The Last Gospel by David Gibbins

to maintain the mystique over centuries, so alluring that it even drew in the Romans, the most rational and practical of peoples. Something the Sibyls themselves believed in.’
    ‘Don’t go all supernatural on me, Jack.’
    ‘I’m not suggesting it. But if the Sibyls believed in themselves, and if others with the power to shape the world, emperors, believed in them, then it becomes something we have to take seriously.’
    Costas grunted, then peered down through his visor at the indented shoreline that was now directly beneath them. ‘What’s that place now?’
    ‘Pozzuoli. Roman Puteoli.’
    ‘So that was where St Paul was heading? After Sicily, after surviving the wreck?’
    ‘According to the Acts of the Apostles, he and his companions sailed up from Syracuse on a ship of Alexandria, then stopped at Puteoli. That’s the ancient Roman grain port you can see now. It complements the naval port beside it at Misenum.’ Jack tapped the screen. ‘The words are: “We found brethren there, and were intreated to tarry with them seven days.’
    ‘Brethren? Fellow Christians? What about persecution?’
    Jack jerked his head to the north. ‘The Phlegraean Fields. Perfect hideaway. Probably always a place for outcasts, beggars, misfits.’
    ‘And then Paul goes to Rome. Where Nero had him beheaded.’
    ‘The New Testament doesn’t actually say so, but that’s the tradition.’
    ‘Might have been better for him if he’d gone down in that shipwreck after all.’
    ‘If that had happened, then western history might have been utterly different.’ Jack banked the helicopter to starboard, then nosed it towards the smudge on the eastern shore of the bay. ‘We might have ended up worshipping Isis, Mithras, or even the great mother goddess.’
    ‘Huh?’
    Jack adjusted the throttle, glanced at the air traffic screen and flicked on the autopilot. ‘That shipwreck really was one of the pivotal events of history, not because of what was lost but because of who survived. Remember, Jesus’ ministry in his lifetime was confined to Judaea, mainly his home province of Galilee. The idea that his word should spread to Jewish communities abroad, and then to non-Jews, only seems to have taken hold after his death. Paul was one of the first generation of missionaries, of proselytizers. Without him, many of those who proved receptive to Christianity might have been seduced by one of the other cults on offer. At the time we’re talking about, the spread of the Roman Empire and the Pax Romana meant that the Mediterranean world was awash with new cults, new religious ideas, some brought back by soldiers from newly conquered lands, others brought by sailors to ports such as Misenum and Puteoli. The Egyptian goddess Isis, the Persian god Mithras, the ancient mother goddess, any one of these could have provided the kernel of a monotheistic religion, giving the common people something they craved in the face of all the gods and rituals of Greece and Rome. If one of those religions had truly taken hold, it might have been enough to repel Christianity.’
    ‘Phew,’ Costas said. ‘And I thought with the crucifixion it was all a done deal.’
    ‘That was really just the beginning,’ Jack said. ‘And the amazing thing is, there’s no indication that Paul ever met Jesus in life. Paul was a Jew from Asia Minor who had a vision of Christ on the road to Damascus, but only after the crucifixion. And yet he may have been responsible more than any other for the foundation of the Church as we know it. The spread of the concept of Jesus as the son of God, as the Messiah, the meaning of the Greek word Christos , all seem to owe a huge amount to his teaching. The word Christian probably first appears about the time of his travels, and the emphasis on the cross. It’s as if, a generation after Jesus’ death, after people’s personal experience of him, the focus had shifted from Jesus the man to the risen Jesus, almost as if he’d come to be