As soon as David was back in his room, he dialed Zane’s cell number. The phone rang five times before voice mail picked up.
“Zane, I heard what happened last night. Hope you are okay. Give me a call when you get this message.”
David hung up and sat at the edge of his bed, wondering what all he had witnessed the past twelve hours was about. He knew Efran was somehow associated with the terrorist network that had attacked New York, but what would a terrorist organization want with an archeologist? What had really taken place last night, anyway? Why had those men been chasing Zane and Rachael? What had they found underground at the dig? Maybe Zane could supply him with more pieces of the puzzle.
Taking off his shoes, he undressed and lay down. He had been up for more than twenty-four hours, and he was exhausted. A few seconds after his head touched the pillow, he was asleep.
Chapter 71
As Zane’s head nodded sleepily, a giggle from Rachael brought him back fully awake. “It looks like our conversation has put Mr. Harrison to sleep.”
Zane, slightly embarrassed, replied, “I guess I’m pretty tired.”
Mr. Neumann stood and said, “I’ve taken the liberty of preparing our guestroom for you, Mr. Harrison.”
“Thank you,” Zane answered, relieved. “I really appreciate that. I’m not sure how far I would get, as tired as I feel.”
“Off the guestroom is a bathroom and shower. There are fresh towels in the cabinet. Please make yourself at home.”
Zane looked appreciative. “If you’ll excuse me, then, I will get a few things from my car. Good night, and thank you, Mr. Neumann, and Rachael, for your hospitality.” He left the table and went out to his car to retrieve a change of clothes. When he opened the trunk, he remembered he had left his clothes and other things in his tent back at the dig site. Well, he would just have to make do. After a hot, relaxing shower, he hand-washed his clothes and wrung them out. Taking them with him into his room, he hung them up to dry as best as he could. Lying down on the bed in his towel, he fell right to sleep.
Rachael talked with her father for another hour before heading off to bed. They discussed what they needed to do at the Capernaum dig over the coming days. They agreed they should have some of the more experienced archeologists help. Her eyes shining, Rachael said as she left to get some rest, “Dad, I can’t wait to show you what we found. It is simply amazing. Mom would have loved to be here.”
He smiled. “Yes, my dear, your mother would have been simply ecstatic over the discovery of Matthew’s home and the artifacts you’ve found. Get some rest. You look tired.”
As she walked away, Jacob Neumann sat still with a melancholy look on his face. “Constance, my dear,” he whispered, “your daughter has found what you always dreamed of finding. Direct proof of your New Testament heroes. You would be proud of her, my dear. She is her mother’s daughter.”
* * *
A little over sixteen hours later, shadows moved in the darkness around the Capernaum dig. The barely discernible sound of cloth over stone, a whisper of movement in the shadows, and then, at precisely 1:03 in the morning, four bodies fell to the ground at the same time. Each life ended by a single silenced bullet to the back of the head. The Mossad agents guarding the Capernaum site were dead.
Ghostly shadows moved about in the darkness. Two large trucks with their lights off drove down the trail into the Capernaum dig. Backing up to the edge of what was once the opening to the basement of Matthew’s house, four men unloaded a dozen heavy boxes. They opened the door to the underground cavern and proceeded to take the boxes inside. When they returned, the boxes had been emptied of their contents, and new contents had taken their place. The four men moved efficiently and confidently. Finally, after removing the last artifact from the cave, they waited for the final member of the team. The operation had taken just over seventy minutes.
Two hours later, northern Galilee was rocked by a massive explosion. People twenty miles away heard the sound, and many called to notify the authorities.
One hour after that, at 5:14 a.m., a phone rang in Jacob Neumann’s house. The voice of the Mossad chief came through the other end. “Jacob, I am sorry to call you so early, but I have some terrible news. It seems terrorists have attacked the Capernaum dig and destroyed it.” His voice was husky, just barely suppressing his own growing rage. “We lost four of our agents, and all but one terrorist got away. The one dead terrorist is a known associate of Hamas. Be assured we are doing everything in our power to bring those responsible for this attack to justice. I give you my personal guarantee I will not rest until each and every one of them has paid for his crimes.”
Jacob was silent on the phone for several seconds. “Is there anything left at all?”
“Jacob, as of right now, it does not appear there is anything left except a massive hole in the ground. They must have used a thousand pounds of explosives to destroy the site after they left. We don’t know if they took anything with them at this point.”
As Jacob listened, his grip on the phone tightened and he grew red in the face. As calmly as possible he asked, “Would you please keep me informed of any developments on this, Nigel?”
“Yes, Jacob, I will let you know when I have any new information.”
“May I drive to the site later today to inspect the damage?”
“I don’t see why not. I will notify my people to be expecting you.”
“Thank you, Nigel, please keep me informed.” Jacob put the phone down and just sat there. Rachael would be devastated. To find something like she and Zane had found and then have it taken away—it was worse than finding nothing at all. The entire site had been completely destroyed, and they had not one piece of evidence to prove the find had even existed. Jacob was angry, angrier than he had ever been in his life except when his dear wife had died. He was angry for the loss to his nation. He was angry for the loss to archeology. Finds like this happened only once in a generation. Most of all, he was angry for the loss to Rachael. He shook with rage.
Finally getting some semblance of self-control, he got out of bed and dressed. He started some coffee and then walked over to Rachael’s door and raised his hand to knock. Hesitating, he instead lowered his hand and turned and walked back to the kitchen. His daughter would need the rest, he decided. She had gone to bed the previous day at ten a.m. and had only awakened for a short time later that evening. As far as he knew, she was still sleeping.
Chapter 72
An hour later, Zane awoke and lay there trying to figure out where he was. He finally remembered—he was in Rachael Neumann’s house. He sat up. It was just turning light outside, and Zane felt completely drained. His clothes had dried, and he put them on.
Once up and moving around, he felt much better. He had slept for almost twenty hours. Well, he guessed he must have needed it.
He opened his door and followed the delightful aroma of coffee to the kitchen. He found Mr. Neumann sitting at the kitchen table watching the morning news.
Jacob turned as Zane entered, and with an unexpectedly haggard look on his face, said, “Good morning, Mr. Harrison. How did you sleep?”
“Dead to the world. I haven’t slept for twenty hours in . . . well, I don’t remember how long.”
“You had a rough day yesterday. I’m sure you needed the rest.”
Jacob seemed distracted, and Zane’s attention followed his to the morning newscast. The anchor was interviewing people about an explosion that had rocked the upper Galilee in the early morning hours.
“What happened?” Zane asked. “I understood explosion and terrorist, but they’re speaking too fast for me to understand the rest.”
Jacob turned his full attention to Zane, catching him off guard with the sorrow on his face. “Zane, someone blew up the Capernaum dig last night. It was totally destroyed.”
Zane looked at him in shock and disbelief. “You mean our Capernaum dig—where Rachael and I just came from?”
“Yes. Whoever it was
blew up the entire dig you had been working on . . . and based on the pictures I have seen, it looks like your underground cavern with the artifacts is gone.”
“Gone?” Zane repeated, not wanting to believe it. Sitting down as if his feet had gone out from under him, he just sat there in silence watching the news report with Jacob Neumann. Finally he could stand it no longer, and he got up and walked outside.
Outside, he looked over the city of Jerusalem. What a heartbreaking place this land was! Zane Harrison could not understand it. Why would anyone want to destroy the dig? Sure, steal the artifacts to sell them, but destroy the whole site? That just did not make any sense. What kind of people would do that?
Zane tried not to be angry. What they had found might well have provided additional proofs that confirmed the biblical record. Why had God allowed this to happen? Were believers not allowed to have real physical evidence that Jesus existed? Must they be content with just faith? First the prophecy of Daniel, which he had found did not confirm that Jesus was the Messiah. It was the one prophecy in the Scripture which gave specific and datable secular events with which to pinpoint the coming of the Messiah. Then they had discovered real physical evidence showing that the first chapter of the book of Matthew was based on a list written in Hebrew, only to have that evidence taken away as well. Not to mention the dozens of scrolls and tablets—who knew what additional proofs they might have provided?
With tears of frustration running down his face, Zane Harrison sat down and prayed. “Father in heaven, why? What are you trying to show me? Why have you been testing my faith like this? Are you trying to turn me away? Father, I do not understand. I want to have an unshakable faith, Father . . . please help me to understand.” Sitting in silence for several minutes before continuing, he prayed, “Father, I will not doubt you. I may not understand, but I refuse to doubt. Have your way. Your will be done. I will wait on you. I acknowledge you, Father, in your son Jesus’s name. Amen.”
Zane got up and walked back into the kitchen. As he entered, Jacob Neumann looked up and was surprised to see the peace and resolution on his face. This was not the same beaten young man who had walked out the door a few minutes before. To be sure, he was not smiling, but neither was he broken..
“Zane, are you hungry?” he asked.
Together they prepared breakfast, and just as they were putting the final dishes on the table, a sleepy Rachael Neumann entered the kitchen. Stretching her arms as she entered, she looked at her dad and then Zane. The expression on both their faces jolted her wide awake in a instant. “You both look like you have bad news. What’s going on?”
Zane looked at Jacob and Jacob looked back at Zane. Both hoping the other would break the news. Finally, after an uncomfortable pause, Jacob said, “Rachael, Chief Yadin with the Mossad informed me this morning that someone destroyed the Capernaum dig and all evidence of the find. All that is left is a huge hole in the ground. I’m sorry, Rachael, but it is all gone.”
Rachael looked from one to another, and after searching their faces for any evidence of a joke, without a word she turned and walked back to her bedroom.
Zane asked, “Is that how she normally takes bad news?”
“I’ve seen many sides of my daughter over her life, but I have never seen her act that way before.” Just as Jacob got up to go check on her, Rachael reappeared with something in her hand.
Holding it out for both to see she said, “They did not destroy all the evidence.”
In her hand was the memory stick from her camera. “Zane, while you went back up the tunnel to notify Efran of what we had found, I took almost three hundred pictures of the artifacts from various angles. We may never know what was written on those scrolls, but we will be able to read most of the clay tablets from the pictures I took. We also have evidence of the inscription of the lineage of Yeshua written by Matthew.”
Zane looked at Rachael in astonishment. “You took pictures?”
“Yes, I have them right here,” she said, holding out the memory stick.
Jacob smiled for the first time that morning, “Well done, my dear, well done! Maybe this won’t be a total loss after all. Let’s go into the living room. I have one of those fancy new flatscreen TVs where you just slip your memory stick into the side. We can look at the pictures on a forty-eight-inch screen.”
For the next four hours, the three of them went through the pictures one by one. Rachael had done a superb job. All but two of the clay tablets were perfectly legible. And the inscription on the wall was just stunning. There were several pictures of it from different angles, all impressive.
Rachael was using the remote to change the pictures. When they had finished looking at all of them, she went back to the inscription. “Dad, what do you make of the four words above the list? They don’t seem to make any sense. Obviously they are intentional, but how are they related to the context of the list?”
After reading the four words out loud, “Yagid, echad, habhab ahabah,” he said, “I’m not sure, Rachael. There is something unusual, though, about the spacing of the first word—do you see it? There’s a large space between the gimmel and the yod. It’s as if they were meant to be two words instead of one.”
Rachael, with a questioning note to her voice, asked, “What if they are not meant to be words at all?”
Jacob Neumann looked at the words again. Turning with a look of wonder on his face, he said, “I think you may be on to something, dear.”
Zane looked back and forth between the two of them. “What are you two talking about?”
Rachael replied, her face shining now with understanding. “As I am sure you know, back when this was written, they didn’t use the Arabic numerals we have today. Each Hebrew letter had a numerical value. The above words may be a numerical code. Take a look at the first two letters of yagid. Yod and gimmel. Yod equals ten, and gimmel equals three. Together they would represent the number thirteen. Next take the last two letters, yod and dalet. Together they equal the number fourteen. The second word, echad, means one in Hebrew. It is the centerpiece of our Shema prayer—‘Hear, O Israel, YHWH our Elohim is One YHWH.’ Echad, or aleph, chet, dalet, equals thirteen. So then we have thirteen, fourteen, thirteen. Continuing, next we have habhab, or offering/gift—the letters here add up to fourteen. And finally we have ahabah, which means love or loved. The Hebrew letters of ahabah equal thirteen. This looks like an intentional pattern of thirteen, fourteen, thirteen, fourteen, thirteen!”
“So what does that have to do with the list of names below?”
Thoughtful, Rachael continued by asking, “Zane, what do you know about the list of Matthew 1?”
“Well, I know it is supposed to be a list of the lineage of Jesus all the way back to Abraham. I also vaguely remember that there is some sort of controversy surrounding the names in the list.”
“Yes, you are correct. Matthew 1 has been very controversial since, well, probably since it was written. To make a long story short, the list of Matthew 1 is four names short compared to the original Hebrew list found in the Old Testament. As my father will concur, this has long been one of the first things a devout Jew might point to in questioning the credibility of the New Testament account. After all, if the first chapter of the first book is not accurate, how can the rest be counted on?”
Zane, nodding, said, “Valid point. Please continue.”
“If you read the account in Matthew, it is very clear the author is trying to make a point that it was fourteen generations from Abraham to David, fourteen generations from David to ‘the carrying away to Babylon,’ and fourteen generations from the ‘carrying away to Babylon until Yeshua the Messiah.’ Fourteen plus fourteen plus fourteen equals forty-two—the only problem is that when you add up the names listed, it only equals forty-one.”
Pointing to the TV monitor now showing the three-column list of names, she said, “There are clearly fourteen names in the first column. There are fourteen names in the second column, but as you can see, in the th
ird column there are only thirteen names. Based on the coded words above the three columns, we can probably assume the list as written by Matthew was intentional. Whatever point Matthew was trying to make, he clearly wanted the numbers thirteen and fourteen to be emphasized on his list.”
Jacob Neumann interrupted, “I think you may have something there, Rachael. Look at the second column in your photograph. Notice the three scored lines between Joram and Uzziah in the second column. Those three lines are exactly where the names of three kings are missing based on the original Hebrew version. Whoever wrote this list wanted to make it clear those three names were missing on purpose. Now, look further down at the single scored line between Josiah and Jeconiah. The missing name there is Jehoiakim. It was during the reign of Jehoiakim that the first captivity of Judah began. This was when the prophet Daniel and his companions were taken captive by Nebuchadnezzar.”
As Jacob explained, Zane took notes on a scrap of paper. Jacob Neumann continued, “Now notice, the three scored lines fall between the sixth and seventh names in the second column. Six plus seven equals thirteen. Is this a coincidence or accident? Notice also the single scored line—it is between the thirteenth and fourteenth names in the second column. Pretty clever, if you ask me. I am not sure what it all means, but clearly, someone was trying to make a point.”
Smiling, he said as if just realizing it, “Look at this, there are forty-one names on the list. Forty-one is the thirteenth prime number. Oh,” Jacob said, laughing like a boy who has discovered a secret, “I just realized the missing names on the list are separated into a group of one and three. Those scored lines representing the missing names also separate the seventh through the thirteenth names on the list. This reminds me of the instruction in the Torah for the Feast of Tabernacles. We were instructed to sacrifice thirteen bullocks the first day and then one less each day until the seventh day, when we sacrifice only seven. The total sacrifices for those seven days were seventy. I don’t see how there could be a connection, but the similarities are striking.”
The 13th Enumeration Page 33
