“I told you, when you arrived here, that any results you achieved would be strictly through your own ability, knowledge, and skills and that I would stand by, solely to protect you and advise you as best I could. I regret that, to this moment, I have not fulfilled my small end of our bargain as well as you have met your great challenge. For while you have made tremendous progress in absolving many of those you had suspected of having been involved in the removal of the body of Jesus from the tomb, your life is now in great jeopardy and all the advice I have dispensed could be placed on the head of a nail.”

“Joseph, you have been wonderful, just as you are. Too much advice from you and I would have suspected that you were trying to influence me or blind me with some facts so that I wouldn’t see others. We have accomplished much together.”

He shook his head sadly. “But our time remaining is short. Would you accept a suggestion or two, at this late hour of our mission, in order to bring you to a more hasty resolution of the mystery concerning the empty tomb?”

“Of course.”

There was relief and gratitude in his warm smile. “In your novels, Matthias, what would happen if the person who had been murdered were to reappear alive?”

“Can’t happen.”

“Why not?”

“I wouldn’t let it happen.”

“Why?”

“Because if the murdered person was actually still alive I have no murderer for my detective to uncover.”

“Exactly.”

“What do you mean, ‘exactly’?”

“What I mean is very simple,” he said patiently. “Just as a book of yours would have no murderer if the person believed to have been murdered was still alive, so, too, would you have no grave robbers, in this case, if the body they are alleged to have taken was seen walking and talking and eating, here in the city, after the tomb was found empty.”

I sighed. I should have known. We had to get to it eventually. “Joseph, certainly you must have noticed that in all my questioning—of Matthew, of James, the brother of John, of Peter and even young John, today, and Mark—I purposely ended our discussions with the discovery of the empty tomb.”

“I noticed—and wondered.”

“When I first arrived here, I told you that during those years of work on The Christ Commission’ I had accumulated hundreds of questions and doubts and stumbling blocks about the life of Jesus, and I gave you scores of them. But I also told you that if I could satisfy myself that no one removed the body of Jesus from his tomb, and that he did rise again. all other questions would fade away.”

“Yes, I remember.”