The Portent

by Michael S. Heiser

  Everyone except Cal looked at Brian. The new resident took notice. “Why is everybody—?”

  Madison elbowed him lightly.

  “Okay, I’ll wait.”

  “How would this vasculoid prevent disease and aging?” Fern asked.

  “It would remove parasites, bacteria, viruses, that sort of thing,” answered Malcolm.

  Clarise nodded. “And, say, prevent cancer cells from metastasizing, even disassemble them when detected. It could also dramatically improve physical endurance and stamina with increased oxygen and adrenaline flow. It’s a transhumanist’s dream come true.”

  “There we are,” Brian shook his head. “We shall be as gods. That had to be the Colonel’s point. Another ego trip.”

  “Something like this vasculoid would also explain the lack of degradation, at least given the time frame so far,” Malcolm suggested. “The nanobots, if that’s what’s going on, would keep doing their job. I presume you’ve put it under the electron microscope.”

  “Yeah,” she answered, and reached for one of the pages in front of her. “Here’s an image of what’s inside the Colonel.” She slid it over to Cal, and then passed a couple copies toward the other end of the table.

  “That’s incredible,” Malcolm gasped, tilting the image toward Madison. Her eyes widened in disbelief. The image was a black-and-white close-up of dozens of rounded mounds. It had the look of a bad case of goose bumps, but the mounds were more tightly clustered and had definable borders.

  “Let everyone get a look,” Clarise said. “Each one of those bumps is three thousand times thinner than a human hair. I have no idea what they actually do. The science we’re looking at here is way off the charts when you’re talking adaptation to a biological organism. It’s unthinkable.”

  “And yet it’s sitting in your lab,” Ward said, glancing at the page as it came his direction.

  “But why would the Colonel need to be … what he is?” Cal asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  An unexpected playful giggle drew their attention.

  “Squish likes the little balls,” she said, looking down at the page in front of her, using the cat’s paws to bat at the round images. She laughed again. “They reminds me of dancing,” she looked up at the ceiling in a happy thought, “and my birthday.”

  Nili gazed at her, perplexed. “Dancing? Your birthday?”

  She nodded. “At home … my class … it was fun.”

  Nili glanced quickly at Clarise, then back to Summit. “Why does the picture remind you of your dance class?”

  “Ahuva would take me,” she replied, ignoring the question. “Then we would go to Dafna’s house. I like her. I know where she lives.”

  “Ahuva was Summit’s aunt,” Nili explained to the others. “She thought dancing would be a good social experience for her. Dafna was her teacher. She lived in East Talpiot, a neighborhood in Jerusalem.”

  “Did she go on her birthday?” Fern asked from across the table.

  “No,” Nili answered. “Summit, you didn’t go dancing on your birthday.”

  “I know that,” Summit replied with bored disdain, still looking at the picture. “Talpiot is my birthday.”

  Nili’s brow wrinkled with confusion. “I’m sorry, Summit. I don’t understand. Talpiot is a place, not a number.”

  “The Talpiot number,” Summit answered unwaveringly and looked at Clarise. “The old boxes. Clarise showed me.”

  Everyone looked at Clarise. Brian watched in bewildered fascination as her confused expression suddenly morphed to an anguished grimace, like she’d been overtaken by a stabbing pain. Clarise cupped her face in her hands for a moment, concentrating, and then looked at Summit. She shook her head in denial.

  “It’s sixteen …” she whispered. She lifted her head, her eyes moving from one confused face to another. “It adds up to sixteen!” She jumped up out of her chair.

  “What’s wrong?” Ward turned his chair in alarm.

  “Please be wrong, Summit … please,” she said anxiously under her breath, “just this once.” Clarise bolted out of the Pit toward one of the hallways.

  “What’s going on?” Neff asked helplessly, agitation in his voice.

  “I don’t know,” Ward replied, now standing. He, Neff, and Malcolm took off after Clarise, leaving the rest of the table in stunned silence.

  “What do you make—?” Melissa turned to ask Brian, but stopped in mid-sentence. He was staring out across the table, his palms flat on the surface, his jaw drooping slightly, fear in his eyes. “Not you, too,” she said, exasperated. “What is it? What does the number mean?”

  “It means I hope she’s wrong, too,” he said ominously, turning toward the girl, who was now sitting quietly, stroking Squish’s back.

  “I’m not wrong,” she said innocently. “My brain doesn’t lie.”

  72

  The average evangelical church lies under a shadow of quiet doubting.… It is the chronic unbelief that does not know what faith means.

  —A. W. Tozer

  “Brian,” said Neff’s voice.

  “What’s up? Did Clarise find what she was looking for?”

  “No, net yet … we’re in the library now. We stopped by her lab first. Clarise needed something there. She wants to talk to Summit.”

  “Okay,” Brian replied. “Everybody’s still here at the table.”

  Brian hit the speaker button on his phone and put it in the middle of the table. “Summit,” he said, “Clarise is in the library. She needs you to tell her where to find something.”

  “Sure,” Summit said quietly, releasing Squish, who leaped with effortless grace onto the floor.

  “Summit—can you hear me?” It was Clarise.

  “I hear you. Your files are in the library.”

  “I’m sure they are,” Clarise answered. “But the files aren’t numbered. You know we’re looking for the number.”

  “Why are you looking for a number?” Summit asked.

  There was silence on the other end. Clarise spoke again after a few moments. “You know what I mean,” she said, some tension surfacing in her voice. “The last number in Becky’s series.”

  “Who’s Becky?”

  “Never mind.” Everyone at the table could hear the frustration in Clarise’s voice. “If you knew about the number, why didn’t you say anything before today? We’ve been trying to figure that out for weeks!”

  “I just saw the number in my brain … 80503. No one asked me about it before.”

  There was silence again.

  “Summit is telling the truth,” Nili spoke into the phone. “After the first number frightened her, we’ve kept her away from our work. She’s never seen the full list.”

  Brian heard an exasperated groan through the speaker.

  “Clarise,” Sabi said calmly, “do not to be angry. God has used Summit despite our mistakes.”

  “You’re right,” Clarise said in a calmer voice. “I’m sorry, Summit. Do we have a folder labeled ‘Talpiot’?”

  “No,” she answered immediately.

  “I can’t believe I’m asking this but … are you sure?”

  “Of course.”

  “But you’re talking about my Talpiot articles from … I haven’t used them for several years.”

  “Yes. I filed them.”

  “Where can I find them?”

  Summit blinked a few times. “Archaeology … then the New Testament tab … then Jerusalem … then osswa—osso … that’s a hard word.”

  “Ossuaries.” It was Malcolm’s voice. “Got it. Brian, are you tracking on this?”

  “Yeah, 80503 is an ossuary number … and I’m pretty sure I know which one,” Brian said, slumping back in his chair.

  “Oh, man, I remember hearing about this. I can’t believe it.”

  “Believe it.”

  “You know what this means! It’s … I don’t even want to think about it.”

  “Bring everything out here,” Brian said in a
subdued tone.

  “We’ll be with you guys in a minute.”

  Brian ended the call and sat silently for a moment. A dull ache crept through his chest.

  “Professor,” Nili said. Brian turned toward her. He could see fear and anger in her eyes. “I think I understand what this means … what this Colonel means to do. He is an evil man.”

  “Let’s wait till everyone gets back.”

  “No one takes this theory seriously … at least in Israel,” Nili fumed.

  Brian held up his hand and sent her a gentle look. She nodded. The he looked at Melissa, whose face was drawn with anxious confusion.

  “What’s an ossuary?” Malone asked.

  “A bone box.”

  “Why is this one so important?”

  “You’ll see in a few minutes.”

  Brian looked at Summit. He watched the girl, off again in her own little world, tickling Squish’s nose with a few strands of her long, pink hair. Laughing whenever the cat tried to bat them away. If only things could be that simple.

  “I hear them coming.” Fern craned her neck to see the hallway.

  “You did a great job, Summit,” Madison congratulated her.

  “Yes, you did,” Brian echoed.

  Summit looked up. “Don’t be sad.”

  “I’ll … I’ll try,” he replied, a little taken aback.

  Melissa leaned toward him with a whisper. “You know that Summit may not look at us, but she studies everyone.”

  Brian forced a smile.

  “But you’re an easy read. What’s troubling you?” she asked.

  “Dr. Scott,” Sabi said in a calm voice. “When doubt seeks to crush the soul, we must remember.… You must examine the record of your life as closely as you would engage your research. You have seen much tragedy—and many, many providences. Consider them and believe.”

  Brian sighed. “I do, and I will.”

  “None of us could have ever imagined our lives would converge in this way,” Sabi continued, “at this place, for this purpose. We are all living proof to each other that God has His own agenda. He enjoys the unpredictable. Whatever this fiend is planning, it will not go unnoticed by the Most High. He will show us the way.”

  Their four colleagues emerged from the hallway, Clarise and Malcolm both carrying thick folders stuffed with papers. They quickly took seats and started rifling through the content without saying a word.

  Clarise pulled a page from her folder and turned to Malcolm. “Did you find it yet?”

  He handed her a few stapled pages.

  “Summit was right,” Clarise said, flipping through the pages of the article Malcolm had handed her. “She’s not only identified the number, but now I remember where I saw that DNA profile before—the one for Dee’s baby. It’s all here.”

  Clarise folded the article in half, exposing a page that contained what everyone recognized by now as a vertical-bar visualization of a DNA sequence. She grabbed the page from her stack and positioned it next to the photocopied article. “You see that? The profile sections are the same.”

  “Sure looks that way,” Neff said, leaning in. “But if that’s the case … the other had something to do with the New Testament. Whose profile is the other one?”

  Clarise looked anxiously at Brian. “It’s the result of a DNA test on bone fragments found in a tomb in Talpiot—that’s the association that Summit recalled. The fragments came from on ossuary in that tomb, one that was given the catalogue number 80.503.”

  “Is there any significance to the ossuary?” Ward asked.

  “Yeah,” Brian answered. “It had an inscription on it … a name: ‘Jesus, son of Joseph.’ ”

  73

  The individual is handicapped by coming face to face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists.

  —J. Edgar Hoover

  “What?” Neff blurted out.

  “The ossuary was marked ‘Jesus, son of Joseph,’ ” Brian repeated.

  “Well, it couldn’t have held the bones of the real Jesus,” Neff protested. “The real Jesus rose from the dead.”

  “I agree,” Brian said, “and most archaeologists and biblical scholars don’t think this ossuary held the New Testament Jesus, regardless of whether they believe in the resurrection. But the Talpiot tomb isn’t explained away by quoting the New Testament. I’m surprised you haven’t heard of it. It was all over the mainstream news outlet back in 2007, as I recall.”

  “I don’t watch television. I’m basically off the grid when it comes to that sort of thing. Do any of the rest of you remember it?”

  “Vaguely,” Malone admitted. “I assumed it was bunk. I never gave it any time.”

  “Same here,” added Melissa. “I wasn’t exactly interested in Christianity back then, but I assumed it was sensationalism.”

  Ward nodded. “Same here. I thought it was a hoax or something. Was it?”

  “No, it’s no hoax,” Clarise said. “I followed the discussions after it aired on TV and read the article on the DNA work. It just sort of died out after scholars began to expose the problems with the interpretation of the data—the whole thesis, really. I lost interest.”

  “Most people did,” Brian said. “And you’re right about the academic response. The tomb itself was actually discovered in 1980, but it only became news in 2007.”

  Ward laughed. “Why did it take twenty-seven years for the world to hear about it?”

  “Because the archaeologists didn’t claim it was Yeshua of Nazareth,” Nili answered angrily. “All the Israeli archaeologists knew about it. But Yeshua was a common name in the first century, and there are other ossuaries with the same inscription: ‘Yeshua, bar Yoseph.’ In Israel, this is not taken seriously.”

  “There’s more than one ‘Jesus, son of Joseph’ bone box?” Madison laughed. “That ought to end the theory right there.”

  “It didn’t because there were other ossuaries in the tomb, all of them with names of people associated with Jesus in the New Testament. There was one for ‘Jude, son of Jesus’; ‘Matthew’; ‘Mary’; another whose inscription may read ‘Mariamne’ or ‘Mary and Martha’ or ‘Mary and Mara’; and there was one for ‘Joseph.’ ”

  The table fell silent. Brian looked at everyone’s expressions, which were exactly as he’d imagined they would be when he’d contemplated having the discussion. He felt suddenly emboldened, almost angry. “What’s the problem?” he demanded.

  A faint smile came to Sabi’s lips.

  “I know you’re not all familiar with the data here, but what are the obvious questions here?” Brian prodded. “Think.”

  “Well,” Fern began, “even with the other names, why haven’t most scholars been persuaded that it’s really Jesus and His family and friends?”

  “Good. What else?”

  Malone jumped in. “Jesus is a common name. Are all the names common?”

  “Another fitting question. Let’s hear more—think like a detective.” Brian looked at Ward, who was quick to pick up on the nudge.

  “Do we know if any of the people in the tomb were actually related?” Ward asked. “And if they were, are they related the way the New Testament has them related? If not, the whole thing’s a wash.”

  “Excellent,” Brian said, sitting up straighter and leaning toward them. “The facts are, the names are common, despite insistences to the contrary. Scholars went after that right away. Of the six ossuaries with names on them, only two have patronyms—statements of family relationship, like ‘son of.’ That means we have no idea which people are related and exactly how they’re related, except for those two instances.

  “In the case of the ossuary that seems to have two names, ‘Mariamne’ and either ‘Mara’ or Martha,’ scholars don’t even know what gender the second name points to, since the spelling was used for both men and women. They might have been sisters, or mother and daughter, husband and wife, father and daughter—who knows?”

  “He’s right,” Clarise interjected
. “Only two of the ossuaries had any bone fragments in them, and they were very small—literally just tiny chips. The bones had been removed. It’s not even clear if the fragments left came from the ossuaries in which modern archaeologists found them. The tomb had been disturbed.”

  “I’m not following,” Neff admitted. “Who took the bones?”

  “The orthodox Jewish authorities claimed the bones of all the ossuaries just days after the discovery,” Nili informed them. “They buried them in an unmarked location. That is the common practice in Israel. Archaeologists sometimes try to hide discoveries if they contain human remains so they can remove the bones unnoticed. If word gets out, the religious authorities will stop at nothing to inter them properly—even risking their own lives.”

  “The Talpiot tomb had also been violated in antiquity,” Brian told them. “The initial discoverers note that in their reports. There were many ossuaries in the tomb, and they found bones and skulls scattered around it. Tomb robbers tend to discard the bones as they look for objects of value buried with them.”

  “So that’s why they can’t really even tell which boxes the bones originally belonged to,” Ward reasoned. “Some could have been tossed out and then put back into a different ossuary.”

  “Right. It’s not the neat and tidy picture that you’re led to believe it is when you first hear about it. Most people—and I think some of you just experienced it—just get shocked by the names. All things considered, there are very few specialists in the field who believe this tomb really was the tomb of Jesus’ family.”

  “But keep thinking,” Brian continued. “If all the ducks were in a row, what would be the obvious question to ask then? It still hasn’t been answered by the few advocates of the tomb.”

  “How about this,” Melissa said, eyes narrowed in concentration. “This was a family tomb, right?”

  He nodded.

  “And it was marked on the outside?”

  “Right again.”

  “So, it stands to reason it would have been visible in antiquity—why else put a symbolic marker on it? You wouldn’t do that if you intended to hide it from view.”

  “No, you wouldn’t,” Brian agreed.