Prologue

Dating near AD 150, the Rylands Papyrus is one of the earliest manuscript fragments of the New Testament Gospel of John. The fragment, known as P52, records John 18:31–33 and 18:37–38.

At 2:37 a.m. on September 15 in the John Rylands Library in Man chester, England, the ancient Greek letters disappeared from P52.

Alexander Morrow, the museum director, and Stanley Will, the chief of security, ordered a complete and vigorous investigation. They were stunned not only by this alarming incident, but even more by the results of the thorough investigation. Not a hint of evidence was detected suggesting any form of criminal activity.

Chapter 1: Unthinkable

SEPTEMBER 20
An early morning misty fog blanketed the neighborhood like a large, cozy, comforter, inviting everyone to snuggle down in bed for a little more sleep. But Ben Cook had not been persuaded to postpone the start to his day. As he walked to the end of his driveway to retrieve his newspaper, he gazed around in the gentle dawn, enjoying the quiet, cool tranquility of his suburban street. River Valley was a fairly new development on the northeastern edge of Grand Rivers, Michigan, a metropolitan area of 750,000 people. It had a good school system and several Bible teaching churches. Knowing they hoped to start a family soon, Ben and his wife, Anne, were glad to fi nd a home in such a good neighborhood when they relocated to the area two years ago.

Coffee mug in hand, Ben settled into his reading chair and scanned the major headlines—Suicide Bomber Kills 15 in Tel Aviv Market, River Valley High Losing Streak Continues, Vanishing Papyrus Baffles Scholars.

“Looks like all the news today is either bad or boring.” Ben set the paper aside and reached for his New Testament. “On second thought, maybe I’ll start off with some good news fi rst, and then face the world.”

Shortly after Ben and Anne moved to River Valley, they had joined Three Rivers Community Church. Launched into being by the large, well-known Grace Church, Three Rivers had attracted a variety of people from the surrounding developments in the five years since it first began. Ben and Anne liked the pastor and enjoyed the friendships they had established over the last two years. As part of a men’s accountability group there, Ben had recently been challenged to make a commitment to read the Bible daily. He was told, among other things, that it would be a great help in becoming a good husband and father. Ben had decided to start out with the Gospel of John, remembering a sermon series that Steve Roberts, pastor at Three Rivers, had preached a year before on that Gospel. Those sermons had developed within Ben a deeper devotion to Jesus, as well as an admiration for the Apostle John’s account. He was especially looking forward to this morning’s reading. John chapter 8 presented the account of the woman caught in the act of adultery. Her life was in danger. Jesus masterfully saved her life from ruthless religious leaders bent on stoning her to death. Ben recalled the riveting sermon Steve had preached on this passage and was anxious to relive the tension and wonder of the story.

Ben opened his Bible to the place he had marked the day before. He saw the chapter number 8 and verse numbers, but otherwise the page was blank. That’s strange, he thought. Ben blinked his eyes several times thinking his sight was failing. He turned to the next page. No words appeared there either. He quickly flipped forward through the pages, then backward until he came to the Gospel of Luke. The pages of John’s Gospel were blank.

Ben’s heart began to race. He scanned quickly through John again. He felt an ache grip him in the pit of his stomach. What’s going on here!

In a cold sweat, he franticly rustled here and there through all the books of his Bible. Everywhere he turned he was greeted with the reassuring sight of printed pages. There was Psalms. Hebrews. Jonah. Ephesians. Isaiah. The Gospel of Luke was all there. And the book of Acts was right where it should be. But John was nowhere to be seen. This just couldn’t be; he had read from this same Bible the previous morning.

Ben stared at the blank cavern where John should have been, trying to get a grip on what was happening. His heart was pounding. “I read John 7 yesterday,” he heard himself saying. “It was right here.” He moved his fingers down the empty pages and noticed that he was trembling. What’s happened to the words in the Gospel of John? They’ve
vanished into thin air.

A soft clattering sound came from the kitchen. His wife had roused herself out of the cozy embrace of the warm bed, and was pouring herself a cup of Cook’s Special Blend.

“Anne, Anne! Come here! John’s missing!” he yelled.

“What happened?” Anne shuffl ed into the room, with obvious concern lining her tired face. “Who’s missing?”

“Not who, what. The Gospel of John is not in my Bible!”

“Oh,” Anne let out a relieved sigh, and nestled herself in the corner of the couch closest to Ben. “I thought you were talking about some poor little missing child you’d read about in the paper or something.”

The paper. Hadn’t one of the headlines said something about some vanishing words off of some old papyrus? Ben grabbed the paper and hunted for the article that he had only minutes before thought boring.

“So, some pages fell out from your Bible?” Anne continued after a sip of coffee. “Well, have you checked under your chair? That’s where anything important tends to show up.”

“No, Anne. The pages are there, it’s the words that are gone. And look at this—in the paper—some words from the Gospel of John disappeared from some old piece of papyrus—”

He folded the paper open to the story and handed it to her.

ANCIENT PAPYRUS PUZZLES SCHOLARS

Anne looked up at Ben and saw her own fear and confusion mirrored
in his eyes.

“Ben, w-what’s going on?”

“I don’t know . . .” Ben faded off. “Go get your Bible, Anne. Quick! And turn to John 8. Hurry! See if it’s there.”

Anne ran to the bedroom, grabbed her Bible from the nightstand and was shuffl ing through to fi nd John’s Gospel as she raced back to Ben.

“Here it i-i-is—isn’t,” she said to Ben with a catch in her throat. “There are no words on my pages either. The Gospel of John is gone.”

Ben’s eyes were wide with stunned confusion. “Oh, my God.”

“What’s happening, Ben? What’s going on?”

“I don’t know, Anne, I just don’t know. I think we had better call Steve.”

• • •

If that airplane were a car, I’d call it an old jalopy, Hank Myers mused. As he and his wife, Karla, watched, the small four-seat Cessna rumbled down the grassy airstrip and climbed into the air, just clearing the trees in the distance. Jim Samsa, the missionary aviation pilot and their good friend and lifeline to the outside world, banked the plane to the left. Jim had brought them some paper supplies, a new belt for a generator, and some topical medicine for a young boy with an infected cut on his foot. Jim also could always be counted on to bring newsy, almost gossipy, reports about other missionaries who
lived and worked in the field offi ce in the compound in Nabire.

Hank and Karla waited until the drone of the engine faded to silence and the plane disappeared in the huge air space of the valley. Only then did they turn to walk hand in hand up the short inclined path to their home—a rough bungalow in the mountain jungle area in the interior of Irian Jaya. It was just the two of them in their home now as Tracy, their sixteen-year-old daughter, was away at school in the States living with Karla’s sister’s family.

Six years ago, Hank and Karla came to live among the Vahudati and put their ancient tribal dialect into written form. They quickly fell in love with the Vahudati, a people group of almost four thousand, as they listened intently to the language sounds, produced an alphabetic/syllabic language system, and worked patiently and lovingly to teach the Vahudati to read and write their own language. A signifi cant part of their mission work, their vocational dream come true, was to translate the good news of Jesus Christ in the Vahudati language. For the past three and a half years they had been laboring to translate the Gospel of John into Vahudati with the help of Seigi, an extremely gifted Vahudati man who had become passably fluent in English from spending several years in a large coastal city.

Karla stopped to admire the blazing scarlet hibiscus blooms and to pinch some dying leaves from the plant. She loved the richness of the lush tropical vegetation. I don’t need a green thumb to grow things here, she mused. A shouting voice jolted Karla from her quiet enjoyment. An excited Seigi, standing at the edge of the small clearing that surrounded their home, was beckoning to them. Seigi’s eyes radiated a wild, sad terror.

“Come, come!” he shouted, frantically waving them toward the house and toward the small room they used for translation work. Hank had built their breezy mountain bungalow from wood harvested from the surrounding trees. With its thatched roof and hard dirt floors, their home was the quintessential missionary dwelling. Hank enjoyed showing slides of it during furloughs in the States. An integral part of the home was the translation room—the “brains of the bungalow” Hank called it. Sergei hurried them to the door.

They rushed into the translation room. The shelves, the tops of three desks, and parts of the fl oor were cluttered with translation guides, Bible commentaries, various translations of the Bible, pages of discarded papers and notebooks. Sergei was pointing toward many worn notebooks that lined one shelf with uncharacteristic neatness. These notebooks were fi lled with the world’s only written translation in the Vahudati language of the Gospel of John. Seigi picked a notebook up and fanned its pages as Hank and Karla looked on. Every page was blank. Seigi was crying as he picked up another, then another.
All of the notebooks were empty.

Hank looked both confused and angry. Karla sank to her knees, head in her hands, joining Seigi with her quiet, bewildered crying. All their translation work was gone.

“Who did this?!” Hank blurted out, seeing but hardly believing his eyes.

Seigi handed Hank two well-worn English New Testaments they used in translation work. In both Bibles the pages where John’s Gospel should be were totally blank except for verse numbers and cross-references.

Hank stepped to their shortwave radio and called the missions compound in Nabire.

“We have a serious problem up here,” he stammered into the microphone,

“Let me speak to Raymond.” Raymond Short was the field director for all Bible translation work in their region of Irian Jaya. “Raymond, this is Hank. We’ve got a problem up here. All our work on the Vahudati language is gone! Seigi discovered it fi rst and just showed us. All our work on the Gospel of John is gone.”

“Hank, hold on, man. I understand. We’ve got something crazy going on down here, too. All of our Bibles are blank where John’s Gospel should be. I’ve never seen anything like this. No one can find a word of John’s Gospel in any of our English Bibles or tribal translations. This is simply crazy!”

“Ray, what is this? What’s happening?”

Hank placed the microphone in its cradle on the radio. He slowly sank to the floor. His mind raced through the years of the often tedious and sometimes thrilling translation work. Each translation breakthrough had been glorious, fulfilling and rewarding. Now each empty page was a piece torn from his heart. He looked over at Karla who sat stunned, her eyes watery and red from crying. Hank was so paralyzed by the shock of the loss of their work that he had no energy to move and comfort her.

Copyright © 2007 John W. Frye