The Last Gospel (Jack Howard #3) by David Gibbins

Description

Herculaneum, AD 79.

In one of the best-kept secrets of history, the former Roman emperor Claudius lives on after faking his death, hidden away in a villa beneath Mount Vesuvius. He has one last story to tell – the story of a visit he made as a young man to Galilee, and of a life-changing encounter with a man he met there. It is a story Claudius has only told his friend Pliny. But before he can reveal it to the world, both men die in the eruption of Vesuvius.

Sicily, present day. Marine archaeologist Jack Howard and his team are excavating the long-lost shipwreck of St Paul. But then Jack’s colleague Maurice Hiebermeyer calls to tell him of an astounding discovery he has made at Herculaneum, in the Villa of the Papyri – a discovery that could change the picture of the foundations of Christianity. Somewhere is a lost document that may contain what two thousand years of believers have yearned for, the written words of the messiah himself
Published in the US as “The Lost Tomb”