The Christos Mosaic: A Novel

"Vincent Czyz's THE CHRISTOS MOSAIC is unique: it somehow manages to include genuine, radical biblical scholarship in a beautifully rendered adventure full of unforgettable characters, set in exotic locales vividly and poetically described. There are very many "Lost Gospel" novels in which the biblical background is fudged, and badly. Not this one! Both sides of this author's fertile brain were working full tilt! And the result is superb." ―Robert M. Price, author of Deconstructing Jesus “Often, the best novels are difficult to categorize. Perhaps more often, novels that try to do too many things don’t succeed at doing any of them particularly well. Fortunately, every now and then, a novel comes along that is both hard to define, yet exceptional at juggling multiple genres whose sum is even greater than its individual parts. Such a novel is THE CHRISTOS MOSAIC, which melds historical fiction with contemporary adventure and produces a compelling mystery that is as educational as it is entertaining.” ―US Review of Books “A brilliant, deftly crafted, inherently absorbing novel from beginning to end, THE CHRISTOS MOSAIC by Vincent Czyz is one of those truly extraordinary stories that will linger in the mind and memory long after the book itself has been finished and set back upon the shelf. Very highly recommended and certain to be an enduringly popular addition to community library General Fiction collections.” ―Midwest Book Review “Vincent Czyz’sxa0THE CHRISTOS MOSAIC accomplishes the rare trick of having it both ways, delivering a fast-paced, action-packed storyline that challenges the mind rather than epileptically dazzling it with portentous piffle. This novel turns out to be the rare adventure story that rewards the reader’s attention by being as diverting as it is rigorously encyclopedic. ―Matt Hanson, The Arts Fuse “I can't come up with enough superlatives to express how thoroughly―completely ―hugely―immensely―I enjoyed reading this novel. It's everything I could have wished for and much more. It must be read by as many people worldwide as possible. I have a gut feeling that it could effect a sea-change in the common understanding of Christianity. It's a masterful synthesis of solid scholarship and adventure.” ―the late Paul Palmer, former assistant editor, American Atheist magazine “… Christosxa0puts the reader on Istanbul’s every street corner―the cafés, bars and apartments―awash in the sights, sounds and even the smells of the city, and the colorful language and mannerisms of its inhabitants.xa0[…] Ultimately … THE CHRISTOS MOSAIC is more than a novel; it is an impeccably framed thriller that will hopefully spark new discussions and provide insight into the future of Christian thought and study for the new century.” ―James Campion, Aquarian Weekly “THE CHRISTOS MOSAIC is part Orhan Pamuk, part Elaine Pagels, and part Dan Brown. But it is mostly Vincent Czyz, an irrepressible fiction writer who has the good sense to realize that scholarship is the friend of great stories--and the talent to put that friendship to good use. I must confess that I turned to the novel for fun, and it is fun from first page to last.xa0 What surprised me was how very much I learned about the past.xa0 A wonderful novel.” ―James Goodman, Pulitzer Prize finalist & author of But Where is the Lamb ? “[THE CHRISTOS MOSAIC] has all the important benchmarks of a thrilling adventure: global conspiracy, shocking revelations, thrilling shootouts, and multiple betrayals. The story is well written with strong plotting and vivacious characters ... a fascinating read.” ―John M. Murray, ForeWord Reviews “THE CHRISTOS MOSAIC is the most fun I’ve had with an encyclopedic novel since Eco’sxa0Foucault’s Pendulum―and a lot more headlong, colorful, and seat-of-the pants exciting. It careens through Istanbul, Cairo, and Alexandria in pursuit of answers to a historical mystery that turns on the unraveling of a theological conspiracy that is deeply meaningful for us today.” ―Samuel R. Delany, author of Dhalgren “Like Dan Brown’s plot, there is violence, narrow escapes from danger, hidden clues, and exotic locations. Unlike The Da Vinci Code, there are no nearly pure characters ... From Istanbul to Cairo to a gunfight at sea ... Czyz creates an exciting thriller, more eloquently written than most, but one which challenges the traditional religious faith of not only the Catholic church, but all Christian sects.” ―D. R. Meredith, New York Journal of Books “There are people who can writexa0ripping yarns. And there are people who can write fine, risk-taking prose. Not that many can do both. In thisxa0 exciting novel, Vincent Czyz pulls off that daringxa0 double-feat with style and verve. Don't miss it.” ―Peter Blauner, author of Slow Motion Riot and Slipping Into Darkness ( publisher ) From the Inside Flap Ancient scrolls hold the key to the origins of Christianityx97but some will stop at nothing to hide the truth A suspicious death in Istanbul leaves one ancient scroll and clues to finding another in the hands of Drew Korchula, a thirty-two-year-old American expat, a Turkish dwarf named Kadir, and Zafer, a Special Forces washout. Drew is desperate to turn everything over to the academic community, and in the process redeem himself in the eyes of his estranged wife, but Kadir and Zafer are only interested in what they can get for the scrolls on the black market. Not everyone wants to see the scrolls go public, however, and some will stop at nothing to protect the Church and believers around the world from the revelations embodied in the priceless manuscripts. An action-packed intellectual thriller unraveling a theological cold case more than two thousand years old, The Christos Mosaic is a monumental work of biblical research wrapped in a story of love, faith, human frailty, friendship, and forgiveness. Author Vincent Czyz takes the reader through the backstreets of Istanbul, Antakya (ancient Antioch), and Cairo, to clandestine negotiations with wealthy antiquities smugglers and ruthless soldiers of fortune, to dusty Egyptian monasteries, on a nautical skirmish off the coast of Alexandria, and finally to the ruins of Constantine's palace buried deep beneath the streets of present-day Istanbul. Ancient scrolls hold the key to the origins of Christianity—but some will stop at nothing to hide the truth A suspicious death in Istanbul leaves one ancient scroll and clues to finding another in the hands of Drew Korchula, a thirty-two-year-old American expat, a Turkish dwarf named Kadir, and Zafer, a Special Forces washout. Drew is desperate to turn everything over to the academic community, and in the process redeem himself in the eyes of his estranged wife, but Kadir and Zafer are only interested in what they can get for the scrolls on the black market. Not everyone wants to see the scrolls go public, however, and some will stop at nothing to protect the Church and believers around the world from the revelations embodied in the priceless manuscripts. An action-packed intellectual thriller unraveling a theological cold case more than two thousand years old, The Christos Mosaic is a monumental work of biblical research wrapped in a story of love, faith, human frailty, friendship, and forgiveness. Author Vincent Czyz takes the reader through the backstreets of Istanbul, Antakya (ancient Antioch), and Cairo, to clandestine negotiations with wealthy antiquities smugglers and ruthless soldiers of fortune, to dusty Egyptian monasteries, on a nautical skirmish off the coast of Alexandria, and finally to the ruins of Constantine's palace buried deep beneath the streets of present-day Istanbul. Vincent Czyz received an MA in comparative literature from Columbia University, and an MFA in creative writing from Rutgers University. He is the author of the collection Adrift in a Vanishing City , and is the recipient of the 1994 Faulkner-Wisdom Prize for Short Fiction and two fellowships from the NJ Council on the Arts. The 2011 Truman Capote Fellow at Rutgers University, his short stories and essays have appeared in Shenandoah , AGNI , The Massachusetts Review , Tampa Review, Quiddity , Louisiana Literature , Logos Journal , New England Review , Boston Review , Sports Illustrated , Poets & Writers, and many other publications. Although he has traveled the world and spent some ten years in Istanbul, Turkey, he now lives and works in New Jersey, where he was born. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. (FIRST TWO CHAPTERS) BOOK 1: 1 - 2 CONFEDERATES OF THE DEVIL Though he was mortal, yet he was of great antiquity, and most fully gifted with every kind of knowledge, so that the mastery of a great many subjects and arts acquired for him the name Trismegistus [Thrice-Great]. He authored books and these in large number, relating to the nature of divine things, in which he avows the majesty of the supreme and only God and mentions Him by those titles which we Christians use—God and the Father. — Lactantius, Institutes 1: 1 TWO WISE MEN Saints lie. At least as far as Drew was concerned, Saint Augustine had. The question was whether or not his paper presented a convincing argument. Uncharacteristically early for class, he was sitting at one of those minimalist desks that looked more like a chair with a paddle for an arm. His hands were probably as cold as the steel tubing the plywood seat was screwed into. It was the same chill that deadened them before a wrestling match. Today they were getting back their term papers—a hefty fifty percent of their final grades. December light streamed through a row of tall windows. Drew could see the slate walks of the mall and the wilted lawns flecked with dead leaves. Laaksonen Hall was a nineteenth century brownstone renovated to accommodate classrooms, and from out there, he knew, the windows looked like bronze panels in the late-afternoon sun. It probably hadn’t been a good idea taking on a saint, especially the author of City of God , an epic tome written to explain why pagan Rome had stood for nearly a thousand years, but shortly after making Christianity its official religion, had been sacked by the Visigoths, presaging the disintegration of the empire. And then there was Augustine’s Confessions , a sort of eternally bestselling memoir recounting the saint’s spiritual conflicts. Professor de la Croix, as it happened, was particularly fond of Augustine, once remarking that he’d had more influence on Christianity than any writer since the apostle Paul. Drew used to picture the saint, robed in black, habitually sequestering himself in a stone tower overlooking a shore of North Africa. There, as Drew imagined it, he peered down a corridor of time as if through a telescope, in search of the moment when God’s infinite design had first been set in motion. Or, quill in hand, scratched out his meditations by oil lamp in such profound early-morning stillness he could hear the continents drift. Drew’s research, however, had revealed a very different Augustine, a cantankerous old man more interested in spin than truth. One chapter of Confessions was titled: “Whatever has been correctly said by the heathen is to be appropriated by Christians.” In other words, if philosophers—particularly the Platonists—had said anything that agreed with Christianity, Augustine insisted it was up to Christians to claim it as their own since the pagans had “unlawful possession of it.” While church officials presided over book burnings, enthusiastically consigning to flames works now considered classics of antiquity, Augustine wrote a polemic declaring that “good men undertake wars,” particularly when it is necessary “to punish” or to enforce “obedience to God.” So much for Christ’s call for love and compassion. Drew’s head turned when the door opened, but it was Jesse Fenton. Her skin pale, and her dark hair brutally short, she had a disarming smile and a sky-high IQ. At the fetish level, what Drew found irresistible was an abundance of freckles—forehead to chin and even the top of her chest. She nodded to him without quite smiling. They never saw each other outside of class, but there was a tacit understanding between them that they were the two best students. Drew glanced down at his notes. As disappointed as he was in Augustine, he wasn’t interested in exposing his faults. An English major with a minor in religion, he’d been caffeinated to the point of insomnia by the idea of welding the two disciplines together. While tracing the influence of the occult in Romantic poetry, he’d come across Augustine’s critique of the Corpus Hermeticum , which, by the Middle Ages, had become a compendium for alchemists. There, in Augustine’s argument, was a fabricated accusation; to put it bluntly, he’d lied. Drew couldn’t use Augustine’s critique for his English course, but he’d found a place for it in de la Croix’s New Testament class. He knew he’d written an A paper—he had a 4.0 within his major—but he was hoping for something extra, some kind of acknowledgment from Professor de la Croix that he’d done first-rate work. The problem was she couldn’t stand him. She made snide remarks when he walked in late. She called on him when she thought he wasn’t paying attention, and was delighted when she was right. While he got good grades, there was always a grudging comment on his test or at the end of a paper. The door opened again—Lisa. A girl so quiet Drew sometimes wondered if she wasn’t some kind of nun keeping a vow of silence. Professor de la Croix came in right behind her, an overstuffed briefcase and a stack of books under her arm. A short woman, she nonetheless did a pretty good job of blocking a doorway. Her gray hair, pulled back in a bun, had a metallic sheen, but a few wiry strays sprang out at random as if to spite her sense of order. And though she had put on a smear of orange lipstick, aside from not quite hitting the mark—something like a child's crayon job—it just didn't look right. She let the books thump to her desk and appraised the class from behind a pair of glasses that were almost modern. Everything else she wore looked as if it had been rescued from an attic. She pulled their papers out of her briefcase and began handing them out as students trickled in. “Miss Dent …” “Miss Fenton …” “Mr. Demko …” She called out names and returned papers until she had only one left. “Mr. Korchula …” Professor de la Croix fixed her gaze on Drew, but the white glare of the fluorescent lights on her glasses erased her eyes. Drew’s fingertips tingled. Professor de la Croix slapped the paper on his desk, face down. “A particularly poor piece of scholarship,” she muttered. Drew’s stomach lurched, as if he were on an elevator that had suddenly dipped. Bending down, she whispered hoarsely, “A C- is a gift ,” and then headed up the aisle between desks. “ C- ?” Drew was surprised by the force of his own voice. Professor de la Croix turned to glare at him. “If you’re going to call Saint Augustine a liar, you’d better back it up.” Faces swiveled toward him. Drew cleared his throat. “Well, he … made a false accusation.” Even Jesse looked skeptical. “How do you know?” “Good question, Miss Fenton.” With a twist of a smile, Professor de la Croix answered it: “He doesn’t.” Ignoring the professor, Drew looked at Jesse. “Scholars who lived during the Renaissance assumed that the author of the Corpus Hermeticum was an Egyptian priest.” Professor de la Croix rolled her eyes. “Hermes Trismegistus, the supposed author, never existed. He was a fiction created by the Gnostics.” Drew conceded with a nod. “Yes, but Hermes was thought to have lived at about the same time as Moses—” “In point of fact,” Professor de la Croix interjected, “the Corpus Hermeticum was compiled in 100 AD at the earliest and probably closer to 300 AD, well after Christianity had been firmly established.” Drew pushed a wing of dark hair from his eyes. “But Augustine didn’t know that. Augustine, like everyone else writing around the fifth century, believed that the Corpus Hermeticum was as old as the pyramids. And because Hermes refers to God the Father and uses the expression Son of God , and because he says God created the world through a luminous word , there were a lot of theologians who thought Hermes must have been a prophet who foresaw the coming of Christianity. Augustine denied this of course.” Professor de la Croix waved a hand dismissively. “Augustine saw through the absurdity of this Gnostic heresy.” “Yes, maybe, but according to Augustine, everything Hermes knew about Christianity came from the Devil.” Drew flipped through the pages of his paper. “ Hermes presages these things as the Devil’s confederate, suppressing evidence of the Christian name …” Drew looked up for a response. “And who is to say he wasn’t, Mr. Korchula? Who is to say that is not a valid explanation?” Drew was too surprised to answer. It had never occurred to him that a college professor might consider the Devil as valid an explanation as an algebra equation or a logical proof. “Umm … well, there was no one named Hermes Trismegistus, and the Corpus Hermeticum came after Christianity so … so there was nothing to explain. But when Augustine thought Hermes knew about the future, and Augustine couldn’t explain how a pagan could be a prophet, he just made something up about conferring with the Devil. He—” “Oh enough of this rubbish! The Gnostics were plagiarists who, between them, never had an original idea. Nor do you, Mr. Korchula.” Drew was furious. His gaze slid over to Jesse, but she was looking down at her notebook. His best paper, probably in all four years of college, and the professor had just announced to the class it was crap. “Just who are you to call Saint Augustine a liar? Have you ever written anything worth publishing? Let alone texts that have been studied for a millennium and a half.” “No, but I haven’t written any lies lately, either.” His voice cracked on lies . “This from a student who can’t seem to make it to class on time— when he bothers to come.” Drew had missed only three classes. “Christianity,” he shot back, “was a little late too, don’t you think?” Professor de la Croix put the back of her hand on her hip and took off her glasses. “What is that supposed to mean?” Drew’s paper was no longer the issue. Neither was his grade. PhD or not, de la Croix was wrong. “Religion is what? About 30,000 years old? If we call those paintings in Lascaux and Alta Mira religious? Assuming a Christian God has been up there all this time, why did He wait 28,000 years to put in an appearance? Isn’t it kind of a cruel joke to leave human beings in the dark with all those pagan gods the saints insist were really demons? I mean, those guys painting in caves? Why not give them a little light to work by? Why not give them a … a goddamn clue ?” Her eyes narrowed. “How dare you use profanity in my classroom.” Drew had to hold onto the arm of his desk to keep his hand from shaking. “Yeah, okay, sorry, but you haven’t answered my question.” “You are lucky, Mr. Korchula, extremely lucky that I tolerate your presence at all. As to your question, which involves thousands of years that are utterly dark to those of us in modern times, who can possibly know? Who are we, after all, to question the ways of God?” Drew looked to the other students, but he could tell from their faces he wasn’t going to get any support. “I thought this was a university, not Sunday school.” Professor de la Croix slammed a desk with the heel of her hand. “Get out! Out of my class!” Gathering up his books, Drew glanced at Jesse, hoping she would say something in his defense. All he got was a sympathetic look. “I will not tolerate that kind of disrespectful back-talk from a student.” As he left the classroom, the professor’s words pelting his back, he wasn’t sure if the backs of his ears were burning from anger or humiliation. Let’s see what the head of the religion department has to say about your C- . 1: 2 BYZANTIUM Whenever he came across the word, he instinctively imagined the letters embossed on gold foil. It reminded him of Yeats’s gold-enameled bird singing to keep drowsy emperors awake. Of Constantine the Great’s bronze lions that—powered by steam—actually roared. Sitting in Professor Wittier’s office, it was hard not to think of Byzantium; along with the antique desk, a fountain pen in a gleaming holder weighted by a marble base, and bookshelves fitted with glass doors and brass hinges, there were several Byzantine icons—Jesus among them. The Savior’s robes, a rich red, looked as though they had been stained by smoke. They contrasted with a gilded background that had lost much of its shimmer. Although gold doesn’t tarnish, this was paint webbed by fine cracks. All of the icons looked as though they had been rescued from a fire—the colors sooty, and the parched wood beginning to split along the grain—but the fire was just time, time consuming everything at an imperceptible smolder. A short man with a receding hairline, Professor Wittier had dressed up the informality of his jeans with a herringbone jacket. He had puffy eyelids that made him seem permanently sleepy and, like his mahogany desk, fit in perfectly with the Old World look of his office. “Look, Drew, you’re a bright kid, but some of your comments, you have to admit, were a little inflammatory.” He sighed heavily. “Couldn’t you have just said darn ?” “I know I shouldn’t have said that, but it’s one … little … word.” “The universe began with a word.” “Yeah, I guess. But my paper has about five thousand of them.” Drew’s hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and he’d tucked a button-up shirt into a pair of black jeans. “Couldn’t we give that a little more attention? I mean, do you think it’s C- work? Can’t she be brought up in front of a board for being unprofessional…?” Professor Wittier leaned forward. “Look, Professor de la Croix was angry, she stepped a little over the line. And, no, your paper isn’t C- work. You’ll get a B+. I’ll see to that.” “But—” “You would have gotten your A if you had just been a little more … diplomatic in the classroom. I hope, at least, that you’ve learned something from this incident.” Drew smiled bitterly. “I learned that if Professor de la Croix can’t attack my work, she’ll attack me .” Professor Wittier laced his fingers together and lowered his eyebrows. “Drew, let me ask you something. You’re an English major ... are you planning to teach?” “I really don’t know. I just … I enjoy reading.” He shrugged. “Well, chances are with an English major that’s exactly what you’re going to do at some point or another—teach. Now I’m not saying Professor de la Croix is right, but in a few years, if you’re running a classroom, you might have a little more sympathy for her position. Don’t forget that, like the rest of our staff, she has put decades of research into her subject. Sometimes, I’ll admit …” He waffled a hand. “Sometimes we’re a little too sure of ourselves, that’s all.” Drew nodded. This office with its rustle of paper, its air faintly musty with the dust-covered wisdom that lined the shelves, its corners and niches where shadow was a reminder that so much more had been lost beneath the crush of history than could ever be imagined—let alone retrieved—yes, he could spend any number of hours in an office like this. But a classroom…? “Can I ask you something a little off-topic here, Drew? Your last name is Korchula. Where does that come from?” “My father’s Croatian,” Drew answered. “We’re named after a town. And my mother’s Gypsy.” He purposely left out the indefinite article to indicate his mother’s ethnicity rather than comment on her personality. “Quite a mix. I suppose I can see it now.” Drew was dark-skinned enough to make people wonder about his ethnic background. Prominent cheekbones and eyebrows that slashed down at a sharp angle gave his eyes something of the Asian, although his nose and the rest of his face had the straight lines and right angles most people associated with Westerners. He lifted his chin. “Are those icons authentic?” Professor Wittier glanced back at them. “Ah … they’re beautiful, aren’t they? Yes, they’re genuine. I picked them up at the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul. Even after bargaining to get the price down, I paid quite a bit for them.” Rain tapped against the glass of the office windows. “You’re a senior, aren’t you, Drew?” Professor Wittier lifted his graying eyebrows. “One more semester and it’s out into the world, right?” Drew nodded. Yeah. Out. Then what? Grad school? Peace Corps? He had no idea. Professor Wittier stood and skirted the edge of his desk. “So let’s just put this whole thing behind us, shall we?” Drew pushed out of his chair. “Sure.” Wittier gave him a friendly pat on the back as he opened the door and shook his hand. “Keep up the good work, but keep it clean, okay?” So that’s it, Drew thought as he walked down the hall. One of the best papers he’d ever written gets a B+. Pulling on an old pea coat, he slid his hands into the worn pockets and walked out into a cold drizzle. The mall was lined with venerable brownstones half-covered with ivy. It was only December, but he had begun to worry about May: what was he going to do after graduation? His father kept asking him the same question. “You don’t wanna teach so what the hell kinda work you gonna find? You wanna drive a truck like me with your fancy diploma?” His father was up at four every morning to deliver cold cuts. “You know what BS stands for, right? Bullshit . MS? More shit . And PhD is just piled higher and deeper.” His father would drag on a cigarette. “What you really need, is a jay oh bee , so you can pay back those loans.” Drew’s father was a practical Slav. He didn’t understand the point of an expensive education that couldn’t be converted into a job paying a lot more than his. “And what did you study? Stories that never happened. They call it lidderacher like it’s important. What the hell is the point if it never happened?” Drew had never been able to answer his father. He couldn’t even appeal to the storytelling tradition of the Gypsies—Drew’s mother was the only Gypsy his father liked. The one rule Drew set for himself when he’d started college was that he enjoy the next four years. And he had. While some students were doing indifference-curve analysis in microeconomics or working out integrals in calculus, he was reading a Greek play or buzzing through a chapter in a Dickens novel. But now that the trees had lost their leaves and the weather had turned cold, the feeling he found himself facing wasn’t anxiety; it was dread. “Hey.” Her voice startled him. “Deep in thought?” Freckles, disarming smile, and short, dark hair safe under a paisley umbrella, Jesse was looking up at him. His own hair was beginning to soak through. “Yeah, I guess I was.” “You have your powwow with Wittier?” “Just now.” “And?” I got a B+.” “Not bad.” He pulled his head back, a contrived grimace expressing a mixture of disbelief and disgust. “All right.” Raising her eyebrows and pressing her lips together, Jesse nodded. “For us a B+ is an unmitigated disaster. But you’ll still ace the course.” “That’s not the point.” “I think you made your point. And I owe you an apology. I shouldn’t have just sat there.” Drew shook his head. “Nah …” The apology made something in his chest that had been uncomfortably tight go slack. “I’m not saying I totally agree with you, but Professor de la Croix was wrong to turn it into a personal attack.” “Well, it’s done with.” “Yeah, I guess. Just remember, there are more things under heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” She smiled again, and shallow dimples deepened among the freckles. “Horatio.” He nodded appreciatively. “ Hamlet is Shakespeare’s best if you ask me.” This was the first time they’d ever spoken outside of class. It was also the first time their conversation had gone beyond theology, and he was suddenly desperate to spend the drizzly December afternoon with her. “I don’t know about the play, but the line definitely suits you … you’re just a little too enamored of logic.” He nodded. “Maybe.” For a long second he listened to rain drum lightly on her paisley umbrella. “How about hitting Café Insomnia for a coffee or something?” The rain came down harder, and the drumming intensified. “I’d love to, but I’m meeting my boyfriend in about fifteen minutes.” Maybe because it was unexpected, the word boyfriend stung almost as much as what Professor de la Croix had said about his paper. A little too quickly he asked, “Another time, maybe?” He knew there wouldn’t be. “I’ll see you at the final.” She snickered. “Horatio.” He watched her cross the mall wondering what her boyfriend was like. Long hair hanging down his back like drenched seaweed, Drew started toward the dorm. Nothing , he decided, is as gray as rain on a sidewalk . Under his breath he said, “Byzantium.” And the gray was backgrounded by gold. Read more