Will still hung in the balance. After Will had thrown down the gauntlet to him in their last conversation, J-Fox was going to come after Will like a buzz saw on wheels.

As the cab pulled up, Will felt the burden of the stakes against him. A one-man office versus one of the nation's largest and most prestigious law firms. MacCameron's dwindling financial resources versus a funding source for Dr. Reichstad that seemed to be limitless. Reichstad as a plaintiff, the man who had become the darling of America's cultural and religious intelligentsia, and who taught at Harvard, published books, and ran an internationally recognized research center. On the other side there was MacCameron as a defendant, a man who had graduated from a little Bible college in West Virginia that no one had heard of and ran a hysterical little magazine that fewer and fewer people were buying.

The ride to the train station was quiet. The cabbie tried to engage him in conversation, but Will's mind was somewhere else. He had been in tough spots before. But not quite like this. Yet he knew that, while there was nothing that could be done about
some
of the odds against him, there was something he could do about
his
preparation for the case. He had a five-hour train ride, each way, up to New York City and back. Will had planned on using that time to school himself on the rudiments of the New Testament Gospels. He would block out of mind the mounting pressures and focus all of his mental energy on the case. That was a knack he had developed in his career. He would have to draw on that ability now more than ever before.

As Will settled into his seat on the train, he pulled out a Bible, the Greek New Testament, and the introductory text to the New Testament Greek language. He planned on reading the Gospels on the way up to New York City, and then delving into some of the basics about Greek on the way back. MacCameron had suggested that Will start by reading all four of the Gospel accounts of the resurrection.

When, after a little fumbling, he found Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, he then took out a little pad of colored sticky tabs. He marked the pages where, in each Gospel, the story of the burial and resurrection began. That way he could flip from one to the other and compare them.

The train was not crowded, and he had space to spread out his books and files on the seat next to him. As the train rocked and creaked Will read through the accounts in all four Gospels. Then he went back and read them again.

But he was having a problem focusing. After the second reading he discovered his problem. He had never spent any time reading the Bible before. These New Testament books had immediately confronted him with tales of angels and a dead Jesus who had arisen from the grave. He found the entire story too incredible to take seriously. He set the Bible down for a minute and thought. Then he had an idea—really, more of a new perspective. A change of focus.

What would happen,
he thought to himself,
if I forget that this is religious literature?
Perhaps that was the key.
What if I treat this as if it were an ancient transcript from a long-since forgotten court proceeding? If I look at the accounts as the testimony of witnesses in court?

Will started reading again. He then went back and reread the accounts for a fourth time, but this time he did so with a legal pad on his lap. At the top he wrote four headings: Matthew / Mark / Luke / John.

As he read each account of the resurrection he numbered and charted the essential facts, descriptions, and events. Will ignored the “religious” component of the stories, merely treating them as testimonies of eyewitnesses (or accounts that could be traced to eyewitnesses)—something he had done for years as a trial lawyer.

After he had charted the basic facts of each account in each column, he went back and started evaluating them.

The first thing he noticed in the Gospel stories was the factor of “consistency/individuality.” Will knew from his trial experience that, when several witnesses to an event later describe that same event, in order to warrant belief, their stories had to possess both of these two convincing facets—much like the two sides of a same coin. The first facet was basic consistency. Though differences are always present in multiple-witness accounts of the same event, the basic facts must be able to mesh.

In Will's review of his notes, he saw that all four of the Gospel accounts contained the same basic factual pattern, with more than a dozen factual components in common.

All four of the Gospels reported that some women—all of whom who were familiar with Jesus and had personal knowledge of the site of the tomb
where he was buried—had returned to the tomb several days after the corpse of Jesus had been buried. They were there to anoint the body. 7QA, by contrast, specifically indicated that some unspecified persons “could not return to prepare the body…” Thus, on that point alone, 7QA was irrefutably at odds with the four Gospel accounts, and in particular the Gospel of Mark.