The Word: A Novel

Irving Wallace's "The Word". From the inside flap jacket: "I, James of Jerusalem, brother of the Lord Jesus Christ, heir of the Lord, eldest of the Lord's surviving brethren and the son of Joseph of Nazareth...herewith...set down a brief testimony of my brother Jesus Christ's life and ministry..." A momentous archeological discovery, the greatest of all time-and the immediate effect it has on the varied group of men and women whose lives are intimately touched and altered by it-is at the heart of Irving Wallace's magnificent and exciting new novel, ... In the ruins of the ancient Roman seaport of Ostia Antica, an Italian archeologist has discovered a first-century papyrus, its faded Aramaic text revealing a new gospel written by James, younger brother of Jesus, the original source of the four gospels of the New Testament. The discovery offers the modern world a new Jesus Christ, a real man who lived and walked on earth, fills in the missing years of his ministry, contradicts the existing accounts of his life-and of his supposed death. ...To Steven Randall, the cynical and successful young New York public relations man who has been hired to introduce the International New Testament to the world, the assignment offers more than an awesome challenge. ... But from the moment that Randall decides to investigate the new gospel, he is caught up in a web of intrigue...Swiftly, recklessly, Randall eludes the vast international organization known by the code name Resurrection Two, which has been created to exploit the new Bible. Moving from New York and London to Amsterdam, Paris, Frankfurt, Rome-from the British Museum to a French radiocarbon laboratory, form the Dutch Westerkerk to a monastery on a Grecian peninsula-Randall continues his pursuit of the shadowy, mysterious figure-convict, madman, genius-who alone knows the truth about The Word.