by James Barney
13. True or False: A purported copy of the book of Jasher was published in 1751, claiming to have been “translated into English from the Hebrew by Flaccus Albinus Alcuinus, who went on a pilgrimage into the Holy Land and Persia, where he discovered this volume in the city of Gazna.”
14. True or False: Another purported copy of the book of Jasher was published in Hebrew in Venice in 1625 and translated into English by Mordechai Noah in 1840.
15. True or False: Scholars still dispute the meaning of the word “bow” in the following passage from the second book of Samuel: “teach the children of Judah the use of the bow: behold it is written in the book of Jasher.”
16. True or False: The exact cause of gravity is still a mystery to this day.
17. True or False: Experiments have proven one of the basic predictions of quantum entanglement theory, that two particles born in the same quantum event can be separated by a great distance yet still somehow share information nearly instantaneously.
18. True or False: One accepted theory of gravity is that it is a residual force of quantum entanglement originating with the Big Bang.
19. True or False: Time dilation is a real phenomenon, which must be accounted for in GPS satellites.
20. True or False: Physicists are already working on a gravity reactor that can create energy by changing the gravitational state of tiny quantities of matter.
21. True or False: The Third Church of Christ, Scientist, is an octagonal, mostly windowless building of Brutalist design, located three blocks from the White House.
22. True or False: Beneath the Third Church of Christ, Scientist, is a nuclear fallout shelter that is accessible from the West Wing of the White House.
23. True or False: The Madaba mosaic—the oldest known map of the Holy Land—shows the location of the twelve stones that Joshua commanded be taken up from the Jordan River and “pitched at Gilgal.”
24. True or False: The Black Stone is one of the holiest symbols of the Muslim faith and is located in one corner of the Kaaba in Mecca.
25. True or False: The Black Stone of the Kaaba is actually formed from several smaller fragments that have been cemented together.
26. True or False: The Black Stone of the Kaaba is reported to have an unusual physical property: it floats.
Answers:
1. TRUE. Thurmond, West Virginia, is a former coal-mining town located in Fayette County, near the New River. In 2010, according to the federal census, Thurmond had a population of five. The old railroad depot (described in the story as run-down and partially collapsed) has in fact been restored by the National Park Service, and the entire town is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
2. FALSE. As far as I know, the Thurmond National Laboratory never existed.
3. FALSE. Fire Creek, West Virginia, is a ghost town. For about fifty years, starting in 1880, it was the base of operations for the Fire Creek Coal & Coke Company, which operated a coal mine and several dozen coke ovens there. By the 1930s, however, the population had dwindled, and today only ruins of the town remain.
4. TRUE. The Department of Energy headquarters is located in the James V. Forrestal Building at L’Enfant Plaza in Washington, D.C. The building’s namesake, James V. Forrestal, served as secretary of the Navy from 1944 to 1947 and secretary of defense from 1947 to 1949. Forrestal was hospitalized in April 1949 for physical exhaustion and depression. On the day he was to be released from the psychiatric ward of Bethesda Naval Hospital, he was found dead below his window. The official cause of death was determined to be suicide, although assassination theories persist to this day.
5. TRUE. Russia commenced construction of the Akademik Lomonosov floating nuclear power station in April 2007, and it was launched in July 2010. Several more of these floating power stations are reportedly under construction. Each vessel is a floating barge with two nuclear reactors capable of producing 70 megawatts of electricity, enough to electrify a city of about 200,000 people. Russia reportedly plans to use these floating nuclear power stations in remote regions, for instance to support oil and gas exploration in the Arctic.
6. TRUE. The Great Mosque of Al-Zaytuna in Tunis was constructed sometime in the seventh century A.D. and has long been one of the most important mosques in Africa. One of its most distinctive features is its Romanesque appearance, particularly its use of numerous columns to separate the mosque into naves and bays. It is widely believed that these columns, as well as other structural elements of the mosque, were salvaged from the ancient ruins of Carthage, which was sacked and destroyed by the Romans in 146 B.C.
7. FALSE. There is no evidence that the Nazis were interested in anything enshrined in the Great Mosque of Al-Zaytuna.
8. FALSE. All materials on earth (and as far as we know, in the entire universe) obey the laws of gravity. The floating black stones in this story are purely fictional.
9. TRUE. The book of Jasher is mentioned twice in the Old Testament—once in Joshua 10:12–13 and once in 2 Samuel 1:18. However, no authentic copy of the book of Jasher is known to exist. The Hebrew word for “Jasher” has been translated to mean “upright” or “just.” Thus, the book of Jasher is sometimes referred to as the “book of the Just” or the “book of the Upright.”
10. FALSE. As far as I know, the government never conducted time-dilation experiments resulting in time dilations of several minutes. The events described in the story as taking place at the Thurmond National Laboratory in 1959 are purely fictional.
11. TRUE. Project Paperclip (or Operation Paperclip) was a covert operation ordered by President Truman in 1945 and carried out by the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the immediate predecessor of the modern CIA. The purpose of the project was to recruit German scientists to come to the United States to conduct scientific research. One goal of the project was to prevent these scientists from being recruited by the Soviet Union. Among the scientists brought to the United States as part of Project Paperclip were hundreds of rocket scientists, nuclear engineers, chemists, physicists, medical doctors, and aeronautical engineers.
12. FALSE. Dr. Benjamin Fulcher and his colleagues are all fictional characters, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
13. TRUE. A purported copy of the book of Jasher was published in 1751, claiming to have been “translated into English from the Hebrew by Flaccus Albinus Alcuinus.” This book was reprinted in 1829 in Bristol, England, along with a “preliminary dissertation proving the authenticity of the work.” However, from the time it was originally published, this book has been widely considered to be a fraud. You can view a copy of the 1829 version at http://openlibrary.org/books/OL22877553M/The_Book_of_Jasher.
14. TRUE. Another purported copy of the book of Jasher was published in Hebrew in Venice in 1625 and was translated into English by Mordechai Noah in 1840. The introduction of the 1625 version mentions an earlier 1552 edition, published in Naples. However, no such earlier text has ever been found. The introduction of the 1625 version also claims that it was originally translated from a book found in the ruins of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 by a Roman officer named Sidrus. Scholars are split on whether this version of the book of Jasher is a forgery or an actual transcription of an ancient Hebrew document.
15. TRUE. Scholars still dispute the meaning of the word “bow” in 2 Samuel 1:18. The Hebrew word is “Qaset,” but its meaning is unclear in context. The King James Version of the Bible translates this passage as “teach the children of Judah the use of the bow,” interpreting “bow” as a weapon. In contrast, the New American Standard Version translates this passage as “teach the sons of Judah the song of the bow,” interpreting “bow” as a song or lamentation. The actual Hebrew text simply says “teach the children of Judah the bow,” without specifying whether it is a weapon or a song.
16. TRUE. Gravity can be measured, and its effects on all things, large and small, can be observed. But as for why gravity occurs and what exactly causes it, there are no definitive
answers, only theories.
17. TRUE. “Quantum entanglement” refers to the relationship between two particles (like photons or electrons) that are forced to interact in a way that causes them to take on certain complementary quantum properties, such as the directions of their spin. Quantum mechanics dictates that, as soon as a quantum state is observed for one such particle (such as a clockwise spin), the other particle will immediately take on the correspondingly appropriate state (such as a counterclockwise spin). Countless experiments have verified this is true. What is perplexing, however, is that this phenomenon occurs even if the particles are physically separated by many miles. Somehow, despite their physical distance, the particles are able to exchange quantum information nearly instantaneously—much faster than the speed of light. Indeed, some scientists have referred to this phenomenon as “quantum teleportation.” (See www.nature.com/news/quantum-teleportation-achieved-over-record-distances-1.11163). Albert Einstein was perplexed and frustrated by this phenomenon, which he referred to as “spooky action at a distance.”
18. FALSE. As far as I know, there is no mainstream theory of gravity that is based on quantum entanglement originating with the Big Bang. I made this theory up from whole cloth. After I did so, however, I noticed that the topic had already been discussed in various physics forums, so I guess I’m not the only one to have had this thought. It is not an accepted theory of gravity, however.
19. TRUE. Time dilation is a real phenomenon, and it occurs precisely as Einstein predicted. In the case of GPS satellites, which are moving through space at a high rate of speed compared to earth’s (inertial) frame of reference, the theory of special relativity predicts that clocks on board the satellites will run more slowly than clocks on earth. This, in fact, has been proven. If the GPS clocks weren’t adjusted for this phenomenon, they would run about seven microseconds slower per day than clocks on earth due to special relativity. The theory of general relativity, in contrast, predicts that the clocks on the GPS satellites will run faster than clocks on earth because they are farther from earth’s gravitational pull. This, too, has been verified and shown to cause an error of about forty-five microseconds per day in GPS satellites. Thus, the offsetting effects of special relativity and general relativity require that the clocks aboard GPS satellites must be adjusted to run about thirty-eight microseconds slower per day than they otherwise would, in order to keep them in sync with time on earth.
20. FALSE. As far as I know, there is no such thing as a gravity reactor that can create energy by changing the gravitational state of tiny quantities of matter, and nobody is working on such a device.
21. TRUE. The Third Church of Christ, Scientist, is an octagonal, mostly windowless building of Brutalist design, located at 910 Sixteenth Street NW in Washington, D.C., about three blocks from the White House. The congregation of the Third Church of Christ, Scientist, fought for nearly twenty years for the right to demolish their church and build a new one. Preservation groups opposed this effort and were able to block it by convincing the District of Columbia to designate the Brutalist-inspired church, built in 1971, as a historic landmark. A protracted legal battle ensued. Finally, in October 2012, the congregation won the right to tear down the old church and build a new one on the same site. As of today, the old Brutalist church is still standing, but it is in serious disrepair and is not being used for services.
22. FALSE. As far as I know, there is no secret fallout shelter beneath the Third Church of Christ, Scientist, although that would certainly be a logical place for one (and would explain why the government fought so hard to keep the original building intact).
23. TRUE. The Madaba mosaic, located on the floor of a Byzantine church in Jordan, is the oldest known map of the Holy Land. It is a fascinating map, which shows, among other things, the location of the twelve stones that Joshua commanded be taken up from the Jordan River and erected as a monument in Gilgal. The map shows a churchlike structure with twelve white circles, annotated in Greek as Galgala-tokai Dodekalithon, which means the town of Galgala with twelve stones. You can view the entire Madaba map at www.christusrex.org/www1/ofm/mad/.
24. TRUE. The Black Stone is a revered symbol in the Muslim faith and is located in the southeastern corner of the Kaaba in Mecca. Mohammed himself is said to have placed it there in A.D. 605. According to Islamic tradition, the Black Stone was delivered from heaven to show Adam and Eve where to build the first altar. The stone was lost during the Great Flood but was later found by Ibrahim, who was guided to it by the angel Jibrail. Ibrahim instructed his son, Ismael, to build a new temple and to embed the Black Stone into it. That temple was the Kaaba in Mecca.
25. TRUE. The Black Stone is not a single stone but, rather, an aggregate of several smaller fragments that have been cemented together. In my story, I suggest that these are ten of the twelve stones that Joshua ordered pulled from the Jordan River after the miracle of the river crossing. But, of course, that is pure fiction.
26. TRUE. A famous story about the Black Stone is that it was stolen from Mecca in A.D. 930 by Qarmatians, a group of nonbelievers and bandits who were terrorizing the Arabian Peninsula at that time. According to legend, the Black Stone was returned twenty-three years later, along with a mysterious note that said: “By command we took it, and by command we return it.” To verify that the returned stone (which had been broken into several pieces) was actually the Black Stone, it was placed in water and observed to float. This unusual attribute—the ability to float on water—is still associated with the Black Stone, although this has never been scientifically tested in the modern era.
Read on
More from James Barney
THE GENESIS KEY
More than three decades ago, Dr. Kathleen Sainsbury’s archaeologist parents were murdered at an ancient excavation site in Iraq. Now the gifted biologist stands on the brink of a miraculous breakthrough: the discovery of a gene that could extend a human life by hundreds of years. But at the moment of her greatest triumph, a mysterious phone call reveals a hidden truth that draws chaos and violence once again into Kathleen’s world . . . and threatens to irreversibly alter the destiny of humankind.
For somewhere in the shadows, powerful unseen forces are watching . . . and waiting. Suddenly Kathleen is a target of covert government operatives as she races to uncover the mystery behind her parents’ secret research and brutal deaths—a mystery locked in the human genome, in the sands of antiquity, and in the book of Genesis. More than survival is at stake for Dr. Kathleen Sainsbury. The future of all humanity hangs in the balance . . . and the prize is the secret of life itself.
“The Genesis Key is a solid blend of science, myth, history, and suspense. It’s remarkable and unconventional, which together make for a great tale. There’s an intense brand of storytelling here, utilizing all of the elements I love. I can’t wait for more from James Barney.”
—Steve Berry, New York Times bestselling author of The Jefferson Key and The Templar Legacy
Also by James Barney
The Genesis Key
Credits
The mosaic piece of art was created by Creative Commons. Used with permission.
Cover design by Richard L. Aquan
Cover photograph @ by Sherry Malotte/ImageBrief.com
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
THE JOSHUA STONE. Copyright © 2013 by James Barney. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanic
al, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
ISBN 978-0-06-202139-7
EPub Edition OCTOBER 2013 ISBN: 9780062198044
13 14 15 16 17 OV/RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street
Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
http://www.harpercollins.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Canada
2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor
Toronto, ON, M4W, 1A8, Canada
http://www.harpercollins.ca
New Zealand
HarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand) Limited
P.O. Box 1
Auckland, New Zealand
http://www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
77-85 Fulham Palace Road
London, W6 8JB, UK
http://www.harpercollins.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
10 East 53rd Street
New York, NY 10022
http://www.harpercollins.com
