Book excerpt: After Cambridge scholar Nathan Tobin discovers and translates an ancient Aramaic letter, he finds himself thrown into an agonizing struggle against powerful forces committed to discrediting him and destroying the letter. The "Alexandria letter," which was written by a first-century Jewish-Christian scribe in Jerusalem, portrays the lives and actions of John the Baptist, Jesus of Nazareth, and Paul of Tarsus, and describes critical early events in the development of Christianity. The Jesus story narrative parallels those of the gospel stories, but is free of content that is not historically supportable, or that is inconsistent with first-century Jewish scripture, religious practice, and tradition. When presented from this perspective, the story that emerges is a fascinating one, and one that sometimes differs dramatically from that of the corresponding biblical texts.