The Moses Stone

by James Becker

  She pointed at 'Gedi', which she'd written on the fourth line of their translation of the Rabat tablet, replacing the blank that had been there previously.

  'Where did that come from?' Bronson asked.

  'Because I couldn't find that word in any of the dictionaries, I wondered if it could be another proper name, like "Elazar", so I started looking for Aramaic versions of family and place names, and I found that.'

  '"Gedi"?' Bronson asked, pronouncing it like 'Jedi' from the Star Wars films.

  'Yes. But I don't know of any locations near Qumran with that name that seemed relevant. I'm hoping that Yosef might have some ideas when we meet him.'

  'And what about the word next to it? Any luck with that?'

  Angela nodded slowly. 'Yes,' she said. 'That translates as "Mosheh", the Aramaic version of "Moses". And that means the sentence now reads "the tablets of ----- temple of Jerusalem ----- ----- Moses the ----- -----". If we take an educated guess at the blanks, the original probably said "the tablets of the temple of Jerusalem and of Moses the great leader", or maybe "famous prophet", something like that.'

  Angela paused and glanced at Bronson. 'But what's obvious,' she said, 'is that Yacoub was right – the "tablets of the temple" almost certainly mean the Mosaic Covenant, the stones of the prophet Moses, the original Covenant struck between God and the Israelites.'

  Bronson shook his head. 'You can't be serious.'

  'I'm not,' Angela said, 'but whoever wrote this inscription obviously believed it.'

  'The Ten Commandments.'

  'No. Everybody thinks there were ten commandments, but actually there weren't. It all depends which bit of the Bible you look at, but the best two lists are probably in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5, and both these sources state that Moses came down from Mount Sinai with fourteen commandments.'

  '"The Fourteen Commandments" doesn't have quite the same ring to it, does it?'

  Angela smiled at him. 'No, not really. But if you study all of Exodus, you can find over six hundred commandments, including gems like "you shall not suffer a witch to live" and "you shall never vex a stranger".'

  'When did Moses live, assuming he was a real person?'

  'Well, as always with this kind of thing, the answer depends on which source you prefer. According to the Talmud, he was born in about 1400 BC to a Jewish woman named Jochebed. When the Pharaoh Feraun ordered that all newborn Hebrew boys be killed, she placed him in a basket of bulrushes and set him adrift on the Nile. He was found by members of the Egyptian royal family and adopted by them. That's the story we're all familiar with, and it's pretty much the same story as that of King Sargon of Akkad in the twenty-fourth century BC, except that the river he floated down was the Euphrates.

  'There are a lot of different versions of the myths and legends surrounding Moses, but most Christians and Jews believe he was the man who led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt and delivered them to the Promised Land in what is now Israel. What's quite interesting is how often Moses appears in source books of different religions. In Judaism, for example, he appears in a whole host of stories to be found in the Jewish apocrypha, as well as in the Mishnah and the Talmud. In the Christian Bible he appears in both the Old and New Testaments, and he's the single most dominant character in the Qur'an. The Mormons include the Book of Moses – that's supposed to be his translated writings – in their scriptural canon. On a lighter note, the founder of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard, claimed that Moses owned a disintegrator pistol which was useful in fighting off the aliens who had invaded ancient Egypt.'

  Bronson shook his head. 'But do you mean Moses did exist or didn't? And if he didn't exist, how can the Mosaic Covenant ever have existed?'

  'Nobody knows if Moses was a real flesh-and-blood man,' Angela replied, 'but the historical validity of the Mosaic Covenant is quite difficult to dispute, simply because there are so many contemporary references to the Ark, the gilded box in which it was housed. The Jews carried something around in it, something that was of crucial importance to their religion.'

  She looked at her watch and stood up. 'We need to leave right now to meet Yosef.' She paused. 'Listen, Chris, we don't mention the clay tablets, and certainly not the Mosaic Covenant. In fact, just let me do most of the talking.'

  56

  Their new hotel was near Namal Tel Aviv – the port at the northern end of the city – in a maze of one-way streets, but close to Rokach Avenue, which Bronson hoped would offer them a fast route out of Tel Aviv if the need ever arose. Angela had arranged to meet Yosef Ben Halevi in a bar just off Jabotinsky, near the Ha'Azma'ut Garden and the Hilton Beach.

  It was only a short walk in the relative cool of the evening, but Bronson decided they'd take the pretty route, simply so he could satisfy himself that they weren't being followed. So instead of walking straight down Hayark or Ben Yehuda, they followed the Havakook pedestrian walkway past the Sheraton Beach, and then cut through the Hilton Hotel itself.

  The city was buzzing, elegantly dressed couples strolling beside the deep blue waters of the Mediterranean as the sun sank below the western horizon in a chaotic artist's palette of primary colours – reds and blues and yellows. But once they entered the tangle of narrow streets to the east of the Ha'Azma'ut Garden – many named after the world's major cities, like Basel, Frankfurt and Prague – the scene changed. The hotels were replaced by whitepainted low-rise apartment buildings, four and five storeys high, walls studded with air-conditioning units, their ground floors a scattering of bars and shops, emblazoned with unfamiliar and exotic signs in Hebrew. Every available parking space seemed to be occupied, frustrating drivers who were nudging their slow-moving vehicles through the crowds of pedestrians as they looked for somewhere to stop.

  'There it is,' Bronson said, leading Angela across the street towards the bar. He'd spotted nobody taking the slightest interest in them.

  For some reason, Bronson had been expecting that Yosef Ben Halevi would be a venerable professor, bent, grey and stooped, and probably well on the wrong side of sixty. The man who stood up to greet them as they walked into the small and quiet bar was none of these things. About thirty, tall, slim and handsome, and with a mop of curly black hair, he cut an almost Byronic figure.

  'Angela,' he said, his smile revealing perfect teeth, their whiteness dazzling against his tanned face.

  Bronson disliked him immediately.

  'Hullo, Yosef,' Angela said, raising her face to be kissed on both cheeks. 'This is Chris Bronson – he used to be my husband. Chris, this is Yosef Ben Halevi.'

  Ben Halevi turned to Angela as they all sat down. 'You were very mysterious on the phone,' he said. 'What are you doing out here, and how can I help you?'

  'It's a little complicated—' Angela began.

  'Isn't it always?' Ben Halevi interrupted, with another brilliant smile.

  'We're here on holiday, but I've also been asked to do some research into certain aspects of first-century Jewish history, because of some inscriptions that have turned up back in London.'

  'A working holiday, then?' Ben Halevi suggested, with a glance at Bronson.

  'Exactly. Specifically, I'm looking into events that took place in the vicinity of Qumran, towards the end of the first century AD.'

  Yosef Ben Halevi nodded. 'The Essenes and the Sicarii, I suppose? With a side order of Roman legions and the Emperors Nero, Vespasian and Titus, probably.'

  The man clearly knew his subject, and Bronson was glad that Angela had chosen such a quiet place to meet him. There were only a handful of people in the bar, and they could talk freely at their corner table without any danger of being overheard.

  Angela nodded. 'One of the things that puzzles me is the word "Gedi", which seems to be a proper name, or perhaps part of one. Does that ring any bells with you?'

  'Certainly. It depends on the context, obviously, but the most obvious answer is that it's a reference to Ein-Gedi. And, if it is, that's a probable link to the Sicarii. Where did you come across it?'

/>   'It's part of an inscription we unearthed,' Angela said smoothly.

  'Right, Ein-Gedi,' Ben Halevi said. 'It's a very fertile oasis lying to the west of the Dead Sea, what the ancients used to call Lake Asphaltitus, not far from both Qumran and Masada.'

  'Only an oasis?' Bronson said. 'That's not very exciting.'

  'It's not only an oasis. It's been mentioned numerous times in the Bible, particularly in Chronicles, Ezekiel and Joshua. It even gets a probable name-check in the Song of Solomon – Ein-Gedi is the most obvious interpretation of the word "Engaddi" that occurs in one verse – and allegedly King David hid there when he was being pursued by Saul. It was a really important place throughout quite a long period of Jewish history.'

  'And the Sicarii?'

  'I was just getting to that. According to Josephus – you've heard of him, I hope – while the Romans were actually besieging Masada, some of the garrison of Sicarii managed to slip out and launch a raid on the Jewish settlement at Ein-Gedi. It was a major attack, and they killed over seven hundred people. You have to remember that at this period in history Jews fighting other Jews wasn't that uncommon.

  'Not much is known about the inhabitants of Ein-Gedi at the time, but the oasis must have been reasonably prosperous to have been able to support that many people.

  Presumably the Sicarii were looking for food or weapons, that kind of thing, to help them in their fight against the Roman forces encircling Masada. Of course,' Ben Halevi finished, 'it didn't do them any good, because the citadel fell not that long afterwards, and all the Sicarii there perished.'

  'That's interesting, Yosef,' Angela said, making a mental note, then changed the subject. 'We're also interested in the background to the story of the Mosaic Covenant. For Chris's benefit, could you explain a bit about that as well?'

  'The Mosaic Covenant?' Ben Halevi said, looking closely at Angela – too closely for Bronson's liking. 'Right.

  Well, according to your Bible – the Old Testament, obviously – one of the most sacred objects owned by the Israelites was the Ark of the Covenant, which was stored in several different sanctuaries in Judea over the years, including Shiloh and Shechem. When Jerusalem was captured by King David, he decided to build a permanent resting place for the relic there, and the Temple Mount in the old part of the city was the obvious choice.

  'Solomon was the second son of David, and ascended to the throne as King of Israel in 961 BC. He continued the work his father had started, and completed the temple in 957 BC. The building was not only the home of the Ark itself, which had its own special room there called the devir, or holy of holies, but also a place of worship for the people. According to legend, though the temple was fairly small, it had a courtyard large enough to accommodate a substantial number of worshippers. It was apparently constructed primarily of cedar, but with a lot of gold ornamentation inside. This became known as the Temple of Solomon, and later as the First Temple. It lasted for some 370 years until Nebuchadnezzar, king of Chaldea, razed Jerusalem to the ground and completely destroyed the building. The Ark of the Covenant vanished from the historical record some time during this period.'

  'What was the Ark made of?' Bronson asked. 'Gold, I suppose?'

  Ben Halevi shook his head. 'Most accounts state that it appeared to be gold, but we believe it was actually made of acacia wood that was then covered in gold leaf. It was apparently very highly decorated, with an ornamented lid and rings on the sides that allowed it to be carried using poles thrust through them. If that description was correct, the chances are that the wood had rotted and the Ark itself might well have disintegrated by this time, so it may not have been stolen.

  'Anyway,' Ben Halevi continued, 'about half a century later, work started on erecting the Second Temple, which was probably similar in design to the Temple of Solomon, but more modest in scale. It was destroyed in AD 70 by the Romans – and as you probably know there's been no Jewish temple on the Mount since then, and that's a problem for many Jews.'

  Ben Halevi gestured towards the waiter, who brought over a bottle of red wine and refilled their glasses.

  'You mean because you don't have a place to worship?'

  Bronson asked.

  Ben Halevi shook his head. 'Not just that, though obviously it's an important point. No, to fully understand why the lack of a temple is so important, you have to delve into your New Testament, into the Book of Revelation, in fact. You're familiar with it, I presume?' he asked, another smile slowly becoming visible.

  Bronson shook his head.

  'Shame on you,' Ben Halevi said lightly. 'Let me explain. The Book of Revelation was allegedly written by a man called John of Patmos, who was possibly also the Apostle John, because he was believed to have been exiled to the island of Patmos in the Aegean late in the first century AD. It's probably the most difficult book in your Bible to understand, because it's entirely apocalyptic, all to do with the Second Coming and the end of the world, which is why early versions of the book were known as "The Apocalypse of John". Now, the truth is that nobody knows if the author was the Apostle John or somebody completely different, just as nobody knows if the man who wrote it was a true visionary, a seer, who was accurately describing visions and images sent to him by God, or just a harmless loony who'd flipped from living on a sunbaked rock in the Aegean surrounded by goats.

  'The trouble is that a lot of people have taken what's written in the Book of Revelation as the gospel truth, literally believing every word. Predictably enough, most of these fundamentalist believers live in America, a nice long distance away from us on the front line in Israel, but there are quite a lot of people here who share the same beliefs. And one of the crucial ideas culled from Revelation is that there will be a Second Coming, a day of Apocalypse, when Jesus will return to the earth, but this time as a warrior, not a messiah, and His arrival will herald the final battle between good and evil. After that battle, which the forces of good will win – obviously – Jesus will reign over a peaceful earth for a thousand years.'

  'Do you believe that stuff?' Bronson asked, his expression openly sceptical.

  'I'm a Jew,' Ben Halevi replied. 'I'm just reminding you of what your Bible says. My beliefs are irrelevant.'

  'But do you?' Bronson persisted.

  'Since you ask, no, but it's what the majority believes that's important, and you'd be surprised how many people do expect the world to end pretty much as Revelation foretells.'

  'And this revolves around the Third Temple?' Angela suggested.

  'Exactly. According to one interpretation of Revelation – and not everyone agrees with this – Jesus will only return to earth when the Jews possess all of the Holy Land. The closest we came to that was in 1967 when our soldiers captured Jerusalem, and for the first time in almost two millennia we regained control of the Western Wall and the Temple Mount itself. But control of the Mount was almost immediately handed back to the Muslims by Moshe Dayan.'

  'Why on earth did he do that?'

  'Well, Dayan was the Minister of Defence at the time, so the decision was his, and it's even possible to argue that it was the right decision. The Temple Mount was already occupied by the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque, two of the holiest sites in Islam. If Israel had retained control of the Mount, there would have been enormous pressure to destroy these buildings in order to erect the Third Temple, and if that had been done, we would almost certainly have found ourselves at war with the entire Muslim world, a war we probably wouldn't have been able to win. What Dayan did brought at least a measure of peace – or the hope of it, anyway.'

  He sighed, and Bronson knew that he was thinking of the recent terrible unrest and the continuing battles between the Palestinians and Israelis.

  Angela leant forward slightly and looked at Ben Halevi.

  'Finally, Yosef, what's your opinion of the Copper Scroll? Do you think it's a genuine listing of some treasures, or just a hoax?'

  The Israeli smiled slightly. 'That's fairly easy to answer,' he said. 'I thi
nk most researchers are satisfied that the Copper Scroll is a real listing of real treasure. It's also been suggested that it was only ever intended to record the hiding places of the treasure for a short time, the idea being that the objects would be recovered within a matter of months or a few years at the latest after being hidden. But if that is the case, why didn't the authors of the scroll write it on papyrus instead? Why would they take such enormous time and trouble to prepare a document apparently intended to last for eternity, if the text they were going to produce would only be applicable for a few years?

  'And if the Copper Scroll is a real listing, that suggests that the reference to another document – the so-called Silver Scroll – is also real, in which case the short-term hiding place argument takes another hit. Why produce the Copper Scroll and another, possibly silver, scroll, to record something so ephemeral? Nobody has so far offered a convincing reason for that discrepancy.

  'The only believable suggestion I've heard was that the two scrolls would have to be read together to decipher what was meant. In other words, the Silver Scroll would positively identify the area where something was hidden, and then the detailed reference on the Copper Scroll would lead you to the exact hiding place. In that case, it would make sense to hide the two scrolls in separate locations, which we know was done, because there's nothing like the Silver Scroll concealed anywhere at Qumran.'

  Bronson and Angela exchanged glances. That was a sort of confirmation of what they had deduced from the inscription on the clay tablets.

  'To some extent,' Ben Halevi finished, 'that argument is supported by the fact that the Copper Scroll wasn't really hidden – it was just placed in a cave with a lot of other scrolls. And it does refer to the Silver Scroll being properly concealed somewhere. So does it exist? I have no idea, but we know the Copper Scroll is real, and the consensus is that the record is genuine, so that makes me think that there could well be a second document, another scroll, hidden somewhere. Unfortunately, we've not the slightest idea where.'