A Love and Beyond

by Dan Sofer

“Let me see,” Dave said. “In gratitude for messing with my soul and my chances of a happy marriage, I should harbor your dodgy artifacts and put my life in jeopardy?”

  Ben smiled. “Glad you agree.”

  He repacked the scroll jar and lugged the cooler into the kitchen. Dave followed. Ben stood in the service balcony at the end of the kitchen. He frowned at a set of rickety storage shelves, then placed the box on the lowest ledge.

  “Just for a few days,” he said, dusting off his hands. “Until I figure out what they want with it.”

  “But it’s been perfectly safe at your place for years.”

  Ben camouflaged the box with a checkered dishcloth. “There was another break-in Thursday night. Bible Lands Museum. Of all the priceless displays, they only took one item. Guess what it was.”

  Two minutes later Dave watched the flow of life on Emek Refaim through the passenger window of Ben’s Toyota Yaris. Pedestrians at crossings. Friends chatting in restaurants. He waited for the right moment to mention his call to Ornan.

  “A word about Professor Barkley,” Ben said.

  “Let me guess, he’s a real genius.”

  Ben turned left off Emek Refaim and toward the apartment block suburbia of Talbieh.

  “He’s an expert on the Dead Sea Scrolls, a student of John Allegro, a member of the original group of scholars who pieced together the scrolls and deciphered their texts.

  “A few years ago Professor Barkley published a controversial paper on the scrolls and lost his post at Hebrew U.”

  They passed the Jerusalem Theater on the rise of Marcus Street.

  “His career never really recovered. So let’s try to avoid subjects like the university.”

  They made a right at a flowery traffic circle and descended Jabotinsky. Soon they would pass Mendele Street. Mandy’s street. Dave felt a twinge of guilt. Mandy had called a few times during the day. He’d let the phone ring. She’d get over him. Mandy was a trouper.

  Trouper. A word Dave had learned from Mandy.

  Ben turned into Sokolow Street.

  He remembered his apology. He opened his mouth to speak when Ben parked the car beside a large island of trees, grass and swings in the middle of the road.

  He closed his mouth.

  No rush. Best to mention Ornan on the way home. Less time to cook in Ben’s wrath.

  They got out the car. A footpath joined Sokolow and Mendele. Dave had spent many Shabbat afternoons with Mandy on the benches and swings of the small park. She could walk by any moment. A thrill passed through him, not of anxiety, but anticipation. One whole day had passed since their last meeting. It felt longer. It would be good to see that she was OK. In time, maybe they could be friends.

  Ben approached a four-story apartment building on the corner of Keren Hayesod. Air pollution stained the Jerusalem stone like nicotine on a smoker’s fingers. Ben pressed the buzzer of apartment number three. An intercom coughed.

  “Yes?” said the voice of an elderly British male.

  “Ben Green, Professor.”

  An electric lock clicked and Ben pushed through.

  Up one flight of stairs, an apartment door stood ajar.

  “Come in,” the professor called from within.

  The two men stood in the middle of a shoebox apartment. Ahead of them, a doorway opened onto a kitchen with rickety closets and an old gas stove. To their right, the hallway flowed into a living room. Rows of well-thumbed volumes and journals strained the floor-to-ceiling shelves. A large, carved writing desk sat by the far wall. Behind the desk sat an old man in a paisley bathrobe.

  “Please excuse the mess,” the professor said. He fussed over papers and writing implements on the desktop, raising small clouds of dust in the meager glow of a naked incandescent bulb. “Early retirement has scattered my sense of order along with my thoughts.”

  The professor looked up. His eyes sparkled. A rakish mop of hair topped a face still handsome beneath the creases and sagging skin. His gaze shifted to Dave and a momentary cloud of disappointment passed over him.

  “You’ve brought a friend,” he said.

  “I hope you don’t mind, Professor. Dave here needs an expert opinion on another matter.”

  “No. Not at all. But we’ll need another chair.” The professor grinned expectantly at Dave. “Whisky?”

  Soon they sat before the desk on kitchen chairs and nursed glass tumblers of Laphroaig. A bit smoky for Dave’s palate but a fine single malt nonetheless. The spirits numbed Dave’s brain pleasantly. He liked the aging professor already.

  Frames of dust marked the former resting places of papers on the desktop. The Oriental rug beneath Dave’s feet had faded, and tattered strands stuck out at the edges.

  A clock ticked, unseen.

  A young Barkley smiled from a photo on a bookshelf. He and his friends wore Victorian dress and neck collars. The label read: Macbeth, Oxford University Dramatic Society, 1973.

  The scent of regret and former greatness filled the room.

  Above the professor and beside the shuttered windows hung a frame containing a square scrap of parchment between glass panes, but Dave could not read the blurred black characters.

  “I see you’ve noticed the famous fragment from Cave Four,” the professor said. “Deuteronomy 32:8. ‘He set the boundaries of nations according to the number of the Children of Israel.’ In this particular copy, however, the text reads not the ‘Children of Israel’ but the ‘Children of God.’ In one stroke, it affirms the text of the Septuagint and exposes the pagan roots of our treasured first monotheism.”

  The professor smiled at Dave. A challenge glinted in his eyes.

  Dave squirmed involuntarily. Bible criticism did that. He was all for enlightenment and reason, but academic scholarship often undermined the traditional Jewish narrative. His personal solution was to ignore the academics. Scientific theories changed every other day, unlike the timeless teachings of the Torah.

  “One word variation,” the professor continued, “and our understanding of the Bible changes forever. Behold the power of the written word.” The professor raised his glass and drained it.

  “Now,” he said, “what is this delicate matter you wanted to discuss?”

  Ben withdrew newspaper clippings from his pocket and spread them on the desk.

  “Scroll jars,” he said. “Recently two were stolen, first from Ir Da’vid, then the Bible Lands Museum. Both jars were from—”

  “Cave Three,” the professor said. His smile disappeared. “Has your boss put you up to this?”

  The professor’s vehemence startled Dave.

  “Who?” Ben said. “Erez?”

  “Yes. Dr. Erez Lazarus. He’s been pestering me about scroll jars for months. ‘How many are there? Where are they?’”

  Ben caught Dave’s eye for a fleeting moment.

  “Erez didn’t send me, Professor. I didn’t know he was interested in the jars.”

  “Obsessed is the word. At the bidding of his Evangelical sponsors, obviously. They stop at nothing. I should know. They ousted me from my post at the university when I dared cast aspersions on their precious faith. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve resorted to thievery to get what they want.”

  “Why would Christian fundamentalists want the scroll jars?” Ben asked.

  The professor licked his lips and glanced at Dave.

  “Two thousand years ago, Jewish society was unrecognizable. With no single Bible canon to unite them, Jewish subcultures abounded. Those were chaotic days. The biblical texts were still in flux. The shadow of Rome fell over Judea. Apocalyptic groups sprouted like mushrooms. Each kept strict regimens of ritual purity and asceticism. Many of them united around a charismatic leader. The Judean Desert Cult that authored the scrolls was no different. Known as Moreh Zedek, the Teacher of Righteousness, he preached penitence, poverty, humility, and neighborly love. He condemned the priestly classes of Jerusalem for their perceived iniquity. His followers called him Mashiach, or Messiah, which
in Greek translates to…”

  The professor paused for dramatic effect.

  “Christos,” Ben said.

  “Wait a minute,” Dave said, unable to restrain his curiosity. “Are you saying that this Teacher of Righteousness was Jesus?”

  “No,” said the professor. “The scrolls predate Jesus by a hundred years. Early Christians must have based their theology on this earlier sect. Which explains the many parallels between Christian teachings and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Both propound legends of the dead rising and read them into identical verses from Psalms and Isaiah. The same sermons and beatitudes, almost word for word. Put differently, there was no historical Jesus, only a poor imitation of this earlier Teacher of Righteousness.”

  Dave whistled. He could see how that theory could ruffle a few feathers.

  “Now you may be wondering,” the professor continued, “what does this have to do with the scroll jars? Each of the jars from Cave Three bears an inscription comprised of three letters.”

  “Zedek,” Dave blurted and Professor Barkley eyed him with renewed interest.

  “Yes,” he said. “As in Moreh Zedek. This may connect the jars with the Teacher of Righteousness. Either they belonged to the gifted leader or contained his special message.”

  “So the thieves need the jars to find the message?” Ben said.

  The professor frowned.

  “Or they collect them as relics, assuming they have warmed to the idea that he really was the original Jesus. In all likelihood they have not and their goal may be simpler: to destroy all references in the archaeological record to the man who undermines their beliefs.”

  The professor refilled his tumbler.

  “This would not be the first time. 1948. Six Arab nations invaded the nascent Jewish State. Jordan captured the West Bank, including Jerusalem and the Dead Sea valley. When Bedouin shepherds discovered the scrolls, the Jordanian government confined their study to a group of foreign scholars that consisted almost entirely of Catholic priests. With the Six Day War in 1967, the West Bank fell into Israeli possession and with it the scrolls. The Israeli authorities, however, respected the Christian scholars’ prerogative to independent study and publication.

  “Which, I may add, took some time. The group delayed publication of their materials for over thirty years. The world first heard of the Teacher of Righteousness only thanks to the bravery of one member of the team, John Allegro, under whom I studied.”

  “So these scholars,” Dave said, “were trying to hide the references to Jesus in the scrolls?”

  “Not really,” Ben said. “The final texts were published in their entirety in the early nineties and contained nothing that controversial.”

  “That,” the professor said, “is not fully accurate. Many scroll fragments made their way onto the black market. Who acquired them? What did they contain? And then there is the matter of Father Roland de Vaux.”

  The professor indulged Dave’s blank look.

  “De Vaux was a Frenchman. A Dominican monk. President of the Palestine Archaeological Museum. Head of the team that studied the scrolls. He searched the scroll caves of wadi Qumran that the Bedouin had looted and discovered additional scroll caves. In the fifties he fully excavated the ruins of Qumran itself.”

  “I thought archaeologists never excavate an entire site,” Dave said.

  “Precisely. De Vaux prevented future researchers from corroborating his finds and theories. And it gets better.”

  Dave hazarded a guess. “He never published his findings?”

  “Very good! He died in 1971 without sharing a scrap, except for rumors of elaborate earthenware and coins. The scant materials that were eventually released, mere photographs and plans, revealed that de Vaux had committed another archaeological crime: he had failed to apply the principals of stratigraphy.”

  “Stratigraphy,” Ben explained, ‘is excavation by layers. Each layer is dated and interpreted separately.”

  Professor Barkley cut in. “A method developed, incidentally, by Thomas Jefferson over a half century earlier, and already applied in Palestine by the likes of Kathleen Kenyon, who excavated Jericho at the same time de Vaux dug Qumran. According to their correspondence, de Vaux and Kenyon were close colleagues.”

  “Kathleen Kenyon,” Dave said. “Didn’t she excavate the City of David?”

  “My, my,” the professor said. “Your friend is an excellent student.”

  “Professor,” Ben said, “are you suggesting that de Vaux sabotaged the excavation of Qumran in order to erase the tracks of whatever he found there?”

  Professor Barkley sank back in his chair.

  “I have no proof for any of this, of course, but a pattern emerges. Nameless forces within the Christian world have taken great pains to silence the truths connected to the scrolls.”

  Professor Barkley let his words sink in.

  “If you happen to come into possession of any such jars,” he added, “I would tread carefully. Very carefully.”

  Dave felt his palms moisten.

  A telephone rang down the hall and the professor excused himself.

  The new information flooded Dave’s mind. Fanatical Christians prowled the streets of Jerusalem, searching for the contents of the cooler bag that sat in his service balcony.

  “Ben,” he hissed. “I want it out of my flat. Now.”

  Ben chewed his fingernails. “Don’t worry. It’s safer there than anywhere.”

  “I don’t care about the damn jar—” He was unable to complete the sentence.

  Professor Barkley returned to his chair behind the desk.

  “My apologies,” the professor said. He turned to Dave. “What was the other matter you wanted to discuss?”

  Dave had almost forgotten.

  “The Foundation Stone,” he began.

  “Ah. Even Shtiya. The Weaving Stone. The point from which God wove the world. Or the Drinking Stone. The legendary source of watery depths beneath the Temple Mount.”

  “I told Dave that the stone itself lies within the Dome of the Rock,” Ben said.

  The professor hesitated.

  “That is the common consensus, yes.”

  “But?” Dave prompted. His insides twisted.

  “But,” the professor continued, “the full picture is more complex.

  “The Talmud claims that the stone served as a stand for the Ark of the Covenant. In order to support the Ark, the stone would have had to be flat and smaller than the Holy of Holies. The rock beneath the dome is neither. It is a large irregular mound of bedrock. The Talmud sets the stone’s height at only twenty-five centimeters.”

  “Where is it then?”

  The professor chuckled at Dave. “A student and a treasure hunter. Many have spent their lives in pursuit of lesser treasures. Ask Ben about the Copper Scroll. That should keep you occupied.

  “But to answer your question: no one knows. The Foundation Stone was last sighted during the Middle Ages. A number of eyewitness accounts exist.”

  Professor Barkley pulled a worn paperback from a shelf and turned the pages.

  “The Arab Judge Mujir ed-Din in the fifteenth century; Rabbi Moses Hagiz in the sixteenth. The Karaite voyager, Samuel son of David a century later. They all reported seeing a peculiar stone at the Temple Mount, a Foundation Stone that floated miraculously in the air and instilled awe in the hearts of all who beheld it.”

  The professor returned the book to the shelf. “Where the Foundation Stone traveled from there, I’m afraid, is anyone’s guess.”

  “I see,” Dave said.

  He could guess better than most where the Foundation Stone had landed and he had burned the one bridge that led there.

  ***

  Darkness had descended on the streets of Jerusalem as Ben drove Dave home. Beneath the mundane surface activity a world of biblical secrets and covert struggles simmered and slowly sucked him in.

  “Hidden scrolls,” he said. “Secret Christian societies. I feel like we’ve walked in
to The Da Vinci Code.”

  “If this were The Da Vinci Code, you’d be a beautiful female forensic specialist. And you might actually be of use.”

  “You’re the specialist, Ben. I’m the lead character. It’s my soul that’s on the line, remember?”

  Ben shook his head, then fell quiet. “Seems I owe you an apology. Maybe you are onto something.”

  Ben’s about-face gave Dave whiplash.

  “You think so?”

  “Yeah. We need to speak with Ornan and settle this once and for all.”

  Oh, brother. No way out now.

  “That might not be a good idea.”

  “Why not?”

  Dave told Ben of Shira’s reappearance. By the time he reached the bit about Ornan disconnecting his phone, the Toyota Yaris idled in the lot opposite his apartment.

  Ben drummed his head against the steering wheel.

  “What do we do now?” Dave asked.

  “Throw you off the nearest bridge, that’s what.”

  Dave sat in silence. On the whole, all was well with the world. He had Shira. Miraculously, the train of his life had jumped back on track. He had no desire to derail his destiny again.

  “Ben,” he said. “I’m sorry. Really, I am. I’ve driven you up the wall with all this hocus-pocus. But maybe you were right all along. Ornan was all in my head. I just needed a little push, a little confidence. That’s all. Let’s just let it go.”

  Dave pulled on the door handle. It didn’t open.

  “We’re going to finish what you started. Ornan won’t pick up? Fine. We’ll meet him in person.”

  “What about the delicate balance in the City of David?”

  “Screw that. If Ornan has the Foundation Stone, I want to see it. Lord knows what other artifacts he has stashed there. And I want to find out what he knows about the break-ins.”

  “Why would Ornan have anything to do with the break-ins?”

  Ben sucked in air. “There’s something I haven’t told you. I got the jar from Ornan. Said he bought it from a dealer. I didn’t make much of it until now.”

  “This isn’t really about the Foundation Stone, is it?”

  Ben ignored Dave’s question.

  “Let’s go Tuesday morning. Memorial Day. You’ll be in between jobs anyway.”