“We heard nothing,” said Baruch. “Sir, where is the staff?”
He gazed into the darkness. “It’s home.”
Reaching out to take his arm, Daniel drew close to Jeremiah.
“Then we have a wall to build.”
The sun was lowering across the western desert, the shadows extending down the wide streets of Babylon. Their rooms on an upper floor, Jeremiah could see the great tower rising in the distance, so visible to the world, so important to Nebuchadnezzar. Only a precious few in Babylon knew a far more important construction had only recently been completed deep in the earth under the tower.
It was time to go home. One more task and they could gather the caravan for their return to Jerusalem.
“Open the mezuzah and bring the discs,” said Jeremiah, sitting at a small table by the window. “We need to grab the light while we can.”
He took a small knife and rubbed it against the flat surface of a whetstone, sharpening its edge, while Baruch removed the end caps from the brass mezuzah and withdrew the leather sprockets.
“What shall we inscribe on the discs?” Baruch asked.
“Directions,” said Jeremiah, “for the one who will come later, at the appointed time. The one for whom the staff waits.”
Baruch sat opposite Jeremiah, laid the discs with the strange arms on the table—the one with the holes to his right—and accepted the knife from his master. “But if we carve directions into the discs, what if the wrong person finds the mezuzah? They will know the secrets. They will know how to find the staff. If we inscribe the directions in our language, even in the Akkadian of the Babylonians, won’t the chance of discovery be too dangerous?”
There was a sheet of parchment on the table, to Jeremiah’s right. He pulled the parchment in front of him, close to his eyes, then looked up at Baruch. “This mezuzah, and others like it, have carried many messages back and forth to Egypt. Only we will know which of these scroll holders is the most important. We will pass this knowledge on to the high priest and use the language and the code of the high priests, brought from Egypt. The rest is in the hands of God. We have done what we can, what we’ve been called to do. Here.”
Baruch took the parchment and scanned its surface. Jeremiah had drawn copies of the four sprocket sides. In the solid sections between each arm was one of the symbols of the Egyptian language.
“Inscribe the symbols as I’ve drawn them. And carve them deep. They will need to last a long time before they are used once more. And, my son …”
The knife poised above one half of the disc, Baruch looked up at his master. “We will pray to El Shaddai, for the one who is anointed to uncover these secrets. He will carry the plan of God, and the future of this world, in his hands.”
11
SATURDAY, AUGUST 29
8:00 a.m., Jerusalem
Tom trailed as Rabbi Fineman led the team away from his home on Tavon Street and turned left on Shiloh Street, away from the Machane Yehuda market area. The Nahla’ot neighborhood was the earliest Jewish neighborhood established outside the Old City of Jerusalem, in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Tom was impressed with the gentrification that had turned the old buildings into quaint homes full of character. “My wife and I have lived in this neighborhood ever since we immigrated to Israel,” said Fineman. “The house belonged to my grandfather … our family has lived here a long time. My grandfather and my father were members of this synagogue. We worshipped here on Sabbath. That is how I came to know many of the elders.”
Rizzo was right on Fineman’s heels, his legs pumping furiously to keep up with the long-striding rabbi. “Hey … I didn’t think you were Jewish anymore.”
Fineman crossed Rama Street and continued the short block to Be’er Sheva. “I may believe in Yeshua, who is our Messiah, and that may make me a Messianic Jew … a completed Jew, some might say … but a Jew nonetheless. It’s like saying if you switched churches you would no longer be Italian.”
“I gotcha, Padre. I wouldn’t stop being Italian if they named me O’Reilly. But I don’t expect these guys in the synagogue would like you too much, since you switched sides and all.”
Reaching the corner of Shiloh and Be’er Sheva, Fineman slowed to a halt. Across the street was a squat, nondescript, ochre, cinder-block building, with a brown terra cotta roof. A four-foot-high wall of the same common block—not the glorious and ubiquitous Jerusalem Stone that gave the city much of its radiance—protruded from the front of the building well out into the sidewalk and was crowned by a stout, wrought-iron railing that rose another four feet.
His head cocked to one side, Fineman turned away from the building to peer at Rizzo. “My wife and I have invested a good bit of our time and resources into helping the children and youth of this neighborhood. We’re welcome here, regardless of our beliefs. In fact, I think the elders enjoy our regular theology arguments.” He looked up, lifting his hand toward the building on the far side of the narrow street.
“The Great Synagogue Ades of the Glorious Aleppo Community … Addis—like Addis Ababa,” Fineman explained. “Quite a name they have given themselves. But this truly is one of the greatest synagogues in Jerusalem. It was founded in 1901 by two cousins from Aleppo, Syria, who came here with an immigrant contingent of Syrian Jews. This synagogue has continued to be primarily the worship center for Syrian Jews over the last 110 years and is known as a center for Syrian hazzanut, a type of Jewish liturgical singing. Today it maintains the rare tradition of bakashot, a set cycle of kabbalistic poetry sung in the early hours of Shabbat during the winter months. Although you can’t tell from the outside, the interior of the Ades Synagogue is one of the most beautiful in Jerusalem. Come, let me show you.”
Tom joined the group crossing the street to the large, metal gate, but he wanted to keep their minds on the task at hand. “So what does all this have to do with the book?”
“Be patient,” Fineman said as he pushed open the gate. “All in good time.”
Fineman wasn’t exaggerating about the interior of the Ades Synagogue—it was sumptuous in its furnishings and striking in its decoration. Tom was intently staring at the colorful mural that ran around the top of all four walls when he felt a tap on his elbow. He turned to find a young, bearded man, achingly slim, standing beside Fineman. He looked as if he had just come off the kibbutz, tanned, dressed in faded jeans and a soiled work shirt, battered boots long past their prime.
“Tom … this is Rabbi Asher,” said Fineman, who completed the introductions to the other members of the team.
“Please, call me Benjamin.” His smile was wide and welcoming.
“The rabbi has agreed to allow us into the gniza … the room where old Torah scrolls are kept until they can be properly disposed,” said Fineman, a sparkle lighting his eyes.
Benjamin leaned closer to Tom and put his hand on Tom’s arm as if they were involved in some conspiracy. “It’s where the book is … that’s what you want to see, right? C’mon, you’re going to like this.”
Benjamin reversed toward the entrance, turned to the left just before the doors, and ducked under a low portal to a flight of descending stone stairs. “I’m from New York, too,” said Asher, his voice trailing behind his body as he disappeared into a below-ground twilight. “But you can’t escape your roots.” Reaching the basement floor, Benjamin stood before a large, solid timber door, fumbled for a moment with a huge ring of keys, freed the lock, and swung the door out of the way.
“Ronald, you know the drill,” said Benjamin, who reached into the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out two keys fastened to a gold star-of-David key fob. “You know what these are for. My grandfather will be down shortly to answer any questions, but I’m sure you can keep these folks occupied until then. Mr. Bohannon … enjoy.”
The interior of the room was longer than Bohannon expected, running about the full length of the building. It was full of wooden shelves—like bookshelves, but deeper—that gave it a library feel, although th
e documents on the shelves were scrolls rather than books. Thousands of them. The scrolls were piled high and packed tightly, filling almost every space and blocking almost any light from penetrating into the room. To the right, a small alcove was protected by a wrought-iron fence. Fineman walked up to the fence, unlocked its gate, and turned on a low, diffused light. In the middle of the alcove was a large, wood table, surrounded by heavy chairs. On the table was a large, padlocked metal chest. Fineman unlocked the chest and opened the lid. He pointed to a stack of thin, white cotton gloves. He put on a pair, then lifted the book out of the chest and rested it on the table.
This book looked similar to many other large, ancient books Bohannon had seen in the past—thick leather cover on both sides, embossed and carved in swirling designs, a metal hasp attached to the front and back covers, its hinged end sliding into a metal lock on the front cover. Fineman took a key from inside the metal chest, unlocked the hasp, and carefully opened its pages, one after another.
The Aleppo codex copy in front of them had three vertical columns of Hebrew letters on each page. Each line in the column contained about a dozen or more symbols, about two dozen lines in each column. At the top and bottom of each column, and in the margins between them, were additional Hebrew symbols. While the marks inserted between the columns of the Scripture were generally one, two, or three symbols, the notations at the top and the bottom of each column were generally more extensive, sometimes running several lines, and were written in a smaller size than the characters in the Scripture verses themselves.
“The original codex, held in the Shrine of the Book in the Israel Museum, is missing nearly half its original pages,” said Fineman. “The first page in the original comes in the middle of Deuteronomy—the first four books are missing altogether. But this copy—this one is complete.”
“How is that possible?”
“It was copied long before the original was destroyed,” said Fineman.
Bohannon stood on the left side of the table, Joe Rodriguez on the right, watching as Fineman gently turned each page. Rizzo stood on one of the wooden chairs, Annie by his side.
“How old is this book?” asked Rodriguez. “The original is over one thousand years old, correct? This one looks pretty ancient, itself.”
A new voice came from behind them all, near the gate into the alcove. It was soft, but pregnant with authority. “We believe our codex is over six hundred years old.”
Tom and the others turned at the sound of the voice. Standing at the gate was a tall, thin, elderly man, dressed entirely in black: suit jacket, shirt, pants, and shoes. His flat-topped black hat was in his hands; white hair tumbled from under his black yarmulke and curled at his temples, dangling just above a thick, wild, white beard. His eyes were dark and questioning, empty of welcome.
The elderly man had not moved a muscle. Tom wondered if he would. Then Fineman stepped forward.
“Rabbi Asher, these are the people I spoke to you about. Those who are—”
“Afforded an incredible honor by my grandson, something I’m not sure was so wise,” said the old man, shaking Fineman’s hand. “You are welcome to study our codex anytime, Ronald. But you”—he pointed to Tom and his friends around the table—“I’m not so sure about you. You seem to have been involved in a great deal of destruction since you arrived in Israel. I hope you do not bring destruction to our synagogue. What is it you want with our book?”
Tom stepped forward. “Rabbi, we have, all of us, lost a great deal lately. I don’t—we don’t—comprehend the why of it all. But one thing is clear to us.” He stepped closer and offered his right hand toward the elderly rabbi, who studied Bohannon for a long moment, as if he were a new book of the Torah—curious, but skeptical. Then the elderly rabbi reached out and accepted Tom’s hand. “Whatever has happened to us, whatever we’ve been involved in, God’s hand has been on it, and his call is on it. We’re just trying to determine our next step. And knowing what’s in this codex appears to be the next step. We’ve been following clues to Jeremiah and the shepherd’s staff from New York to Egypt to Ireland to this room today. I’m just trying to understand what God wants us to do. And I think—Rabbi Fineman thinks—it’s possible we may find some answers, some truth, in this codex.”
Rabbi Asher removed his hand from Bohannon’s grasp. Measuring his step like a toddler on ice, he moved to the side of the table and sat in one of the stout, wooden chairs. He closed his eyes; his chin fell to his chest. After a deep breath, he looked up again. “So, I shall tell you a story.”
“Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, laid siege to Jerusalem and captured the city on three different occasions,” said Rabbi Asher, his arthritic hand laid on the cover of the book. “As a result of the first siege, Nebuchadnezzar took thousands of captives back to Babylon, including the prophets Daniel and Ezekiel. After the second siege, Jeremiah gained Nebuchadnezzar’s favor with his prophecies of the king’s victorious future. But before Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem following the third siege, God directed Jeremiah to hide the Jews’ most sacred objects—the Tent, the Ark and its contents, as well as the sacred vessels.
“Many scholars believe, and Jewish tradition holds, that the report in Maccabees—that Jeremiah buried the Ark and the Tent of Meeting on Mount Nebo in Jordan—was actually a diversion created by his servant Baruch.”
Rabbi Asher used both hands to open the book. He appeared to measure the number of pages and then pried the book apart. He drew his finger, right to left, across the small notes at the top of the page, from the book of Jeremiah in the Codex, and read:
“For this is what the Lord Almighty says about the pillars, the bronze Sea, the movable stands and the other furnishings that are left in this city …
“They will be taken to Babylon and there they will remain until the day I come for them,” declared the Lord. “Then I will bring them back and restore them to this place.”
“The notes of the Masoretes here, at the top of the column, tell us that Jeremiah, knowing of the coming destruction to be wrought by the armies of Nebuchadnezzar, removed what the notes call ‘the sacred vessels’ from their hiding place in the caves under Temple Mount.” Rabbi Asher moved his finger to the top of the middle column. “Jeremiah’s scribe, Baruch, altered the records to protect the truth. The scholars who created the notes in the codex claim Jeremiah hid the Ark, the Tent of Presence, and the golden vessels of the Temple in a place known only by the Aaronite high priest and passed down verbally through each generation of high priest that followed. But Aaron’s staff—the instrument of God’s power—Jeremiah returned to its home. These Masoretic notes tell us Jeremiah traveled to Babylon. While there, the prophet Daniel revealed a great secret. This note, here, says, ‘And the staff of G-d was returned to its rightful place.’ That is all the book tells us.”
Rabbi Asher bowed his head, spoke in a barely audible voice, and closed the codex. He turned to face the group.
“But that is not all we know,” he said. “Many believe the staff, perhaps reunited with the Ark, will be the weapon of Armageddon—the weapon God will use to destroy the armies of the world who mass on the plain of Megiddo.
“From our tradition and what the book tells us, I believe Jeremiah braved the eight-week, thousand-kilometer journey to Babylon where he met with Ezekiel and Daniel, who was the king’s chancellor and ran the government. Because ancient Babylon was built on the same spot that contained the garden of Eden before Noah’s flood, I believe Jeremiah’s intention was to restore Aaron’s staff to its place of origin … to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.”
Rabbi Asher spread his hands and looked around the table. “So now you know what our fathers wrote in the most accurate recording of Scripture in history. Tell me. What does it mean to you? What is this next step you must take?”
“To be honest, at this moment I don’t know,” Bohannon admitted. “But tell me—how is it you have a complete copy of the codex when most people believe the only extant v
ersion of the codex is incomplete, housed in the Israel Museum? It could be dangerous for you to have it.”
Rabbi Asher motioned for Fineman to return the codex to its secure home. “This synagogue was established in 1901 by a group of Syrian immigrant Jews—led by the cousins Ovadiah Josiah Ades and Yosef Isaac Ades. That was more than four decades before Israel was declared a state and the central synagogue of Aleppo was sacked. Sometime in the early days of the codex’s residence in Aleppo, the rabbi of the synagogue, an ancestor of the Ades cousins, executed a complete copy of the book, including the Masoretic notes. The rabbi’s family kept it hidden—insurance, as it were, for the original.”
His fingers touched the cover like a lover.
“This is a beautiful book,” said Rizzo. “Priceless. But if it’s the only complete copy of the codex, why keep it hidden? Why isn’t this one in the Israel Museum?”
“It is safer here.” Rabbi Asher waved his hand above the book. “Credible witnesses insisted the codex was complete when it was rescued from the synagogue in Syria, complete when it was delivered into the care of an Israeli government official. There is strong suspicion the pages of the codex were deliberately ripped out. Perhaps for money. Perhaps for a more sinister reason. That I don’t know.”
The rabbi turned and leaned his back against the table. “What I do know is that as long as this synagogue stands, we will protect this book with our lives. Until Messiah comes.”
12
7:30 a.m., Washington, DC
Oliver Stanley’s name was barely out of the presidential secretary’s mouth before he was through the door to the Oval Office, his florid face redder than normal, his jaw set and hard.
“Do you know what you have done to Baruk? He’s finished. His government coalition won’t survive—”
“Good morning, Ollie,” said the president. His jacket was off, draped over the back of his chair, and he was reviewing reports from the Office of Management and Budget, never a pleasant experience. “Why don’t you sit down?” Whitestone pointed to one of the straight-backed chairs in front of his desk.
The Aleppo Code (The Jerusalem Prophecies) Page 11
