The Gates of Zion

The Zion Chronicles

Book One

The Gates of Zion

Bodie & Brock Thoene

www.thoenebooks.com

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Copyright © 1986, 2006 by Bodie Thoene. All rights reserved.

Cover illustration copyright © 2006 by Cliff Nielsen. All rights reserved.

Authors’ photo by Joe Dillon, Tuam, Co., Galway, Ireland. All rights reserved.

Designed by Dean H. Renninger

Edited by Ramona Cramer Tucker

Scripture quotations are taken from the
Holy Bible
, King James Version or the
Holy Bible
, New International Version®

NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.

This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the authors or publisher.

Printed in the United States of America

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This story is for Mama,

Bettie Rachel Turner,

who also happens to be

my best friend …

because she believed the promises

first among us all.

“
The Lord loveth the gates of Zion
.”

Psalm 87:2

For additional information and maps

for the Zion Chronicles series,

visit

www.thoenebooks.com

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Prologue

Qumran, near the Dead Sea, ad 68

Pale smoke from the oil lamp curled to the ceiling and hung suspended in the corners of the small stone room. Simon bar Gideon blinked hard and wearily rubbed his tunic sleeve across his aching eyes. Leaning back against the wall, he gazed at his unconscious seventeen-year-old brother, so still on the pallet beside him.

“Reuben,” he whispered sadly as he touched a finger to the blood-soaked bandages that covered the frail young man’s head. “So young —so young.”

Only a short time before the physician of the brotherhood had predicted that the boy would not live through the night. Clucking his tongue in despair, the physician had left Simon alone in his sorrowful vigil.

Simon leaned close to Reuben’s head and gently smoothed back a lock of dark brown hair from beneath the bandage.

“What of Mother?” he asked. She and their three sisters were still in Jerusalem, surrounded by the brutal Roman legions of Vespasian and Titus. “Can you not give me even one word of hope, Reuben?” he pleaded. “Did you come so far over the wilderness to die without a word concerning her fate?”

He wiped a trickle of blood from Reuben’s temple, then stared at the dark red stain. Had the blood of those he loved already been spilled in the streets of Jerusalem by some Roman sword?

“Speak, Little Brother. Only one word. Do they live still?” He laid his lips next to Reuben’s ear, his question answered by the shallow breath of the beardless young man whose wounds spoke more dramatically than words. “Your blood is mine,” Simon said quietly.

The tears stung his eyes. He took Reuben’s limp hands in his own and began to recite the Shema:
“Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God
is one Lord… .”

His voice was joined by another, steadily chanting from the doorway behind him. As they recited the ancient invocation in unison, Reuben’s breathing became even more labored until at last the rattle of death filled his throat.

Simon bowed his head and pressed Reuben’s hands against his cheek. “When he was a baby, these hands reached out to me,” he said, his voice ragged with pain. “He took his first step into my arms.”

I am sorry, Simon,
said the voice, his tone filling the simple words with deep compassion.

“They must all be dead—all of them now.” Simon mourned. “And I deserted them. Instead of fighting, I turned away to this—a life of peace, of studying the Word of God. I would have done better to have died with the Zealots!” Bitter pain made him clench his fists.

Jerusalem has fallen. You have a greater
purpose for your life than
to die of plague or famine behind those gates,
his companion comforted.
You are not finished yet.

“What is the use?” Simon threw the words. “Who will know or care what we do here?”

Jerusalem has fallen,
the voice said again.
What good would it
have done to have numbered yourself among the starving and the
dead?
Even the wife of the high priest was driven to wander
through the alleyways of the city in search of scraps. Those who
stole out beyond the city gates after dark for roots were crucified
by the hundreds each night. Every tree has been hewn down, all
made into the crosses that line the roads into the city. And when
they have served their evil purpose, they fuel the bonfires that
burn the dead bodies of our people. Such a death is not noble,
Simon. It is only death.

“How do you know these things?” Simon asked, his eyes still fastened on Reuben’s blood-streaked face.

Only an hour ago two Zealots stumbled into this compound. They
escaped death once, but it will find them soon enough, I think.

They say legions are coming here.

Simon sighed, nodded, then crossed Reuben’s hands on his chest.

“Then I have urgent work to complete.” He drew a deep breath and straightened his shoulders. “Is everything in Jerusalem lost then?

everyone dead?”

They say Titus began his assault on the North Wall. By day he
crashed battering rams against the fortifications. By night the
Zealots struggled to repair the breaches, resting only after
collapsing with exhaustion—or when death came. Two weeks ago
the outer wall fell, then the second wall. And last week the third
wall crumbled. When the legions swept through the streets of the
city, the survivors retreated to the temple and continued to resist.

For six days the battering rams echoed in the courtyards of the
Holy Citadel. Then it, too, was taken. The soldiers butchered—
killed everyone they found alive. Some escaped. A few—like your
brother, like the two men. But as they escaped, the smoke of the
Temple blackened the sky behind them.
The voice paused, then said gently,
I am sorry, Simon. Your family is dead. We will say kaddish
for them.

“And when the Romans come here, who will say kaddish when the last Jew is dead?”

Perhaps God,
the voice answered slowly.

“Then we must preserve the words of His promises.” Simon wiped his eyes and stood. “And when the words are sealed, then we, too, may die in peace.”

Yes, Simon. We have another way to fight against those who say
there is no God in Zion. Though we all descend to the grave and
Israel be empty, God still lives.

Simon turned toward the speaker in the doorway, a kindly appearing, gray-bearded old man. “Then I will return to my pen and fight my enemies with peace in my heart.”

Simon walked slowly across the dark, deserted courtyard to the now-empty writing room. He unlatched the door and opened it, looking around the long stonework area as though he were seeing it for the first time. Two dozen scrolls neatly wrapped in linen lay on the wooden table at the far end of the room. Tomorrow they would receive a final coat of pitch before being sealed in the clay jars and hidden in the caves on the barren hillsides around Qumran. Only this scroll, the book of the prophet Isaiah, remained unfinished.

Wiping his hands on his robe, he crossed to his writing table and sat down, lovingly touching the new leather stretched out before him.

How long, he wondered, before the eyes of man would read the words he so carefully copied from the worn and faded master scroll?

In the dim light of the oil lamp, he strained to read the next line of the column:
“How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him
that bringeth good tidings, …”

His own voice echoed hollowly against the stone walls of the room.

An ache filled his heart as he remembered Reuben stumbling into the community only two days before. His feet had not been beautiful.

Without sandals, they were bloody, lacerated to the bone.

“
… that publisheth peace; that bringeth good tidings of good, that
publisheth salvation; that saith unto Zion, Thy God reigneth!”

The triumphant declaration seemed to mock him.
There will be no
salvation, no news of peace
, thought Simon as he carefully dipped his pen in the inkwell and copied the words of the promise he had just read.
Only the Romans reign in Zion now.
The promise of Isaiah would have to wait for another age, another lifetime.
Or will
it ever come?
he wondered fleetingly.

In a matter of days, the legions would come here to the community and kill, burn, and destroy in the names of Titus and Vespasian. Only the sacred writings would be safe. The Word of God would sleep quietly in a cave until another time to come—who knew how long?

—when men would hear the promises and see their fulfillment.

Slowly Simon reached out a trembling finger and reverently traced the words of the prophet. He did not fear his own death. But he did fear the fire that would inevitably follow the slaughter.
The scrolls
must be preserved! Help us, Yahweh!
His silent cry reached out to the God of Abraham.

He drew a breath as the faces of his family crowded his memory.

Surely the God of Israel would not forget His promise. Surely He would remember Jerusalem!

Simon brushed away the tears with the back of his hand and once again dipped his quill into the ink. Every letter, every jot must be perfect. Nothing could be changed or deleted.
The Temple has been
burned,
he mourned.
Were any of the holy scrolls saved, or do I,
Simon bar Gideon, hold the last of the Word that promised a
nation would live again where now there are only ashes?

The thought of the legion filled his mind. Only a few days’ march from where he now sat, someone was sharpening the sword that would end his life.
Quick! I must do this carefully but quickly,
he resolved. He and his compatriots would steal the final victory from the Roman holocaust.
Together,
thought Simon,
we will be
Guardians of the Promise even as we die in silence.

PART I

THE CELEBRATION

I know that God promised all of Palestine to the children of Israel.

I do not know what borders He set. I believe they are wider than
the ones proposed. If God will keep His promise in His own time,
our business as poor humans who live in a difficult age is to save
as much as we can of the remnants of Israel.

David Ben-Gurion, 1947

1

The Discovery

November 29, 1947

“
Antikas! Antikas!
” the old Bedouin shepherd shouted as photojournalist Ellie Warne entered the mahogany-paneled study of her uncle’s home in the New City of Jerusalem. After six months in Palestine she understood the word well enough. For an unsuspecting tourist lost in the maze of the Old City souks, it usually meant that a piece of the true cross or the actual crown of thorns was being offered for sale to the highest bidder.

“
Antikas!”
The old man smiled a broad, toothless smile and whacked his young companion on the shoulder in hopes of making him a little more enthusiastic.

Ellie rubbed a hand wearily across her forehead and resisted the urge to turn around and go straight back to bed. What had old Miriam been thinking when she let these two con artists into a room filled with actual archaeological antiquities? Not to mention the fact that she had roused Ellie out of bed with the worst case of flu
ever
, just so she could look at what was most likely phony junk. For three days Ellie had stayed home from her work at the dig. Sick and weary, she wanted only to rest, to sleep. Her uncle Howard Moniger, after all, was the archaeologist. She merely photographed the finds.