The 13th Enumeration (21 page)

Chapter 46

Capernaum, Israel

After lunch, Zane returned to the dig’s screening area. Walking up to Rachael, he indicated the wheelbarrow and matter-of-factly asked, “Miss Neumann, do you have a full-sized wheelbarrow I could use? I could get a lot more dirt moved every trip if I had one. That kiddy-barrow you have there is okay, but not as efficient.”

Rachael looked up in mild surprise and with an even voice replied, “I’ll see what I can find for you tonight, Mr. Harrison.” With a touch of sarcasm she said, “For now though, you will have to use the ‘kiddy-barrow’ because it is all I have here.”

“No problem,” he replied, “just trying to get done as much as possible with every trip.”

Returning to the pile, Zane attacked it with renewed vigor. By four p.m. he had dumped another fifteen loads of debris. He did not see Rachael when he returned from his last trip, so he just left the wheelbarrow leaned up against the pile and returned to his tent. He put on a fresh pair of socks and headed down to the dig site. Some of the team was still working. Most of the activity was focused on the opening to the cellar they had discovered. They had removed about two feet of debris from the opening and exposed four steps.

Zane walked around the site, trying to stay out of the way. He noted the exposed outline of the dwelling. Frankly, he thought to himself, it took some imagination to identify the building. Not much of the first layer of stones remained of the foundation, and many of those that did were broken or no longer aligned. In his mind, he tried to rebuild an imaginary house over the outline. Who had lived here? What strange tales could these stones tell if they could speak? Picking up a handful of dirt, he smelled it, then let it fall through his fingers to the ground.
The promised land,
he thought to himself.
So much history, so many tears, a land with such an incredible future.

Leaving the dig site, he walked up the trail to the parking lot. He retrieved his computer and set off again down to the shore of the Galilee and the park service pier. Walking out on the pier, he sat down at the edge, hanging his feet over the side and relaxing for a few minutes before turning on his computer. Opening the file with his research paper notes, he read over the conclusions he had reached so far about Daniel’s prophecy.

Over the winter months, he had worked out what he considered a reasonable outline of the chronological details of the prophecy. According to Daniel 9:24, the entire prophecy was contained in seventy “weeks”—each “week” usually considered to be a period of seven years. The verse read:

Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy.

Verse 24 gave six goals which were to be accomplished during the seventy-weeks period of time. Zane underlined “during.” Verse 25 stated that “Messiah the Prince” would come after the first seven weeks. Verse 26 stated the Messiah was to be “cut off” after the sixty-second “week.” Since the sixty-two weeks followed the first seven weeks, it was reasonable to assume the Messiah was “cut off” after the sixty-ninth week. The final one week of the prophecy concerned an unidentified “he” who confirmed a covenant with the “many.” Most scholars believed the “he” was a yet future “anti-christ.” Zane wrote out a brief equation:

Zane looked over his outline again. This was the same outline he had originally pinned over his desk at college. Now, under point 2, it contained the additional information as outlined in his notes. There were several additional questions he needed answers to, but for now he was satisfied with the general outline of the chronological details.
 

As water lapped around his feet, Zane rewrote some of his notes. Since completing the second point of his outline, he had been working on the third point: the time aspect of the prophecy. He had been pursuing this for the past several weeks now. What he had been struggling with lately was the time units, or the so-called “weeks.” The Hebrew term used was
shabuwa
or
shabua.
Literally, it meant
seven
or
sevens.
So the prophecy was for a total time of seventy “sevens.”

Seven whats?
Zane asked himself. Most Christian writers believed the shabuwa represented seven literal years. So they figured the total time of the prophecy was four-hundred-and-ninety years. But as Zane had already proven, there was no reasonable starting point past 520 BC for the going forth of the commandment. Thus it was impossible to make the prophecy applicable to Jesus, because his birth did not take place until at the earliest 4–5 BC, and his ministry did not begin until
at least
26–27 AD. The four-hundred-and-ninety years fell well short of the five-hundred-and-twenty years necessary to lead to Christ.

Zane sighed. If the prophecy did not concern Jesus, then who was the “Messiah” of Daniel 9? Could the assumption that the shabuwa or “sevens” represented literal years be wrong? If not years, then what?

Zane heard someone walking down the pier. As the steps approached, they hesitated and then stopped. Zane looked up in pleasant surprise to see Rachael Neumann standing there, her sandals hanging from one hand. The reflected light of the lowering sun on the gently rolling water cast a shimmering light on her attractive face, accentuating her light green eyes. Looking up at her, he realized that while she was undoubtedly a fine-looking young woman, there was something else about her that he found attractive. Maybe it was her quiet, cool confidence, or something more, something intangible but just as compelling.

“Good evening, Mr. Harrison. Do you mind if I sit down?”

“No, by all means,” he said warmly, “please sit down. And please, call me Zane—my dad is Mr. Harrison. To what do I owe the pleasure of your company, Miss Neumann?”

Rachael sat down a few feet away and hung her bare feet over the side of the pier. Zane watched as the breeze from the Sea of Galilee caught a few strands of her dark hair, blowing it into her face. She brushed it away and replied, “I often come down here to watch the sunset. I saw you sitting here and thought it would be rude to pass by without at least trying to be friendly.”

Zane laughed. “You make it sound as if being friendly is a challenge for you.”

Rachael smiled in turn. “No, it’s not really that, it’s just that I am happy with my own company, and sometimes people misinterpret that as being aloof or snooty. I can be friendly and engaging if I try.”

They were quiet for a few minutes, enjoying the silence and the beauty of their surroundings. Both were loath to break the silence and interrupt the peace of the moment. The gentle sound of water splashing against the pier was soothing. In the distance, a bird could be heard calling. The damp freshness of the water mixed with the smell of the desert, and a hint of mustard and olive trees completed the unique scent.

Finally Zane broke the silence, his curiosity getting the best of him. “Miss Neumann, do you mind if I ask you a personal question?”

As if brought back to reality from a peaceful dream, she replied, “Depends on the question. And do call me Rachael, if you don’t mind. Miss Neumann sounds a little formal considering you’ve already held me in your arms.” She said the last in jest, trying to be funny. It didn’t quite come out right, and she was a little embarrassed.

“I was wondering about the onion. What was the onion for?”

Rachael blinked in confusion; it was not exactly the question she had been expecting. “The onion? What are you talking about?”

Zane chuckled softly as he replied, “After the paramedics took you away in the ambulance, I went back to collect my rope and gear at the cliff. I found your backpack, and besides the book of Psalms there was an onion. What was the onion for?”

Rachael’s rich laugh danced on the water as she replied, “It was for eating.”

“Eating?” he asked.

“Yes, I like to eat sweet onions. They aren’t really expensive, they’re good for you, and they keep the young men at a distance.”

She said the last with that lilt in her voice again. Zane, with a good measure of skepticism, replied, “Good thing then you didn’t eat that onion before you made that free solo climb of yours.”

She laughed richly. “Oh, but Mr. Harrison, I had two onions in that backpack.”

Zane looked over at her. She sure made a fitting picture there with the smile in her eyes, the light of the sun setting in her face, and the breeze blowing through her hair. It was one of those pictures he knew would bring him back to this point in time no matter where he was or how much time had passed.

Rachael pointed to the computer on his lap. “Brought your homework with you?”

Zane looked down at his notes. With a shrug and a look of frustration he said, “Yes, this is a research paper I’ve been doing for one of my classes, and I’ve reached a point where I’m kind of stuck. The paper has gone in a direction I didn’t expect, and now I am—well, frankly, I am unsure, confused, and more than a little disappointed.”

Rachael looked at him with interest. In the time since she had met Zane Harrison, not once had he seemed to be unsure, confused, or stuck. In fact, it was just the opposite. “If you don’t mind my asking, what is your paper about?”

Zane looked at Rachael to see if her interest was real or feigned. Only after reading a sincere interest in her expression did he start to explain.

“At the beginning of the school year, my professor gave each of us an assignment to choose one messianic prophecy from the Bible and then build a reasonable case, based on the available evidence, for or against its fulfillment in Jesus Christ. I chose the prophecy of Daniel’s seventy weeks. I started out thinking it was pretty much an open-and-shut case—most Christians seem to think it is. Instead, it’s turned out to be the opposite. In the first place, I found that the chronology of Ezra, Nehemiah, and the so-called ‘Artaxerxes’ of Christian interpretation did not match with the evidence of the Scripture. Ezra and Nehemiah, it turns out, were contemporaries of Darius, son of Hystaspes. Most accepted interpretations place Ezra and Nehemiah as contemporaries of Artaxerxes Longimanus. Unfortunately, in order to do this they have to ignore and modify several key chronological points. Then, to top it all off, Darius Zarindast comes up with his treasured artifact that does in fact show that Ezra and Nehemiah were contemporaries of Darius Hystaspes. So what started out as an attempt on my part to show that Jesus Christ did in fact fulfill the prophecy of seventy weeks has ended up disproving it.

“Not willing to give up, I’ve started the paper completely over. So far, I’ve identified the starting point and a general outline of certain key chronological events. What has me stuck is the measure of time used in the prophecy. You see, I really can’t be completely unbiased here. I want to see if I can find a way that Jesus fulfills the prophecy without sacrificing reasonable scriptural evidence. So far, it doesn’t seem possible. The only reasonable contextual starting point is in 520 BC during the reign of Darius Hystaspes. No matter how you try to stretch it, four-hundred-and-ninety years from Darius Hystaspes does not reach to the time of Christ. I want to believe Jesus fulfilled the prophecy, but I don’t see how it can work.”

Zane finished describing his conundrum with a flourish. Rachael had listened attentively to Zane’s entire explanation. For a few moments, she thought about what he had said. She did not know much about the book of Daniel in general, or the prophecy of seventy weeks in particular. But she could see Zane’s predicament.