The Gospel of Afranius: The Holy History as an Object of a Detective Inquiry

  • Kirill Es'kov
Published in Russian by the author rasn@glasnet.ru 1995
Credit: BRIDGEMAN ART LIBRARY

During the Soviet period in Russia, ‘militant atheism’ was a cornerstone of the official ideology. Scientists were ordered to be atheists, the result predictably being that even those who did not believe were in sympathy with the believers. It seemed that the fields of religion and science were different and no problem would arise if there was no trespassing from either side. Most scientists avoided participating in official antireligious campaigns, and religious activists had neither desire nor opportunity to start the brawls.

The situation changed with the fall of the communist regime. Russian scientists began to find all kinds of missionaries and mystics grazing in their kitchen garden, some of them migrants from outside, some mutated from the local stock. Now the former owners feel uneasy. It still seems unethical (and hardly possible) to kick the trespassers out, but it is also humiliating to endure the invasion silently. Such is the historical context within which The Gospel of Afranius should be assessed.

Kirill Es'kov is a specialist in the palaeontology and zoogeography of spiders, and a senior scientist at the Palaeontological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow. The appearance of The Gospel of Afranius was stimulated by The Resurrection Factor by Josh McDowell (Thomas, 1981). McDowell maintains that he analysed all the possible materialistic explanations of events following the crucifixion of Christ as they are described in the New Testament and found none satisfactory. In his view, it is enough to conclude that here we are faced with the direct intervention of God.

Es'kov defines his own position clearly and precisely. He writes: “As for religion, I am an agnostic like many of my colleagues — naturalists. For me it has always been an axiom that there is not and cannot be a proof of God's existence in the sphere of mind Since Protestant McDowell has rejected Tertullianus' honest ‘Credo, quia absurdum’ and with his own hands desacralized the text of the Gospel, he deliberately got involved in a rather risky game on the field of the opponent. Unable to withstand the temptation I have accepted his challenge.”

After that Es'kov demonstrates what a specialist accustomed to analysing fragmentary and not very reliable data can do even in an area outside his normal domain. He does it brilliantly in the first part of the book, discovering a lot of ‘logical possibilities’ overlooked by the opponent even though, playing fair, he accepts ‘presumption of honesty’, excluding any version that implies fraud committed by Christ or the apostles.

The second part of the book contains a story written, the author assures us, by Afranius, the chief of Pontius Pilate's Secret Service, a person well known to Russian readers as a character in a popular novel, The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. The story describes an operation of the Secret Service that used Christ without his knowledge. The witty narration is excellently stylized as a modern ‘spy novel’ and perfectly dovetails into the Gospel's scenario.

The story explains how skilful professionals could stage a ‘resurrection’ using substitutes after Christ died on the cross and manage to convince the apostles that they had seen nobody but their resuscitated rabbi. The author says: “You wanted a materialistic explanation, didn't you? All right, here you are!” The humour is sometimes biting, but never insulting.

The manuscript was offered to several publishers but none wanted to spoil its relations with the Russian Orthodox Church, so the author had to publish the book himself. It has already won admirers. In 1997, it won the Grand Prix at the Festival of Science Fiction Authors in Odessa. There is reason to think that The Gospel of Afranius would find many interested readers if it were published in English.