The Sacred Blood (25 page)

“How did he get through?”

“He had a key,” one of the men replied. “An ID badge too.” He handed both to the rabbi.

“Eleazar Golan,” he read from the authentic ID. Cohen squared off in front of the intruder, arms folded across his chest, glaring down at the top of his head. “Look at me,” he said.

No response.

The man holding the gun grabbed a fistful of Ali’s hair and jerked his head back so that the green eyes had no choice but to see the rabbi. Deep red blotches on the Palestinian’s cheekbones were already darkening to blue, and his nose was bloodied and bent sharply to the right. His left eyebrow was split in half by a ragged gash oozing blood as thick as oil.

“You look Israeli, I’ll give you that,” Cohen said. “Very deceptive indeed.”

“He went inside,” the gunman informed him, pointing to the breach in the Temple Mount foundation. “Saw everything. It wasn’t until I spotted him making a phone call that we figured it out.”

Rage flushed over Cohen. “Give me his phone.”

The man passed it to him.

Immediately the rabbi huffed. He could tell by its cheap design that it was of the prepaid variety, most likely bought on a street corner for cash. His slim fingers adroitly navigated its simple menu to find any stored numbers. As expected, it was empty. Then he hunted for the last outward call—no doubt a second drone—and hit a green button to patch the number through. Someone picked up within two rings, but no reply came. On the other end, a muezzin’s chant swirled in the background. Cohen summoned his best Arabic and offered
“As-salaam alaikum.”

The call immediately disconnected.

Cohen smashed the phone against the wall. Then he bent at the waist and pressed his face close to the Muslim’s. “Whatever your real name is,” he hissed with teeth bared, “it will die with you today. No honor will come to your family because of what you’ve done here, I assure you. And for you, there will be no garden paradise on the other side, no rivers of honey, no virgins to pleasure you.”

The Palestinian’s green eyes boiled with hatred—a pulverizing stare.
“Allahu Akbar,”
he proclaimed. Then he spat on Cohen’s shoes.

“God is indeed great. However, though your words may honor him, your deeds mock Him. Blasphemy!”

And in Leviticus, the prescription for blasphemy was clearly written.

Cohen straightened, went over to a nearby wheelbarrow heaped with debris, and palmed a jagged rock. He stepped aside, told the gunman to remain where he was, and signaled to the others to come forth. Eleven more men came in turn, each taking up a formidable stone.

Crouching before Ali, Cohen held the rock tauntingly, turning it over in his palm. The Arab trembled, and it pleased him. “ ‘And he that blasphemes the name of the Lord, he shall surely be put to death; and all the

congregation shall certainly stone him.’ ”

The eleven men fanned out around the Palestinian.

The gunman backed away, still aiming the gun at Ali.

The Muslim bowed his head and began to loudly pray in Arabic.

Tilting his chin up, Cohen held out the stone in his right hand, paused . . . then brought his left hand down upon it as a sign to commence the execution.

The first stone flew through the air and struck bluntly, tearing open the scalp. Ali teetered severely but remained on his knees, his chant pressing on in an unrecognizable garble.

Four more stones pummeled the Palestinian, peeling the flesh and hair clean back from the skull, dropping him to the ground. The prayer abruptly ceased; the green eyes rolled back into their sockets, so that only twitching white orbs were visible. Froth bubbled from his lips.

Another six stones pulverized his face—the nose flattened, the cheekbones mashed, the jaw snapped inward. Teeth clattered out across the ground.

Cohen handed the twelfth stone to the gunman, who now stood with the pistol lowered.

The final bludgeoning strike brought forth brain matter in globules.

“Throw the body into the cistern,” Cohen instructed the men. “Then prepare with haste,” he said, pointing to the breach. “For the time is upon us.”

49.

Jerusalem

Since the Shrine of the Book housed the majority of the Dead Sea Scrolls recovered from Qumran, it was Amit’s home away from home. Thus the IAA had granted him his own key, thanks in part to the clout of his late friend, Jozsef Dayan.

Unlocking the glass entry door, he urged Jules into the dim space beyond—a corridor designed to invoke the feeling of spelunking through a cave. Coming in behind her, he led the way to the main gallery, which had been constructed in 1965. American architects Frederick Kiesler and Armand Bartos had designed the Shrine of the Book’s domelike roof to resemble the lid of one of the clay jars in which the ancient scrolls had been stored. Inside, the ceiling rose in concentric coils to a central oculus, lit by a gentle amber light.

Directly below the dome, an elevated platform commanded the center of the circular exhibition hall. There, a meticulous reproduction of the great Isaiah Scroll was displayed in an illuminated glass case that wrapped around a huge podium resembling a scroll handle. Other display cases spread along the room’s circumference featured additional scroll reproductions.

Amit had studied many of the originals, which were stored in an airtight safe beneath the gallery.

“It’s just over here,” Amit said, moving quickly along the looping ambulatory.

He stopped in front of a curved glass display case where faux vellums were laid against a black backdrop, top-lit by dim lights.

“This scroll came from Qumran, Cave Eleven,” he told Jules. “It’s called the Temple Scroll. Nineteen parchments totaling just over eight meters in length. The longest of the Dead Sea Scrolls. See the characters there? That’s Assyrian square script.” He pointed to the scribe’s writings, inked just below horizontal guidelines cut superficially into the parchment with a stylus.

She nodded.

“This was written by an Essene.”

“A follower of Jesus,” Jules proudly replied in a show of solidarity.

He smiled. “The Temple Scroll speaks about a revelation made by God through Moses. God basically explains what the true temple should look like—explicit dimensions, precise layout, how it is to be decorated, you name it. And its design is much grander than what Solomon or Herod built.”

“So what should it have looked like?”

He pointed up to a placard hanging in shadow above the case.

“See there?”

She moved closer, squinting to make out the details.

“The gray area is the Temple Mount that exists today,” he said. “The outermost square would be the footprint of the new and improved Temple Mount—a fivefold expansion to about eighty hectares that would virtually swallow Jerusalem’s Old City and connect the Kidron Valley to the Mount of Olives.”

This was tough for Jules to envision, since at fourteen hectares of sur
face area, the Temple Mount was already a massive construct, even by modern standards. “That’s a mighty ambitious building project.”

““According to the Temple Scroll, that’s what God specifically com manded. And of course you’ll notice where the temple sanctuary must reside.”

Focusing on the rectangular bull’s-eye inside the squares, she answered, “Directly over the foundation of the Dome of the Rock.”

““And does the design of the temple look familiar?”

It did. “Nested courtyards . . . twelve gates . . . ,” she muttered. She blanched. “Same as the model we saw at the Temple Society.”

“
Par
f
ait,
”
Amit said, praising her. “The courtyards mimic the original Israelite desert encampments where Moses and the twelve tribes would have set up camp around the tent that acted as the first mobile Taber nacle.”

Amit further explained that from the middle courtyard, there would be three gates in each of the four walls, each named for one of the twelve tribes of Israel. The expansive outer court extended eight hundred meters in each direction, enclosed by a perfectly square wall. From there, another twelve gates led out to bridges spanning a fifty-meter moat to the residential precincts surrounding the Temple City.

“The scholars who’ve studied the Temple Scroll, me included, have theorized that the Gospels are encoded with this stuff.”

“How so?”

“Three inner courtyards and three rooms in the temple—the Trinity. Twelve gates—twelve disciples gathered from twelve tribes. It’s built into the temple’s physical design,” he said, spreading his hands. “And Jesus himself references the temple’s design in Matthew nineteen, verse twenty-eight. Jesus says to his disciples, ‘I assure you: in the Messianic Age when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne, you who have followed Me will also sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.’ ”

She pursed her lips. “Amit, you know any theologian will say those passages are a metaphor for the afterlife and heaven.”

“Not so,” he said, correcting her. “Religious authorities in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all agree that the Messianic Age is a time of great peace and prosperity, which the Messiah will bring to the living earth prior to the Final Judgment—the End of Days, or whatever you choose to call it. This reference clearly describes a new kingdom in the here and now. And Jesus refers to himself as ‘the Son of Man,’ not only in this passage, but throughout the Gospels.”

Amit explained that the phrase “Son of Man” had actually been ascribed to many great prophets—human prophets—by God Himself. He used Ezekiel as an example.

“In the first sentences of Ezekiel two, when the prophet is standing in God’s presence, God says to him: ‘Son of Man, stand up on your feet and I will speak with you.’ Then Ezekiel states: ‘As He spoke to me the Spirit entered me and set me on my feet.’ ‘Son of Man’ is then used numerous times throughout the text. It’s a reference to an earthly prophet transformed by the essence of God. Same with Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the others.”

“But still in human form?”

“Of course.”

The implications shook her to the core.

“The Temple Scroll also goes on to spell out how this new kingdom should be governed and protected with a praetorian guard. There’s another scroll in the Dead Sea collection that is dedicated to a New Jerusalem—it details how this Temple City would flourish during two millennia of peace under messianic rule. That’s a lot of time to grow, so they’d certainly have envisioned a mighty big palace. I’m sure you’ll also remember that in the Gospels, Jesus points to the buildings on the Temple Mount and tells his disciples, ‘Don’t you see all these things? I assure you: Not one stone will be left here on another that will not be thrown down!’ ”

“Jesus’s prediction about the Roman destruction of the temple in seventy c.e.?”

He shook his head.

She rolled her eyes. “So what does the learned Amit Mizrachi have to say about it?”

“It could just as easily mean that Jesus was announcing the Essenes’ plan for the Temple Mount’s refurbishment—knock it down and rebuild according to God’s original plan given to Moses.” He paused to study the diagram again. “Which leads one to ask: was Jesus one of the architects of the Third Temple?”