“I’m not upset! I’m just surprised you don’t see the unbelievable importance of this letter.”

“I do! I do!” Sana insisted.

“What I think happened was Basilides asked Saturninus not just his opinion on Simon’s divinity but also whether Simon had written anything of substance and, if he had, where it might be. Maybe Basilides had his suspicions. That’s why I believe Saturninus described the Gospel of Simon along with the fact that he and Menander put it in the ossuary. I don’t believe Basilides had any idea about the Virgin Mary’s remains having been brought to Rome by Simon, nor did he care. He was interested in Simon’s theology.”

“What’s the actual definition of the word gospel?”

“It’s any message concerning Christ, which most people associate with the first four canonical books of the New Testament covering the teachings of Jesus Christ. More broadly, a gospel is any message of a religious teacher. That’s why it’s going to be both thrilling and instructive to learn if the Gospel of Simon is about Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ and Simon Christ together, or Simon Christ alone. I say it that way because most people think Christ was Jesus’ last name. It wasn’t. Christ was from the Greek kristos, meaning messiah, and it is where the word Christian was derived. If Simon considered himself a messiah, he could have very well referred to himself as Christ. Of course, we already know one thing: There was no resurrection associated with Simon. He stayed dead after he toppled off a tower in the Roman Forum at Nero’s behest, trying to prove his divinity, or at least his close association with divinity.”

Sana glanced in Shawn’s eyes. She could read his mind. Obviously, he thought his chances of finding the Gospel of Simon were good, and she knew exactly why. Five years ago Shawn had prevailed upon James to use his influence with Pope John Paul II to obtain access to the necropolis under Saint Peter’s Basilica to carry out the definitive analysis of Saint Peter’s tomb. Over a period of six months, Shawn, along with a team of architects and engineers, had studied both the site and two thousand years of available papal records to write the definitive history of the tomb, including the 1968 discovery of a headless first-century male skeleton, heralded by Paul VI as the apostle’s remains. The result was that Shawn had become an expert on the gravesite, and if Saturninus and Menander had buried the Virgin Mary’s ossuary containing the Gospel of Simon in AD 65 where Saturninus claimed in the letter, Shawn would know where to look.

“I’ve heard of the Sadducees and the Pharisees, but never the Essenes or the Zealots,” Sana said, going back to the letter. “Who were these people Saturninus is talking about?”

“They were all separate Jewish sects, of which the Sadducees and Pharisees were far and away the most important because of their numbers. The Essenes were a small militant, ascetic, communal group who felt the Temple in Jerusalem had been defiled. Although there were Essene cells in most Palestinian cities, their strictest leaders and brethren moved out into the desert along the shores of the Dead Sea at Qumran. They were the transcribers of the Dead Sea Scrolls, as well as the people who hid them to keep them out of the hands of the Romans.