The Second Messiah

He heard a bird cry overhead, looked up, and saw a hawk circling. He tried to focus, knew that this moment was important. Not one to be rushed but savored. What happened in Rome had changed everything, he felt sure of it.

Now Hassan turned to stare down at the graves of Robert and Margaret Cane. He stared for long time until a wave of fury exploded inside him. Without a word he violently crushed the lilies with his shoe until they were a trampled mess of green stalks and white flowers. He stamped and kicked, scattering the gravel chips. All control gone now, Hassan hawked a mouthful of saliva and spat upon the graves.

Then he wiped his lips with his sleeve and strode back to join his brother.

8

QUMRAN

DEAD SEA

ISRAEL

“It’s pretty incredible. Take a look for yourself. I wanted you to be the first to know, Jack. You’re the one who found it, after all.”

Jack Cane, wearing a pair of white latex gloves, steadied the magnifying glass in his hands. “Are you sure about all this, professor?”

His excitement mounting, Jack studied the faded images on the two-thousand-year-old parchment. It lay partially unrolled on the table, the scroll edges sepia brown, fragile from centuries of lying buried in an earthenware jar. They were in Professor Green’s tent, a stand-up affair cluttered with boxes of reference books, a cot, a table, and folding chairs.

Jack tried to read by the light of an overhead butane lamp and using the magnifier. Faded lines of ancient Aramaic characters had been exposed in the unraveling. “I mean, really sure?”

Professor Donald Green frowned. “Sure about all what, Jack?”

“Your translation.”

Green’s delight was replaced by a tone that bristled with irritation. “Of course I’m sure. Yasmin and I stayed up working on it after everyone went to bed. Once I managed to unravel another three inches of the parchment, which was about as much as I could without causing damage, I went to work deciphering the exposed text. I wouldn’t have had Yasmin fetch you from your bunk if I hadn’t been certain.”

Jack rubbed his gritty eyes, tried to focus on the ancient writing in front of him and ignore Green’s annoyance. It was, after all, past 5 A.M. “I’m glad you did, professor. I was half awake and couldn’t sleep either.”

Professor Green was a bear of a man, bristling with energy. Distinguished-looking with gray hair, he wore a khaki tropical shirt with epaulettes, one of them hanging loose and missing a button. He removed his half-moon glasses and gave an excited nod. “Okay, go ahead. Translate lines three and four.”

“Give me a chance, professor. My Aramaic’s pretty basic and not up to your standards, and here and there the writing’s faded.” Jack’s mind felt sluggish, despite his elation. Like most of the other forty-strong crew he had stayed up late, drinking beer to celebrate the scroll’s discovery in one of Qumran’s caves. He’d only climbed into his cot two hours before being woken again by Green’s niece.

The professor hovered at his shoulder. “Let me tell you again what it says—”

“It’s okay, I think I’ve got it.” Jack studied the faded parchment symbols and his voice was hoarse with shock. “You’re right. It’s incredible.”

Green said excitedly, “Of course I’m right. No scroll like this has ever been discovered at Qumran. We both know with absolute certainty that this scroll’s unique.”

Jack knew that Green was right. In 1947, two hundred yards farther up the valley of Qumran, the first of many hundreds of the famous Dead Sea scrolls had been discovered by Bedouin tribesmen. Most of the finds dated from between 250 B.C. and 70 A.D. and had been hidden by the Essene community. They had remained hidden for thousands of years.

The discovery was to rock the world.

The leather parchment, papyrus, and copper scrolls documented the life of the Essenes—an austere Jewish religious group that had been in existence during the time of Jesus Christ. Copies of parts of the Old Testament, as well as unknown New Testament records, were also found.

The restoration and translation of the scrolls was directed by Father Roland de Vaux, director of the Ecole Biblique, a French-Arab theological school in Jerusalem. Dominated mostly by Catholic priests, the process had taken decades and became mired in controversy.

It took almost fifty years after the discovery for the Vatican to finally claim that all the contents had been made public. But the slow pace of de Vaux’s work and its extreme secrecy fueled a theory that some senior Vatican churchmen wished to suppress damaging information revealed in the scrolls. The theory was never proven, but the Dead Sea caves produced such a rich mother lode that digs were ongoing, even after more than six decades.

And now he, Jack Cane, had uncovered another ancient scroll. But one that was very different from all the others that had been discovered.