The Isaac Question: Templars and the Secret of the Old Testament (Templars in America Series Book 5)

by David S. Brody

  And when they finally decided to rebuild, he’d be there to sell them the machinery and equipment they needed.

  Unless they found another supplier.

  Here, again, he was back to the same problem: He needed to be able to give these radicals something beyond the traditional currencies, something they would value, something that would build loyalty and trust.

  He sipped at his tea. This was the reason for today’s meeting.

  His guest, a bearded, angular man in his thirties wearing a black dishdasha, his head covered by a black kufi, sprang from a white Mercedes limousine, marched across the tarmac casting a long shadow, and climbed the stairs of the jet two at a time. The tails of his dishdasha flowed behind him and the billowing, white Cumulus reflected like mushroom clouds off his Ray-bans. He came alone, as did all Zuberi’s guests. Only when the limousine was hundreds of yards away would Zuberi’s security detail open the door to the plane. Engines running, the jet could take off on a moment’s notice if someone decided to storm the aircraft. Zuberi’s enemies might shoot him down as he attempted to flee, but they would never take him alive.

  A few seconds passed, during which Zuberi knew the man was being frisked, and then his guest was led into the jet’s cabin. Zuberi stood, smiled, and moved forward for the traditional Arab greeting. As an Egyptian, Zuberi stopped at one kiss on each cheek. His guest, being Jordanian, would continue kissing back and forth, cheek to cheek, a dozen times had Zuberi not ended it. Not that his visitor seemed to mind—his eyes were cold and distant even as his warm lips brushed Zuberi’s face.

  “As salam aleykum,” Zuberi said, stepping back. “Welcome, Khaled. I knew your uncle,” he said, speaking Arabic. “To Allah we belong and to him we return.”

  Khaled nodded, his eyes remaining expressionless. “All that is on earth will perish, but Allah abides forever.”

  Zuberi motioned for the man to sit, lest an hour pass with them exchanging bereavement condolences for Khaled’s uncle, a snake of a man whom nobody liked in life and surely nobody beside Zuberi missed in death. And the only reason Zuberi missed him was because Zuberi had pictures of the Jordanian with naked young boys. He had no such leverage over the nephew.

  Seated in a leather chair facing Zuberi across a polished cherry table, Khaled sipped his tea, twirled his dark beard, and studied his host. He was of the next generation of Arab leaders, a generation with hatred in their hearts and disdain for the West in their souls. Life had been much easier dealing with the cocaine-snorting playboys and greedy camel-traders of the previous century. Men like Khaled were more interested in holy wars than in business. But as the saying went: The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago; the second best time is now. The uncle was dead; now Zuberi needed to build a new relationship with Khaled and the other ISIS radicals.

  Zuberi was content to wait, to allow his guest to control the pace of their meeting. Finally Khaled spoke, still in Arabic. “I hear your son is attending an American university, with the Jews.” He spat.

  Zuberi raised an eyebrow and set down his tea cup. “I commend your intelligence work. You obviously understand the importance of knowing all you can about those you are dealing with, both friend and foe.”

  Khaled nodded slightly.

  “I enrolled my son at Brandeis for that same reason. As Sun Tzu said: Know thy enemy.”

  “He will return to you soft and flaccid, like a cock in a cold shower. I hope you have other sons.”

  Zuberi let the insult pass. “It is, in fact, my son’s experiences at Brandeis that I wish to discuss with you today.”

  A flicker of curiosity in Khaled’s eyes. “I am listening.”

  “I am a businessman. And as a businessman I make it a habit of making gifts to my customers.” Zuberi smiled and shrugged. “It has always been such, as long as there has been sand in the desert.” He shifted forward, watching carefully for a reaction to the words he was about to speak. “What if I could produce for you a book, written by a professor at America’s leading Jewish university, offering proof from the Old Testament that the Jews have no legitimate claim to the land of Israel?” If God’s covenant had been made with Abraham, and the Jews did not descend from him—because the patriarch Isaac was not Abraham’s son but rather the son of the pharaoh—then their claim to the Holy Land would be null and void. “This, I think, would be more valuable to you even than the weapons I deliver.”

  Khaled’s hand shook, tea sloshing in his cup. He set the cup down and covered his surprise by wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve. A few seconds passed. “Yes, that would obviously be of interest to us.”

  Zuberi nodded. “I thought it would be.” There was only one thing Muslims hated more than other Muslims. And that was Jews.

  After showing the alarm technician the house layout, Cam set aside the rest of Saturday morning to research what Rachel had euphemistically referred to as the Isaac Question.

  “You know,” Amanda said from the kitchen as she changed a light bulb, “Rachel’s parents are not going to approve of this relationship just because Isaac’s father may have been an Egyptian pharaoh.”

  “I know. But she’s desperate. It’s the classic Romeo and Juliet story. I’m sure she’s trying everything she can to try to change their minds, both rational and irrational. This is the rational approach.”

  “Okay,” Amanda said, “One always feels compelled to root for love.” She smiled sadly.

  He held her eyes. “I know I do.”

  She sighed. “I’ll take Astarte with me to the grocery store.”

  “Great. I’ll be done in time for her game.”

  “I’m pitching today,” Astarte said, “so I want to get there early to warm up.”

  Cam hugged her. “Your bullpen catcher will be ready, I promise.”

  He spread his materials on the kitchen table, opened his laptop and focused on his task. First, he needed to confirm Rachel’s version of the Isaac parentage story—that Isaac had been fathered not by Abraham but rather by the pharaoh during the period when Abraham had sold his wife Sarah into the Egyptian monarch’s harem. Second, if the pharaoh had indeed fathered Isaac, would this event impact the later Moses/Akhenaton story?

  Cam had taken notes while Rachel spoke and compared her assertions to the actual text of the Old Testament. When necessary, he consulted secondary sources and commentaries. As he pored through the materials, he became increasingly convinced that the young student’s conclusion—as revealed to her by her Brandeis professor—was, as Amanda would say, spot on. The recounting of Abraham’s fathering of Isaac as told in the Old Testament looked to be an obvious coverup. And a clumsy one at that. What the writers had essentially done was push back the birth of Isaac a number of decades, creating the perception of time and distance between Isaac’s birth and Sarah’s time in the Pharaoh’s harem.

  Using graph paper, Cam made a series of timelines, one for each character in the story, and plotted the events related in the Book of Genesis for each character. If this was a retelling designed to coverup the truth, as he strongly suspected, it would be impossible to make all the dates line up. Halfway through the timeline for Ishmael, he clapped his hands. “Gotcha!”

  There were two key passages involving Ishmael. First, Genesis 17:25 stated that Ishmael—Abraham’s son by Sarah’s handmaiden, Hagar—was thirteen years old when he was circumcised as part of God’s covenant with Abraham, a covenant which produced Isaac a year later. Ishmael therefore was fourteen years older than Isaac (thirteen plus one), according to the purported timeline of the Old Testament. Second, Genesis 21:14-19 recounted the story of Hagar and Ishmael being cast out by a jealous Sarah after Isaac’s weaning (which traditionally occurred at age three), making Ishmael seventeen (fourteen plus three) at the time of the casting out. But these passages described Hagar carrying Ishmael into the wilderness and setting him down under a bush to wait for him to die. Cam shook his head. What kind of woman would lift a nearly fully-grown man and carry him into the
wilderness? And, even more telling, what kind of seventeen-year-old would agree to sit under a bush and wait to die? What had happened here, Cam guessed, was that the clumsy re-dating of the Isaac birth story had caused the timeline to become distorted.

  Could the Koran shed any light on this story, Cam wondered? It didn’t take him long to find his answer, as the Koran also recounted the story of Ishmael being cast out at the time of Isaac’s weaning feast. The Koran version largely mirrored the Old Testament, with one glaring exception: In the Koran, Ishmael was a young child, an age which made the story of Hagar carrying him into the wilderness far more plausible than the Old Testament’s version. Again, the writers of the Old Testament seem to have taken pains to delay the date of Isaac’s birth by more than a decade, distancing it from Sarah’s time in the pharaoh’s harem. But Ishmael’s true age revealed the coverup.

  The distortion of the timeline, by itself, was fairly revealing. When combined with the circumstantial evidence outlined by Rachel—Sarah’s time spent in the pharaoh’s harem, the pharaoh’s gift of a handmaiden/midwife to Sarah, Abraham’s later willingness to sacrifice the boy Isaac—a compelling case emerged. Cam had won many court cases with less. But, again, this was about finding the truth, not swaying a jury. He kept digging.

  And then he found it. A famous rabbi from the 1500s named Obadiah Sforno wrote a commentary justifying Abraham’s decision to ‘cast out’ his son Ishmael. Relying on ancient texts and sources now lost, Rabbi Sforno asserted that Abraham did so because Ishmael had insulted Abraham at Isaac’s weaning feast by alleging that Abraham was not the true father of Isaac. Instead, Ishmael claimed, Isaac had been fathered by a neighboring monarch.

  Cam sat back. What a strange accusation for Ishmael to make. If the Old Testament timeline were accurate, more than a decade had passed since Sarah had left the pharaoh’s harem. Even a young boy would understand that a pregnancy could not extend that long. The modern-day equivalent would be someone blaming President Obama for the Vietnam War—he would surely be miffed at the charge, but the historical timeline was so clearly at odds with the claim that he would likely shrug the accusation away rather than react angrily.

  But if the timeline had been altered in the Old Testament, as Cam now believed, then both the accusation itself along with Abraham’s angry response made sense. A public accusation questioning Isaac’s parentage—made in conjunction with a plausible timeline—might have stung Abraham sufficiently to cause him to cast his firstborn son Ishmael out, just as Rabbi Sforno opined. Cam felt certain now that Rabbi Sforno, in attempting to defend the patriarch Abraham, had unwittingly provided compelling evidence calling into question the entire Isaac birth story.

  Cam walked to the refrigerator and poured a tall glass of orange juice. There was one more thing he wanted to check. When Isaac was born, God promised that Isaac and his line would rule all the land from the Euphrates River in the east to the Nile River in the west—pretty much the entire Middle East. This had always struck Cam as an odd promise, as the Israelites had never controlled such a vast territory. Why had God made such an expansive promise? Cam sensed the truth. Returning to his laptop, he found a map showing Greater Egypt as ruled by Pharaoh Tuthmosis III during his reign around the year 1500 BC. His skin tingled. The map mirrored God’s promise to Isaac, comprising a swath of land stretching from the Euphrates River valley to the Nile River valley and all fertile territory in between. Cam sat back. Of course it did. God was merely promising to Isaac what was already his by birthright: The land of Isaac’s true father, Pharaoh Tuthmosis III. The promise had nothing to do with Abraham.

  Territories Ruled (in orange) and Controlled (in red) by Pharaoh Tuthmosis III

  The Brandeis professor had been correct, Cam concluded. The evidence was overwhelming, as soon as one opened one’s eyes to it.

  So what did this all mean? Did the revelation of Isaac’s true parentage have a domino effect on the later story of Moses and the Exodus?

  Cam pulled out a legal pad and scribbled his thoughts. Primarily, and most clearly, the Isaac truth explained how the Jewish slave Joseph had made his unlikely ascension to Prime Minister—what was seemingly impossible became quite understandable with the revelation that Joseph was actually a direct descendant (the great-grandson) of Pharaoh Tuthmosis III and therefore a kinsman of the current pharaoh. But even more importantly, the revelation that Joseph descended from the pharaoh explained how he had been able to marry into the royal family and become the grandfather of—and monotheistic mentor to—Moses/Akhenaton. And it also explained the mystery of the gold: When Moses/Akhenaton and his followers fled, the group was not comprised only of slaves, but also of members of the royal family whose wealth the pharaoh coveted.

  Cam stood, stretching as he walked to the picture window overlooking the lake. By focusing on timelines and maps and bloodlines and specific details of the story, he had been studying the individual trees and ignoring the fact he had wandered deep into a dark forest. He sighed and pondered the unthinkable: What would it mean if Isaac really was not Abraham’s son?

  Here things turned from being merely academic to potentially impacting world history: If God made his covenant with Abraham, and if Isaac and his line were not of Abraham’s blood, then what group had the rightful claim to be called ‘The Chosen People’?

  This was the hidden, fundamental truth Cam had sensed was being kept from him, the corner Cam had for weeks been unable to see around. Now, deep in the forest but finally able to see, he was pretty certain he didn’t like the view.

  Zuberi did not completely relax until the wheels of his jet lost contact with the Jordanian tarmac. Someday, he feared, a flight to the Middle East would turn into a one-way journey. It was the nature of his business. He had diversified his dealings into high-tech and real estate, but his core operations still revolved around arms dealing. Which meant he still needed to spend time in those areas of the world where lethal weapons were part of daily life.

  He checked his watch. Seven in the evening, local time. Later than he preferred, only a few minutes before dusk. He had a rule never to remain on the tarmac at night, when enemies might use darkness to approach.

  He phoned Amon. “Are you awake, my son?”

  “Of course, father. You know I like to rise early.”

  “What is that American expression of bird waking early to catch fish?”

  “Not a fish, a worm. The early bird catches the worm.”

  “So, tell me my son, did you do as I ask? Did your little bird wake early and contact Thorne?”

  The boy hesitated. “She spoke to him this morning. I think he is willing to help her. To help us.”

  “Excellent.” He sensed there was more. “What more, Amon?”

  “I am feeling guilty for not being completely honest with her, father. I did not tell her that we have a selfish motive in directing Professor Thorne’s research in this direction.”

  The boy had told Zuberi about his romance with the American girl and asked for advice on how to deal with her parents. The solution that presented itself—in the person of Thorne—offered benefits not just to Amon but to Zuberi. And allowed Zuberi to overlook the unfortunate fact that his son had fallen for a Jewess. “The Americans have another bird expression, about killing with one rock the two birds. We have this here. It is not a bad thing if a man prays for rain to water his crops and the rainwater also fills his well.”

  “I suppose you are correct, father.”

  “Trust me on this, Amon. I know not too much about love. But I am expert on business. And this business is good for Zuberi, it is good for Amon, and it is good for Jewish girl.”

  “Her name is Rachel.”

  He laughed. “Yes, my son. So is mother of Joseph with many colors coat.” Pausing, he added. “Maybe your Rachel will be important in Egypt history also.”

  They returned from Astarte’s softball game Saturday afternoon, Amanda observing as Cam light-heartedly teased the girl on the car ride home about bei
ng so focused on cheering on her teammates that she went up to bat … without her bat.

  “But I got a good hit,” Astarte countered.

  “Yeah, but only after you had to run back to the dugout.”

  She smiled. “I was just trying to distract the pitcher.”

  Could she in good conscience separate them, Amanda wondered?

  They had accepted an invitation from Randall Sid to attend a ceremony at the Bunker Hill Monument later in the afternoon. Amanda was not sure she wanted to attend. She and Cam had not been out as a couple in the eight days since the photo bomb arrived. And she didn’t particularly like Randall Sid. On the other hand, she knew the Masons were the moving force behind the monument’s erection, and its design as an obelisk obviously tied back to their research on Masonic connections to ancient Egypt.

  As if reading her thoughts, Cam touched her on the arm as Astarte ran into the house. “I hope you’re still planning to come to the Bunker Hill thing with me.”

  “Honestly, I’m not sure.”

  He bit his lip. “It’s research, not a date.” And then his smile. The smile she thought would brighten the rest of her life. “I promise not to be the least bit charming.”

  She turned her head and blinked away a tear. “All right then.”

  Cam nodded toward the street. “There’s the unmarked cruiser. He’s was circling the neighborhood this morning also.”