The word - Irving Wallace (First UK edition)

First UK edition. 1972.

"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 archaeological discovery, the greatest of all time - and the immediate effect it has upon the varied group of men and women whose lives are intimately touched and altered by it - is at the heart of Irving Wallace's exciting new novel, the most powerful and dramatic work to date from the author of such international bestsellers as The Man, The Plot, The Prize and The Seven Minutes.

In the ruins of the ancient Roman seaport of Ostia Antica, an Italian archaeologist 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 living Jesus Christ.

To the world at large, The Word - if it is genuine - will come as a revelation, a call to revived faith and hope in an age of doubt and fear. To the syndicate of international Bible publishers, and the theologians who have guarded the secret since its discovery, The Word is a consuming obsession as well as a business enterprise of such magnitude that they cannot let it be touched by the slightest tinge of doubt. 

To Steven Randall, the cynical and successful public relations man who has been hired to launch the International New Testament upon a world which is losing its faith amidst the materialism of the twentieth century, the assignment offers more than an awesome challenge. Haunted by his own personal problems, he sees in it the promise of spiritual regeneration, a last chance to save himself from the pointlessness of his life.

But as he gathers the background material for his international promotion, delving deeper into the circumstances surrounding the resurrection of the gospel, he begins, slowly and much against his will, to question its authenticity. Randall's search for the truth takes him across Europe from Amsterdam to Rome, from Paris to Milan, and into centres of learning from England to the Eastern Mediterranean. He is a layman questioning the considered judgments of scholarship and science; one man, desperately wanting to believe, but determined to follow his suspicions to the end, to establish beyond doubt the validity of this momentous discovery before the divine revelations of "The Gospel According to James" are given to the world.

With his brilliant flair for authentic detail, with his incomparable gift for storytelling Irving Wallace has created in The Word his most explosive, controversial, and breathtaking novel to date.