by Katz, Yoram
He rose to refill his guests’ glasses. “One cannot honestly say that any of Jesus’s other disciples could be considered a great thinker… They were simple people, mostly fishermen and farmers.”
Jeanne was going to say something, but gave it up.
“So, according to this hypothesis of mine, in addition to Jesus’s public preaching, which focused mainly on contemporary themes, like spiritual and national salvation for the Jews, Jesus was working on the foundations of Kabbalah with Judas.” He paused for a sip of tea. “Sometime, before 30 AD, Jesus underwent a crisis. He realized that he was at a dead end. He had exhausted the potential of his small Galilean community and yet failed to break into national consciousness. All his miracles and myths had not placed him in a position to have the significant impact he craved over the life of his fellow Jews. To create the wave that would carry the Jews toward the spiritual and national salvation he was dreaming of, a new measure was called for, something drastic and dramatic – a game-changing move.”
It was beginning to dawn on Luria where the professor was heading.
“As we now know from ‘Gabriel’s Vision’, the story of the hero who dies and is then resurrected after three days, was a prevailing myth of that time. Jesus, acutely aware of this myth, decided to make use of it and shared this idea with Judas.”
Luria looked at Jeanne. She was sitting tightly on her couch, taut as a spring.
“Jesus was ready to sacrifice himself for the cause. He understood the power of martyrdom and wanted Judas to use the shock wave he hoped his martyrdom would generate, and lead the Israelites toward the changes he envisaged. We can assume Judas found this hard to swallow. He did not possess Jesus’s charisma and was out of his league. However, Jesus was one of those men who could, by force of personality alone, persuade anybody to do anything, and Judas reluctantly accepted his role. He shouldered the task of getting Jesus extradited and then of making the necessary arrangements to have Jesus’s body disappear to create the resurrection effect.”
Jeanne grimaced.
“So now everything was ready for the big event. Jesus naturally chose a grand stage - Jerusalem during Passover - one of the three Jewish pilgrimages of the year. He took his followers with him to Jerusalem and then set the stage for the big eruption.”
“What exactly did he do?” asked Luria.
“Any provocation he could think of. He led big parades and demonstrations, preached excessively and ran wild in the Temple court, turning over tables and causing damage to property. Within hours of arrival he was marked as a dangerous, subversive element. Following his extradition, he was brought to trial before the Jewish High Court – the Sanhedrin, and sent from there to be tried by Herod Antipas, ruler of the Galilee, who happened to be in Jerusalem for the Passover. He managed to infuriate Herod with his arrogance and was sent by him to Pilate, the Prefect of the Roman province of Judaea under Emperor Tiberius, the highest authority in the land. Jesus, again, made sure to mark himself as an arrogant rebel. According to the description in the New Testament, Pilate, who probably saw in Jesus a harmless eccentric, more dangerous dead than alive, tried to avoid creating unnecessary complications. He asked Jesus mockingly whether he really was ‘King of the Jews’ as some were calling him. Now, Jesus was facing a charge of treason that carried a death penalty. You would expect someone who values his life to answer respectfully.”
“And what did he say?” Luria was curious to know.
“I am sure Jeanne knows the answer to that,” said Orlev.
“His reply to Pilate was ‘That’s what you say’,” said Jeanne hoarsely.
Luria burst into laughter. “’That’s what you say’? That was his reply? The guy sure had guts.”
“He certainly was brave,” acknowledged Orlev. “Yet, such answer could also be considered a huge error of judgment, and it indeed cost him his life. This was not just blind courage. Jesus craved martyrdom. He did whatever he could to facilitate it, and ultimately succeeded. Nevertheless, he had made one big blunder.”
The professor scanned the tense faces of his two students and looked pleased. “Jesus was counting on the wrong guy. Judas was too weak. The act of extraditing Jesus to the Romans was supposed to be secret, but as it turned out, Judas was exposed, denounced as a traitor to Jesus and lost any chance of leading his community. Probably, the death of his friend and mentor proved too traumatic for him as well, and he broke down and committed suicide. Jesus’s brother, James, took over his brother’s followers, but the movement remained relatively small and with little impact. All this changed dramatically, when in walked that marketing wizard, Saul of Tarsus, aka Paul, who led Christianity on a glorious path, yet totally incompatible with the one Jesus ever envisioned.”
“All this is pure speculation.” Jeanne was trying to keep calm and contain the shock and anger this heresy was causing her. ”You are making unfounded statements. Where is your corroborating evidence?”
Orlev smiled. “I have a number of leads from several sources, which have led me to form this theory.”
“And that’s it? That's all it takes to transform humanity’s most infamous traitor into a hero?” Jeanne did not hide the fury in her voice.
“But my dear,” said Orlev softly, “the story of Judas has been an embarrassment to Christian scholars for ages. Many have commented that if, as Christianity asserts, all these events were part of a grand scheme devised by God to redeem humanity of its sins, then what is Judas to be blamed for? Should he be blamed for following God’s Master Plan? For facilitating the event which eventually led to the breakthrough of Christianity? Many scholars were quite concerned with this obvious contradiction. So, while they had to succumb to the notion that Judas was indeed punished by hell, they actually claimed it was not because of the extradition, which had been forced upon him, but because he had committed suicide.”
Jeanne looked bewildered. “Anyway,” she blurted out, “you are building too much upon too shaky a foundation.”
“I agree it would have been much more convincing, if I could show you tangible evidence to prove it. If, just for argument’s sake, Jesus and Judas had kept diaries, documents describing their day-to-day life, or even explicitly recording their ideas …”
“Like, perhaps, the de Charney documents?” Luria saw where the professor was heading.
The professor waved his hand angrily. “I have already told you that I do not appreciate you calling them thus.”
“I meant the Safedi documents,” Luria corrected himself. “Could they be your missing diaries?”
“Yes,” said Orlev. “This is a possibility."
“Let us examine this possibility, then.” Luria was really curious now. “How could such documents have found their way to Safed? And how did Jesus’s ideas end up in Kabbalah?”
“Aha!” called the professor enthusiastically. “There are several potential scenarios, and Jeanne’s family story helped me narrow them down.” Jeanne, who seemed to have been lost in thought, raised her head when her name was mentioned.
“Go on,” said Luria. “I am intrigued.”
“All right, here is a conceivable scenario: Jesus kept a journal in which he documented events in his life as well as his plans and ideas. He may have even included the few pages of ‘Sefer Yetzira’ there. Judas, his disciple and associate, kept his own journal, if only to help him at the time when he was to take over. Now, suppose that during the hectic events of that fateful Passover, both journals somehow fell into the hands of the High Priest Joseph Caiaphas and ended up in the Temple’s archives.”
“How could that happen?” Jeanne wanted to know.
Orlev was quick to answer. “Remember both Jesus and Judas, were interrogated by Caiaphas and his men before their tragic deaths. Now, let's suppose that with the demise of the Temple, one of these journals, say Jesus’s, which we will term for convenience the ‘Jesus Scroll’, was salvaged and somehow reached Yavne, the newly established center of Judaism. A few decades later, t
his scroll found its way into the hands of Rabbi Akiva and his student Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai – the Rashbi. In this scenario, the two were deeply influenced by the ideas expressed in the document. The fact that its source might have been attributed to the lost Temple, could have added certain aura to it. These rabbis were confirmed Pharisees. They were breathing Derash, and Kabbalistic ideas perfectly fit their thought processes. They must have felt they had stumbled upon a treasure. After the failure of the Bar Kochva rebellion and Rabbi Akiva’s execution by the Romans, the Rashbi took this script with him to a cave in the Galilee, where he hid for thirteen years. During this period, he had ample time to develop the ideas he found in the ‘Jesus Scroll’, which might have included the text of ‘Sefer Yetzira’ as well, into what would become an early version of the Book of Zohar. This must be the reason why the Rashbi himself is depicted in the Zohar with descriptive attributes, which are very much like Jesus Christ.”
“What?” Luria was surprised. “Is this another hypothesis of yours?”
“No,” said Orlev. “This has been demonstrated by a number of distinguished scholars. The Rashbi is described in the Zohar as a righteous man, around which the whole world revolves, and is referred to in a number of places there as the ‘Son of God’. There is a hymn still sung today by Hassidim in honor of the Rashbi, which goes: ‘Bar Yochai, you have been anointed, be blessed’; ‘Christ’ means ‘the anointed one’.”
Luria and Jeanne kept silent and the professor pressed on. “The principle of ‘Love thy neighbor’ was highlighted by Hillel the Elder, a Jewish scholar who passed away when Jesus was a boy. Jesus adopted this principle and made it a pillar of his teachings. He developed this theme even further, to give it its Kabbalistic meaning. Don’t you see how all this fits perfectly?”
Orlev closed his eyes a few seconds.
“And now for the second thread of our hypothetical plot, the story of the ‘Judas Scroll’. Let us take a leap of 1,000 years in time, to when nine anonymous knights under Hugues de Payens, receive the blessing of Baldwin II, King of Jerusalem, and are given the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount as their headquarters. The nine Templar founders, very curious about the historical place, start some diggings and stumble upon an incredible document.”
“The ‘Judas Scroll’?” ventured Luria.
“Exactly; they somehow decipher it and realize that they are in possession of a document which turns the whole Christian narrative upside down. Hugues de Payens immediately travels to Rome to share this revelation with the Holy Throne.”
The professor gestured with his hand for emphasis. “The result of this meeting is dramatic. Within a few years, the Templars are transformed by writ of the Pope, from a group of a few eccentric knights, into an economic and military empire, the most powerful organization in the Christian world, with ex-territorial status. Hugues de Payens must have put the cards he had been dealt to good use.”
“And the scroll?” Luria was becoming really interested.
“De Payens must have been an excellent card player. In the arrangement with the Pope, he kept the scroll in his hands to guarantee that the Pope would not have a sudden change of heart. This document was then passed over the years from one Templar Grand Master to the next, as an insurance policy. In my narrative, the ‘Judas Scroll’ is the much talked about Templar secret.”
“And what do you reckon happened to this scroll?” inquired Luria.
“In 1291, Guillaume de Beaujeu, the Templar Grand Master, was killed in Acre, which fell to the Muslims. I believe he was the last Grand Master to have the scroll in his possession. From then on, the status of the Templar Order rapidly deteriorated and within fifteen years, they were wiped out completely.”
“And you claim that the demise of the Templars was due to the loss of the scroll?” asked Jeanne.
“The prime reason for the tragic end of the Templars was, of course, the fall of the Kingdom of Jerusalem,” said Orlev. “They lost a great deal of their ‘raison d’etre’. However, I believe Philippe the fair found it much easier to convince the Pope to undermine the Templars, once the Templars’ insurance policy had expired.”
He thought a moment. “Now back to the ‘Jesus Scroll’. It remained in the vicinity of the Galilee. I cannot be sure of what exactly happened to it during the eleven centuries which had passed since the Rashbi, but I believe it somehow found its way into the hands of the Ramban, the head of the Acre Yeshiva, together with the Rashbi’s own records. The Ramban was a renowned Jewish scholar, who moved in 1267 from his native Catalonia to Acre.”
“How can you be sure of that?” wondered Luria.
The professor held up his hand. “I can’t, but it fits in perfectly and makes a lot of sense. So, the Ramban actually had at least two documents in his possession. One was the original early version of the Book of Zohar by Bar Yochai - let’s call it the ‘Rashbi Script’. The other was its inspiration - the ‘Jesus Scroll’.”
Luria took a while to digest all this. “OK,” He finally said, “let’s suppose all this did happen, what next?”
“The Ramban sent the ‘Rashbi Script’ to the Ramdal, an important Jewish-Spanish scholar, whom he had known from a previous chapter of his life. Based on this script, the Ramdal wrote the Book of Zohar as we know it today.”
“And the ‘Jesus Scroll’?” wondered Luria.
“I believe it remained in Acre’s Yeshiva.”
“So how did the two scrolls, held by two totally unrelated organizations, end up together in 1799’s Safed?”
The professor looked a bit embarrassed. “I don't have a good answer to that,” he admitted. “But remember that Guillaume de Beaujeu, whom I believe was the last Templar Grand Master to own the ‘Judas Scroll’, died in Acre in 1291. I guess that during the chaos that followed the fall of Acre, the two scrolls somehow ended up together, but I admit this is still a weak link in my narrative... Anyway, we now know from de Charney’s letters, that somehow the two scrolls ended up in Safed. I believe that the scrolls had resided there for a few centuries before they were picked up by de Charney, and that the Holy Ari had studied them as well.” He sipped the rest of the cold tea in his glass. “And from here, thanks to your investigations, we know the rest of the story: Rivka Bakri-Luria, Pascal de Charney, the Carmelites and Father Fernando Diaz.”
“I must ask you something, Professor,” said Luria. “Can I be frank?”
Orlev frowned. “Sure, what is it?”
“Well…” Luria felt he was stepping into a mine field. “If you believe Jesus was the first Kabbalist… and Professor Bennet claimed that Kabbalah was heavily influenced by Christianity, then… then what was your dispute all about?”
Jeanne raised her head and looked at Luria in surprise. The professor’s face turned ashen and Luria already started to regret his tactlessness. Yet, he was genuinely puzzled by this vehement feud between the two lifelong friends over what now seemed a triviality.
“You don’t see it, do you?” Orlev’s voice was strange. “I thought you would by now. He looked at Jeanne. “How about you, my dear? Do you understand this?”
Jeanne shook her head. “I hardly understand anything anymore,” she said weakly.
The professor looked back at Luria. “Both Jonathan and I agreed about the link between Jesus and Kabbalah. The basic dispute between us was over our different perceptions of Jesus. He identified Jesus with Christianity and thus claimed that Kabbalah is a Christian creation, while I claimed… I still do… that Jesus was a Jew, and Christianity was a later invention thought up by Paul. And Paul’s Christianity had nothing to do with Kabbalah!” he was becoming agitated. “Is this so hard to understand?”
“OK. OK.” Luria tried to calm the old man down. “I think I see your point now.”
Unpleasant silence fell upon the room. “Can I ask one more question?” ventured Luria.
“What is it?” the professor was still visibly annoyed.
“Why were the scrolls kept at Stella Maris? Why
didn’t the Vatican keep them in Rome, under tight security and in more appropriate conditions?”
“Well,” said the professor, calmer now, “they may have preferred keeping them in a distant place where no one would suspect. And, of course, the Carmelites might have insisted on holding on to this relic, which they obtained in 1799, just like the Templars had done in their time. The Vatican may have settled for copies.”
Luria was still pushing. “Now, the part Bennet played in this story remains a mystery to me. We believe his murderer broke into his safe and took something from there. Can we assume that what he took were indeed the scrolls?”
The professor’s face was solemn. “It all blends in neatly. The open safe in Jonathan’s bedroom, things he told me, that in retrospect can be explained by his having access to such material… and there is also a clue I was shown by the police. They wanted my professional opinion.”
“What clue?”
“They told me I was not at liberty to discuss that. Try your police sources.”
“OK,” said Luria, “let us suppose that Bennet had the scrolls. How do you reckon they came to be in his possession in the first place?”
The pain on Orlev’s face was evident. “I don’t know,” he said. “And I don’t even want to think about it. This whole subject is an open sore for me; something I fear will never heal for as long as I live.”
42. Lorenzo Molinari – Ben-Gurion Airport, February 23rd, 2010 (Tuesday)
The young policewoman at the Border Control booth in Ben-Gurion Airport stared at the picture in the passport and then examined the face of the tall man on the other side of the glass. He was fortyish with close cropped black hair and a pair of blue eyes. She thought he looked like a movie star. “Lorenzo Molinari?”
