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

by David S. Brody

  Cam’s car pulled into the cottage driveway, interrupting her research. They made sandwiches and had a picnic on the beach, Venus barking at the encroaching seagulls, then played Frisbee for a half hour. But Amanda’s mind was on her research.

  When Astarte tired of the game and began to build a sand castle, she and Cam sat on the sand nearby, hands linked. “How was your meeting at Brandeis?”

  He glanced at Astarte. “Interesting. I’ll tell you about it later.”

  “Okay, well I’ll tell you what I did.” She summarized her morning’s work.

  “So do you think there’s something to the fact that both Akhenaton and Baphomet are portrayed androgynously?”

  She shrugged. “Let me turn the question around to you: Is there a chance that Scota and her gang would have preserved Akhenaton’s head and brought it with them to Scotland?”

  “Sure,” he said. “They were Egyptian. They preserved all their royalty. And Akhenaton’s tomb in Egypt is empty—nobody knows where the body is.”

  “So…” she said, letting her mind wander. “Is it crazy to think that the Baphomet skull the Templars worshiped could actually be the head of Akhenaton-Moses?” That would explain the Templar’s obsessive veneration of the head, and also the Church’s violent putdown of the Templar order. If the Templars had learned that Akhenaton and Moses were the same person, they also had surely followed the trail back and discovered the truth about Isaac’s parentage. That was not a secret the medieval Church—in the middle of a series of Crusades to win back the Holy Land—could afford to have revealed…

  “Not crazy,” Cam responded, interrupting her musings. “In the hierarchy of Christian relics, Moses would be pretty high up there. Even above John the Baptist.” He shrugged. “But we don’t really have any evidence.”

  She stood up and brushed the sand off her shorts. “Not yet we don’t. You stay here and watch Astarte. I’m going back to work.”

  Amanda spent the next couple of hours back at the kitchen table of the cottage with her laptop, scrolling through thousands of images of Rosslyn Chapel. The chapel boasted hundreds of thousands of visitors per year, and it seemed like most of them had posted pictures of their visit. But how many images of the ornate Apprentice Pillar could one look at before—like the jealous master mason of Chapel legend—wanting to bash in the head of the apprentice who carved it?

  Amanda needed something that would tie Moses to the chapel, something that would give some traction to their musings. Ready to give up, she clicked on one more set of images. Her breath caught in the throat. What was this?

  Moses Carving at Rosslyn Chapel

  She stared, blinked, rubbed her eyes, and stared again. A bearded man carrying a stone tablet in his right hand, the caption reading, ‘Moses carved onto a pillar along the south wall.’ With horns.

  Horns. Just like Baphomet. Could it be? Could this be the proof that the Templars worshiped the head of Moses as the horned Baphomet?

  But a voice in her head whispered to her, reminding her that wisdom is knowledge tempered with judgment. Something about this conclusion seemed premature. She had plunged deep into the Baphomet mystery, and until today had never bumped her head against Moses. The voice spoke to her again: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. A single carving of a horned Moses was not enough to assert he was Baphomet.

  Was there another possible explanation for the horns on Moses’ head?

  Five minutes later she had her answer: Due to an error in translating the Bible from Hebrew to Latin around the year 400 AD, Moses’ “radiant face” had become his “horned face” throughout Europe for over a thousand years, as evidenced by Michelangelo’s horned sculpture of Moses in Rome. And, apparently, in Rosslyn Chapel as well.

  So did this settle the matter? Was the horned carving of Moses a meaningless clue? She wasn’t willing to go that far. If the Scots indeed did descend from the Egyptians—and more specifically from Akhenaton/Moses through Scota—they would surely know Moses was not horned. So why depict him that way? It was possible, she concluded, that the Chapel builders had used the translation error to hide the clue in plain sight. To a casual observer Moses’ horns would be attributed to the translation error. But to those aware of the true history, perhaps the horns conveyed a far different message: I am the horned one you revere; I am Baphomet.

  She stood, closed her laptop, and jogged toward the beach. She needed a second opinion. “Cam,” she called, “you have to see this.”

  Amanda ran toward them across the sand. Cam stood, alert, his eyes arcing the horizon for signs of danger. “Are you okay?” he called.

  “Yes, fine. But you have to see this.”

  “What?”

  Carrying her laptop, she dropped to her knees on their blanket, nudging Venus out of the way. “Look at this picture. It’s a carving from Rosslyn Chapel.”

  He did a double take at the horned representation of Moses. “That can’t be.”

  “Well, it is.”

  Astarte put down her book and leaned in. “Why does Moses have horns?”

  “It’s a clue,” Amanda said.

  Amanda had clearly made the same Baphomet association that he had. “How come nobody’s ever made a big deal about it?” Cam asked.

  “Probably because there’s, like, a thousand strange carvings at Rosslyn Chapel. What’s one more?”

  He looked at the image again. “You’re the Baphomet expert. So could Moses be Baphomet?”

  “Possibly. But there’s another explanation.” She took a deep breath and explained how the Bible had been mistranslated, ‘radiant’ turning into ‘horned.’ “It turns out there are many representations of Moses with horns.”

  He made a face. “Yeah, but not among the Jews, right?”

  “Right. The Hebrew clearly says ‘radiant.’”

  “So anyone who knew Hebrew, or anyone who had access to Bible experts or Hebrew speakers, would know better, right?”

  She smiled at him knowingly, as if he was going down the same path she had just traveled. “Right again.”

  “Look, the Sinclairs were smart people. Very smart. And they brought in religious experts, including rabbis, from all over Europe to help them design Rosslyn Chapel. I can’t believe they would allow a mistake like this.”

  She nodded. “That’s what I thought also.” She explained her theory that the horns had a hidden, secondary meaning, meant for those who had ‘eyes that see’—a term they had coined for those trained to see hidden meanings and messages among Templar and Masonic symbolism. “What do you think?”

  “Well, it’s either one or the other. Either the Sinclairs didn’t know their Bible history, which I have trouble believing, or they were using these carvings in the Chapel to convey secret, coded messages.”

  She grinned. They both believed that’s exactly what the Sinclairs were doing.

  “So does this change things?” Cam asked.

  “I think it does.”

  They had been working under the assumption that Baphomet was the head of John the Baptist, and they had tracked his skull back and forth across the Atlantic. First, his executioner Mug Ruith brought the head home with him as a keepsake to Ireland; second, the Celts venerated the prophet’s skull and its visionary powers as part of their Cult of the Head; third, Druids voyaging with Brendan the Navigator brought the skull to America to keep it out of the hands of the invading Christians; fourth, the Templars (having heard legends of the head’s existence) traveled to America to retrieve the skull of their patriarch; and fifth, after the downfall of the Templars, the Sinclair family built Rosslyn Chapel as a repository for this and other Templar treasures. It had been such a neat, tidy theory. But maybe they had the wrong skull.

  He looked out over the Atlantic, toward Scotland, wondering.

  Amanda broke the silence. “Let’s walk through it, step by step.”

  “Okay,” he sighed. “Akhenaton, now known as Moses, leads his group of mixed Israelites and Egyptians into th
e desert. Eventually he dies. Does anyone know where his body is?”

  She shook her head. “No. Like you said, the tomb in Egypt is empty.” She tapped at her phone for a few seconds, doing some quick research. “The Jewish belief is that God buried Moses’ body and nobody knows the exact location.”

  Cam smiled. “How convenient. Okay, so his daughter Scota somehow ends up with his remains, or at least his head, in the Egyptian tradition. Scota and her people carry the head with them—along with his throne, the Stone of Destiny—on their journey westward across Europe.”

  “But if Scota settled in Scotland, how did the skull end up with Brendan the Navigator in Ireland?”

  He smiled again. “I don’t think I told you this part of the Scota story. Scota and her followers actually settled in Ireland before moving on to Scotland. Scota’s son, Hiber, led the attack that defeated the Irish natives. That’s where the name Hibernia comes from.” Ireland was often referred to as Hibernia. “They stayed in Ireland for many generations before some moved on to Scotland. Maybe they left the skull in Ireland for safe-keeping.”

  She shifted on the blanket, her movements conveying her excitement. “Well, clearly, the skull of Moses would have been quite a prize in Cult of the Head worship, even more so than John the Baptist. And I suppose the same logic works for Moses as for John the Baptist: The bloody Christians were coming, and the Druids would want to protect their valuable skull.”

  After that, the story would mirror that of John the Baptist’s head, bouncing back and forth across the Atlantic before finally ending up at Rosslyn Chapel. And the Templars would have learned all about it during their time in the Holy Land. The Knights were there purportedly to fight the Muslims, but they also made numerous alliances and friendships in their two centuries in and around Jerusalem. If anyone could have ferreted out a secret like this, it would have been the Templars.

  Cam pondered the possibility. If the Templars did end up with the skull of Moses, it would be a powerful symbol of their ties back to the Holy Land and to the Old Testament. Cam had been convinced the Baphomet skull was that of John the Baptist, but in the pantheon of great Biblical figures, Moses clearly stood above the Baptist. Not only that, but the skull would have been a veiled threat to the Church, an indication that the Templars knew the version of the Exodus story the Church was telling was simply not true…

  “You know,” Amanda interrupted, “there’s another possibility. It’s possible the head of Moses is buried in Rosslyn Chapel, even if Moses was not Baphomet. The carving of Moses with horns could be a clue saying, ‘Hey, I’m just like Baphomet,’ rather than, ‘Hey, I am Baphomet.’”

  “The ‘just like’ part meaning his skull was being worshiped as part of the Cult of the Head, in the old Druidic ways.”

  “Right.”

  Cam nodded. “That makes sense also.” In the end it didn’t really matter whether Moses was Baphomet. What mattered was that the head of Moses might be hidden inside Rosslyn Chapel.

  Cam had another thought. “And you know what, if the head is Moses, that would explain something that’s always bothered me.

  People always talk about these important skulls and relics and treasures hidden at Rosslyn Chapel—well, why didn’t they display them out in the open like all the other churches and cathedrals did?”

  “You’re right,” Amanda replied. “It’s one thing to have the tooth or little finger of some saint. The head of John the Baptist or Moses is something else entirely. The Church would likely insist on taking it.”

  They sat on the blanket, staring at the surf.

  “Odd how our research has converged,” Amanda said. “Again.”

  He nodded. It seemed to happen often. Who would have thought that the beehive stone chambers of New England that Cam had been studying would somehow link back to Amanda’s Baphomet research, and that both of these paths would lead back to Zuberi’s Scota legend. “Usually when it happens like that, it’s because we’re on the right track,” he said.

  “Yes. We follow different paths, both leading back to the same truth.”

  “You know who’s really going to love this?”

  “Zuberi. Not only did the bloody Egyptians settle in Scotland, but it may be that they brought the head of Moses with them as well.”

  Cam smiled. “And his wife’s family has been keeping it safe for the world for all these years. What a story.”

  “Not to mention the whole thing begins with the revelation that Isaac was not Abraham’s son. Without that, it’s impossible to make the Moses/Akhenaton connection.”

  They sat in silence for a few seconds. “So is that it?” Amanda asked. “Is your research done? Are you ready to write it all up?”

  “I think so.” He had not yet told Amanda about his conversation with Zuberi and his arms dealings, or about Dean Maxson’s request that he keep secret his Isaac Question research. “I’m ready to write. I’m just not sure this is a story the world is ready to hear.”

  Zuberi had agreed to meet Duncan Sinclair for an early Friday evening dinner. Sinclair had invited Zuberi first to his country club, and then to a fancy restaurant along Edinburgh’s Royal Mile, but Zuberi had suggested the White Hart pub in the gritty Grassmarket section of the city. Men like Duncan Sinclair felt comfortable around linen tablecloths and crystal decanters. Men like Zuberi preferred paper napkins and a foamy pint.

  Zuberi waited outside for his guest, admiring the massive Edinburgh Castle looming over the strip of Victorian architecture built along the base of its hill. The Castle purportedly housed the Stone of Destiny—but if Thorne were correct in his research, the stone on display was actually the Bethel Stone, not the true Stone of Destiny which had served as the throne of Akhenaton. That throne, Zuberi now believed, was hidden at Rosslyn Chapel. His goal tonight was to convince Duncan Sinclair to let him go find it.

  A tall, white-haired man in a dark suit eased his way out of the back of a black sedan and began loping past the skateboarders and sidewalk musicians toward Zuberi, a look of bemused curiosity on his face as if he were strolling through an exhibit of exotic animals. Zuberi guessed it had been years since the soles of the banker’s wingtips had trod upon working class detritus. He’d probably need to throw them away.

  Zuberi offered his left arm to the banker and they shook, a greeting far preferable to the silly Arab exchange of kisses. Sinclair seamlessly accepted Zuberi’s left hand, which Zuberi took as an indication he had conducted a background check on Zuberi beforehand. Which, in turn, meant the meeting was important to him. Zuberi would adjust his price accordingly.

  “Mr. Sinclair,” he said, speaking slowly, “it is a pleasure to meet you.”

  “Aye.” The elderly man’s blue eyes sparkled as he showed a row of even gray teeth. “Apparently we are cousins, Mr. Youssef,” he said. He spoke with a thick Scottish accent that Zuberi always had trouble understanding.

  “Some of my least favorite people are my cousins,” Zuberi sniffed, not untruthfully.

  “Well, then, that should make it easier for me not to disappoint you.”

  They found a table in the front corner of the pub; a harried waitress dropped a couple of menus and some silverware onto the middle of the table. “Place your orders at the bar,” she said.

  Sinclair smiled. “I used to come to Grassmarket as a student at the University of Edinburgh, after the war. They still don’t have table service, eh?”

  Zuberi nodded. He had been surprised at the practice when he first came to Scotland, but many pubs followed the same procedure. “When you know what you want, I will order for us,” he said.

  Five minutes later Zuberi returned with a couple of pints, one tucked into the crook of his elbow. He got right to the point. “I assume you are trying to convince me to not sell arms to ISIS.”

  “I am indeed.” The elderly man leaned forward. “I do not need to explain to you the geopolitical danger ISIS presents. You know this as well as anyone, yet you still choose to arm them.” He sat
back. “So I will not attempt to appeal to your sense of decency.”

  Zuberi did not take offense. “Good. Many people believe I do not have one.”

  “But I do have something to offer. It is my understanding that you believe ancient relics may be buried at Rosslyn Chapel.”

  Zuberi nodded. This was a dangerous game he was playing, potentially reneging on a deal with ISIS. But he wouldn’t have many chances in life to ferret around at Rosslyn Chapel. And he could placate ISIS with the Isaac Question bombshell. “And you are prepared to let me dig?”

  “Within reason. We, too, have long been curious as to what relics may be buried there. This arrangement you and I come to, assuming we do, would be the kick in the arse we need to find out what is hidden. The crypt, as well as the Apprentice Pillar, seem like obvious places to look.”

  Zuberi sipped at his pint. “How long would be moratorium?”

  Sinclair peered at him. “A year. No arms sales for a full year. That should give our allies enough time to destroy ISIS.”

  “Three months,” he countered. “After that it will not matter—they will find another supplier.”

  “Perhaps another supplier, but not one nearly so well-stocked.”

  In the end, as they picked at their steak and ale pie, they settled on a six-month embargo, provided the Rosslyn Chapel excavations began in the next sixty days. Zuberi knew how these things worked—without a firm deadline, it would be years before the excavations began. If the dig were delayed beyond the sixty days, Zuberi would not be bound by the embargo.

  They finished their pints and shook on the deal. Zuberi stood to leave.

  “Where are you going?” Sinclair asked.

  Zuberi cocked his head. “Home. Our business is done.”

  “Very well. Good night, cousin.” He grinned. “I think I’ll stay and have another pint.”