The Aleppo Code (The Jerusalem Prophecies) (5 page)

BOOK: The Aleppo Code (The Jerusalem Prophecies)
9.35Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

“The Ark of the Covenant was not powerful in itself. What was inside the Ark provided the power … the shepherd’s staff … the most powerful weapon in the history of the world.” He looked across the room to the sofa. “Rabbi, I think you better take it from here.”

Bohannon was tired and frustrated, his body sore from the damage inflicted during the chase to save Annie and Kallie from their kidnappers. He wanted answers, not a long-winded lecture. But Rizzo’s mention of the world’s most powerful weapon grabbed his attention. Fineman wouldn’t let it go.

The rabbi spun a tale of the codex, a book written in the tenth century that contained the most accurate compilation of the Tanakh, the twenty-four holy books of the Hebrew Bible. It was captured by the Crusaders, ransomed by Jews in Egypt, hidden for centuries in a cave under the main synagogue in Aleppo, Syria, and returned to Israel 850 years later, in 1958. But, by then, only half remained intact.

While the book’s history was interesting, it was the story in the margins of the book of Jeremiah that brought Bohannon fully alert.

Fineman was staring through a darkened window, gazing absently into the Jerusalem night. “Did you know it was Aaron’s staff specifically that brought forth six of the ten plagues against Egypt?” He turned from the window and crossed the room to a bookcase, speaking as he searched the shelves. “Moses or Aaron stretched out their hand and used the staff to call down the plagues of blood, frogs, gnats, hail, locusts, and darkness.

“It was Aaron’s staff that Moses waved over the Red Sea to part the waters and lead Israel to safety, the staff that called down fire from heaven to destroy the rebellious Hebrews as Israel wandered in the desert for forty years.”

Fineman removed an old book from the shelves, carried the book across the room and laid it in Bohannon’s hands. “In rabbinical literature, particularly in this Haggadic Modification, it is taught that this staff has been handed down from generation to generation throughout the biblical history of man. That it passed through the hands of Shem, Enoch, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Ancient Jewish authors claim that Joshua used the staff to part the waters of the Jordan River and to hit the walls of Jericho before they came crashing down; that David used it to slay Goliath; that Solomon used it as his scepter when he sat on the throne of Israel; and that when Messiah comes—when the Temple is rebuilt and sacrifice returns to the Temple—Messiah will receive Aaron’s staff as his scepter of authority.”

“The Temple?” said Bohannon. “We’re back to the Temple?”

“Getting pretty interested now?” asked Rizzo, patting Bohannon on his good arm.

There was a glimmer of light flickering at the edges of Rizzo’s eyes, a sliver of that impish smile nudging the corners of his mouth. Life, struggling for space. For the first time in days, Bohannon felt hope.

But Fineman’s words, about the origins of Aaron’s staff, seized Bohannon’s attention once again.

“Rabbinical literature asserts that this staff was delivered into the hands of Adam when he was driven out of Paradise. The story is told that Aaron’s staff is a fragment of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, severed from the tree by God, for man to carry until the Messiah returns.”

“You’re kidding, right?” Bohannon slid forward in his chair, holding the book in front of him.

“Aaron’s staff was part of the Tree of Life?” asked Rodriguez.

“No,” said Fineman, returning to the sofa and sitting next to McDonough. “There were two trees in the garden—the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. It was the latter that God commanded Adam and Eve not to eat. When they sinned and God exiled them from the garden, God severed the staff from the tree and gave it to Adam. From there it passed down through the ages in the hands of Israel’s leaders.”

Bohannon looked at Fineman and McDonough. “Okay. So what does this Aleppo Codex book and Aaron’s staff have to do with us?”

“Only half of the original Aleppo Codex remains intact,” Fineman said. “Over two hundred pages have either been lost or destroyed, including a segment from the book of Jeremiah. But the Masoretic notes surrounding what remains of the book of Jeremiah tell a story that Jeremiah was the last person known to have possession of the Ark of the Covenant, the Tent of Meeting, and Aaron’s staff. We know what happened to the Tent. We don’t know what happened to the staff or the Ark.”

“Aye, and there’s the rub,” McDonough cut in. “For a long time, I wondered why there were so many recurring images of a budding shepherd’s staff in all the messages and clues left behind by Jeremiah on the mezuzah, in the grotto, and in his tomb. The purpose or meanings of the other symbols—the Tau symbol, and the scorpion and the others—have all fallen into place. But why the shepherd’s staff? What did Aaron’s budding staff have to do with finding the hidden Temple, or uncovering the burial place of the Tent of Meeting?”

“Which is where we come in,” said Rizzo.

“So where … I’m sorry,” said Bohannon, “but I still don’t see how the codex or Aaron’s staff is involved in the search for the hidden Temple, or the Tent of Meeting.”

Rizzo grabbed a sandwich off the plate on the table and pulled a red-handled Swiss Army knife out of his back pocket. After carefully cutting the sandwich in quarters, he turned to face Bohannon, wiping down the blade with a napkin.

“Before Doc was killed,” he said, “he was in his room, talking with the old man we met in the library of St. Antony’s Monastery. When I gave up and went to bed, they were going through an old book. The two guys from the Temple Guard who rescued me grabbed that book and brought it with them. It was an incomplete version of the codex. This Aleppo Codex thing is what got Doc killed.

“Here’s what I think,” said Rizzo, taking a bite and chewing heartily. “Hey … Missus Fineman! This is great. Thanks.” He turned back to the group. “I think Jeremiah was trying to tell us something. I think there was a third message on the mezuzah, a message from Jeremiah, something about Aaron’s staff. That’s what the guys with the Temple Guard believe—what they told me the Prophet’s Guard believes. That Jeremiah was the last guy with this awesome weapon and that somehow—whether through the scroll, the mezuzah, or the scribblings in the margins of the Aleppo Codex—they will find the clues to reveal what Jeremiah did with the staff, where he hid it. Jeremiah was big into hiding stuff. Why wouldn’t he hide the staff, too?”

An audible rustle circulated around the room. Bohannon could feel the excitement level ratcheting up.

“I asked those guys why they didn’t reveal the secret before—the secret of the Temple, the secret of the Tent, or now of the Staff,” said Rizzo, leaning against the door leading to a small dining area. “They said they knew they had not fully discovered all the secrets. They knew the message that was on the scroll, from when the code breaker came to the monastery, and there appeared to be other clues. Their incomplete copy of the codex told them about the power of Aaron’s staff but not what happened to it. That’s why they are not giving up, why the Prophet’s Guard is still hard on our heels. They want Aaron’s staff, and they want its power.”

For a heartbeat, silence joined them. Tom was about to raise an objection …

“Hang on,” said Annie. “I hear the history and I hear the legends. But there is one thought I can’t escape. It’s God’s power. We’re not talking about a stick’s power, or an Ark’s power. We’re talking about God’s power. And God’s not going to allow his power to be used for evil. Who cares if the Prophet’s Guard gets the staff? In their hands it will be a dead piece of wood.”

“Yes, you are right,” said Fineman, inching forward on the sofa. “All power is in the hands of the Creator. Yet, there are many things we humans don’t know. None of us can see God’s ultimate plan or understand his ultimate will. Isaiah has written, ‘“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the
LORD.
“As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”’ Perhaps the staff will have no power in the hands of God’s enemies. But then, tell me, why has God brought you here? Why all these clues about Aaron’s staff from so many different times, different places, different people, all coming to completion in this group of people? You
have
been called. So,
why
have you been called? What is your role and purpose? What is God’s purpose.”

He looked around the room and his eyes settled on Bohannon. “We don’t know,” said Fineman. “We do know that the Prophet’s Guard has searched for centuries and risked everything to gain possession of the staff and that their adversaries, the Temple Guard, have fought just as earnestly to protect it. Both groups believe the staff could have power inherent in itself. We don’t know.”

Fineman turned his attention back to Annie. “This is no coincidence, no accident, that you are here. If it were, your friends would have perished in vain and I don’t believe that’s true. I believe God’s plan is at work in the world and you were enlisted to bring part of that plan to fruition. I don’t know why you or what part—and neither do you. I don’t know if the staff itself has any power. I don’t understand it all. But what am I confident about is that all you have experienced these last several months has been orchestrated by God. And now, I believe God has called you to find Aaron’s staff.”

“But, wait a minute,” said Bohannon, shaking his head. “Sammy just said nobody knows what happened to the staff, right?”

“Well, me bucko, that may no longer be true,” said Brandon McDonough. McDonough had the quick wit and the acerbic tongue all so familiar to the Irish, but his edges were softened by a passion to protect the downtrodden and a love of words, art, and beauty. “As me sainted mother used to say, ‘If God sends you down a stony path, may he give you strong shoes.’ I showed you the rubbing I made from the inscriptions carved into the top of the sarcophagus of Jeremiah’s tomb. When I got here, the rabbi and I began sharing information. I believe that the carving on Jeremiah’s sarcophagus was his last communication to us. It’s a statement about what he did with Aaron’s staff—that he brought it home … back to the garden of Eden.”

The guttural rattle of the air conditioner ricocheted around the room. There was no other sound. Even each person’s breathing seemed to be muted.

“Okay, I’ll ask,” offered Rodriguez, piercing the silence and indicting McDonough’s logic with reasonable doubt. “The garden of Eden? I’ve heard some pretty crazy stuff over the past few months, but this is probably the most bizarre premise any of us have thrown on the table thus far. I’m sorry. This is crazy.”

Fineman got up from the sofa and stretched his back. “You are correct, of course,” he said. “The existence of the garden? No, it’s just not possible.”

“There. Thank you, Ronald, for agreeing with—”

“Only one thing. No, three things.” Fineman stood in their midst and waited until all eyes were upon him. “First, on the last page of the Aleppo Codex are the names of some of the scribes involved in the project. At the head of those names are two hallmarks: Elijah, the man who was in charge of the final stages of its creation; and his son, who was the man who received the completed Codex—our old friend, Abiathar, head of the Jewish community in Jerusalem. Second, Elijah and Abiathar are direct descendants of Jeremiah the prophet.”

“But that’s not enough—”

Fineman’s raised finger stalled Rodriguez’s interruption.

“And the third thing are the notations in the Aleppo Codex around what is now considered the twenty-ninth chapter of Jeremiah—one of those missing from the original in the Israel Museum—where Jeremiah writes a letter to the Jewish exiles in Babylon. Those notes confirm what we know from rabbinical history, that in the year 594 Jeremiah traveled to Babylon at the request of King Nebuchadnezzar. Significantly, both Daniel and Ezekiel were exiles in Babylon at the same time, and Daniel was in charge of all facets of Nebuchadnezzar’s government and continued as one of the most powerful men in Babylon during the reigns of the emperors Darius the Mede and Cyrus the Great.

“But this is most important.” The rabbi looked around the room like a magician about to pull a rabbit out of a hat. “Following the flood of Noah, Babylon was the first city built by man. It was founded and built by Noah’s grandson, Nimrod. The Masoretic notes surrounding Jeremiah twenty-nine attest that Nimrod built Babylon—which literally means ‘The Gate of God’—directly over the location of the garden of Eden as a memorial to his family’s salvation from the flood. And that Jeremiah brought Aaron’s staff with him on his journey to Babylon for the express purpose of returning the staff to the garden of Eden, where it would be safe once again—until Messiah comes.”

Tom could hear Mrs. Fineman singing a Hebrew song in the kitchen, the laboring air conditioner syncopating to her voice. One word kept buzzing in his mind.
Again? Are we really going to do this again?

Across the room, Brandon McDonough held up the heavy paper containing the rubbing. “And I believe that is the same story being confirmed by this carving on the lid of Jeremiah’s sarcophagus in Cairn T—that Aaron’s staff has been returned to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, guarded by archangels of God, in the garden of Eden.

BOOK: The Aleppo Code (The Jerusalem Prophecies)
9.35Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

02 Unforgivable - Untouchable by Lindsay Delagair
Folklore of Lincolnshire by Susanna O'Neill
Wild Cards V by George R. R. Martin
Hey Nostradamus! by Douglas Coupland
The Gardens of the Dead by William Brodrick
Taken by Two Bikers by Jasmine Black
Robot Blues by Margaret Weis, Don Perrin
Beauty and the Wolf by Lois Faye Dyer
Entranced by Jessica Sorensen