The Quest for the Word (c. 36-39 AD)

The First Century House Churches Saga (Book 2)

The early house churches of Rome are built on a dangerous foundation: human memory. It is 36 AD, five years after Pentecost, and the elders—Andronicus, Rufus, and the scholar Caius—discover their recollections of Christ's teachings are fading and conflicting. A simple dispute over church discipline spirals into a crisis of authority, leaving their flock vulnerable to a new, insidious threat.

From the intellectual forge of Alexandria, an emissary of the sorcerer Simon Magus arrives in Rome. His name is Dositheus, and he preaches an eloquent, philosophical gospel of a spiritual-only Christ, a phantom who never truly inhabited flesh. This Gnostic lie appeals to the fearful, offering a faith without a physical cross.

To save their church from dissolving into heresy, the Roman elders launch a desperate quest. They send two emissaries, Caius and Lucius, on a perilous journey to the source. Their mission: find the apostles in Judea and Antioch and secure the unchangeable, written Word of God before it is too late.

This quest leads them to the very wells of apostolic testimony, where they secure the first copies of the Gospels of Matthew and Mark and gather irrefutable, physical accounts of Christ's healing power. Armed with this sacred cargo, they must race back to Rome for a final confrontation, where the new-found power of the written Word will clash head-to-head with the silver-tongued deception that has poisoned their flock. The Quest for the Word is a story of faith, heresy, and the critical transition from an oral tradition to a scripture-only foundation, showing how the written Gospels became the unshakeable rock of the early church.