1.

Esplanade adjacent to the Southern Gate, Opposite the Vestry, Qumran Complex, Wilderness of Judaea – 3 p.m. Friday, March   20, AD 33.

‘Eli . . . Eli. . . . lama sabachthani?’

Terrible . . . forlorn  . . . the cry, every word a deafening, anguished remonstrance wrenched from the very bottom of his tortured soul, echoed silently across the barren expanse festering under a cloudless cerulean sky.

Not a breeze stirred in the treacle-like air cloaking the ground in a futile attempt to hide the shame. The sun . . . distant . . . merciless . . . a dispassionate red ball of fire . . . witnessed the torrid scene impassively.

Starkly etched against the unforgiving light, three solitary crosses stood out like warts on a maiden’s fair skin.  On each a man . . . twisted . . . grotesque . . .  hung scarecrow-like in outright agony, their suffering palpable. 

The cross he was nailed to, stood to the west of the other two. Looking down, his neck muscles on fire, he saw that most of the eager crowd gathered there from early morning to witness the sport had long since dispersed . . . the thrill and excitement over. All that remained were the faithful few . . . and Death . . . patiently waiting on the outskirts.

2.

About twenty cubits away, lounging under a gaily-striped pavilion erected especially for him to witness the executions, Pontius Pilate, Roman military governor of the Imperial Province of Judaea, heard the cry. Turning to his aide Augustus he asked, ‘Who is it calling? What is he saying?’

‘It is the one they call Jesus my Lord,’ Augustus, a man well versed in Jewish tradition and religious procedures, answered.  ‘What he said was “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”. But he is not calling his god, he is railing at the man who betrayed him, who put him on the cross, Jonathan Annas, the man who offered you the bribe. The words . . . it is a quote from one of their psalms ….’ Augustus paused, thoughtfully. ‘Actually, it could also be translated as My Power, my Power, why hast thou forsaken me?’

‘And why is that?’

‘Annas as the High Priest gives him the power to act as king or priest, depending on the circumstances. I don’t think he expected to be betrayed by the man he supported.’

‘I see.’ Pilate stared pensively at the scene out front. ‘Perhaps I crucified the wrong man . . . it should have been Annas instead.’

3.

On the middle cross Simon Magus, turning to his right, said through parched lips, ‘It is useless. You call in vain.’

Jesus in sheer agony whispered, ‘I cannot take it. I trusted Annas to come to our deliverance.’

 ‘You wait in vain,’ Simon answered. ‘For now …. it suits him to court with the Romans.’

‘False prophets!’  Judas  Iscariot, on  the  eastern  side of Simon hissed, his throat on fire.

‘I tell you this Judas,’ Simon said through clenched teeth, ‘that before the sun rises again you will be cast into the bowels of hell for betraying us and our brothers to the Roman pigs.’

‘You will be with me Simon,’ Judas croaked.

‘No traitor  …… you of a black heart!  It is  to be your lot, not mine.’ Turning  his head  to Jesus Simon said, ‘Be of good courage, I spoke on our behalf.’

Looking down with difficulty at the few remaining near his cross Jesus beheld his mother, accompanied by her sister Mary, the wife of Clopas, and his own wife, Mary Magdalene, pregnant with their first child, and . . . naturally, John Mark, the Beloved Disciple.

Seeing the white distressed faces of the women, he summonsed all his strength. Looking at his mother’s anguished countenance, indicating John Mark he said, ‘Dear woman . . . he will now be as your son.’ 

Turning  his head to look at the Beloved  Disciple  Jesus addressed

him: ‘Treat her …. like …. your mother.’

Then,  looking down at  Mary  Magdalene,  he simply smiled,  the

special smile she knew so well, reserved for only her. Words were superfluous; she knew what he was thinking.

A little while later, molasses minutes dragging like hours, he turned once more to John Mark. ‘I am thirsty,’ he said, indicating that he wanted the cup he had arranged the previous evening, the cup containing “vinegar” - spoilt wine laced with poison.

His handsome face torn by searing sorrow, John Mark placed a sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant. Wetting the sponge in the cup, he lifted it to the cracked lips of Jesus . . . once . . . twice . . . three times.

Mary Magdalene, looking up at her beloved husband’s violated body and pain-wracked face, could no longer stem the flow of tears she had been desperately trying to hold in most of the terrible day. She had been up the whole of the previous night when he, together with Simon Magus, was tried in the vestry. Powerless to do anything against the bitter betrayal of Jonathan Annas and Judas Iscariot she had to watch, helpless and forlorn, as in the early hours of the morning Pontius Pilate, against his will,  at the insistence of the  Annas group,  had  no option but to condemn Jesus to die on the cross.

Feeling her eyes on him, Jesus looked  down at  the woman he loved. As their eyes met, she knew she could never love another.

Her entire inner being steadily dismantled, the jagged knife of sorrow hacking at her heart, she  deliberately wiped her eyes, putting on a brave face she smiled up at him.  

Not long afterwards, he bowed his head.  Looking down at Mary Magdalene one last time before losing consciousness he said, ‘Do not fret for me woman . . .

‘It is finished.’              

4.

Shortly after three-thirty the tetrarch Antipas, a sly and cunning man,  well schooled in the  prevailing  Sabbath  rules approached Pilate.

‘My Lord, may I draw near?’ he asked obsequiously.

‘Come!’ Pilate granted permission for him to enter the pavilion.

‘My lord, I realize you are anxious to get back to Jerusalem.’ Pilate nodded. ‘These men have been crucified under Roman law.’ Seeing Pilate lift his bushy eyebrows he hastily added, ‘Rightfully so. But my Lord, you know from experience they may take days to die. I do not believe Your Eminence can truly afford the time.’

‘You have a solution then?’  Pilate asked, not unfriendly.  If it could work, at all feasible, he could get away from this dreary foreboding place.

‘Yes my lord. Our Temple Scroll . . . our laws provide . . . men that have been hung are not permitted to stay on the stakes overnight. As I am sure you are aware our Sabbath is fast approaching.  After  the sixth hour we are forbidden to pick up any burden.’

‘You have a suggestion then?’                   

‘If  Your Eminence  would  hand  these  men over to us to implement our own law …’  he  spread  his  hands imploringly, ‘it would solve your Lordship’s dilemma.’

‘And what would that be?’ Pilate asked, hope flickering in his mind. He’d had enough of this charade. Spending half the previous  night  on the  road from  Jerusalem  he’d been in this barren sinister place since well before dawn.         

‘My Lord, under our law condemned men must be taken off the cross, their legs broken, and then buried alive.’

‘By Jove I thought we were heartless,’ Pilate whispered aside to Augustus.

‘There is a cave nearby my Lord in which we can bury these men.’

Pilate looked at the crosses. ‘I see Jesus, the man you so conveniently condemned, seems to be dead already,’ he said, distaste in his voice.

‘We will bury him with them my Lord.’

‘Show me the cave,’ Pilate commanded.

‘Certainly Your Eminence,’ Antipas agreed, hiding a smile. Leading the way he showed Pilate a cave hollowed out of the side of the cliff on the edge of the southern end of the esplanade on which the crosses stood. Some distance down  from  the  top  it  could  be  reached by a narrow path running down to the edge of the esplanade. 

‘If we place them there my Lord the caves will be sealed before the sixth hour this evening. According to our law they may only be opened after a period of seven days. By then my Lord … I am sure they will be dead.’

‘And who will ensure this place is not opened?’ Pilate asked, still in a quandary as to whether to allow it or not. His position as Governor demanded – it was his sworn duty – to ensure the crucified men would die, but on the other hand, what could go wrong? The innocent one was dead already, the other two seemingly not far from it. Placed in a cave and left alone they would not last long. If the cave was guarded it would be perfect.

‘I  will  provide  a  guard  Your Eminence. Till the third day at least,’ Antipas offered, as if reading Pilate’s thoughts.

‘Very well,’ Pilate sounded relieved. ‘Do what you must. I want to personally witness the cave being sealed.’   

‘Your Eminence.’                 

                                                 5.          

Watching impatiently as Simon Magus and Judas Iscariot were taken down from the crosses, their legs broken . . . torturous cries of pain echoing in the eerie stillness . . . then duly carried up the path to the cave, Pilate instructed the Centurion to start arranging for their departure.

‘And the one they call Jesus?’ he asked. ‘He is dead?  It is strange.’

‘As is our custom my Lord,’ Antipas answered, ‘it is the duty of a relative to take him down and bury him. I shall instruct his brother James to do so.’

Beckoning the Centurion again, Pilate, indicating the figure of Jesus, commanded, ‘Pierce his side!’  It was a test to determine death.

Satisfied, Pilate ordered, ‘Very well. Take him down.’

John Mark, the Beloved Disciple, on hearing the words knew that Jesus must be dead. Feeling his heart plummet like a ton of lead into a vacuum, he steeled himself to look up at the figure on the cross, mentally preparing himself for the worst.

Startled at first, then wiping his eyes to clear his vision, he saw blood ooze from the wound in Jesus’s side. Trained in medical matters he realized the significance immediately. His heart lifting like a flock of startled birds he whispered to James, brother of Jesus . . .

               ‘He lives!’

Book One

 One__________________  

1.

Mossad Headquarters, King Saul Boulevard, Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel – Wednesday, March 15, 2006.

Maxwell Dayan, head of the Department of Historical Records situated on the seventh floor of the Mossad headquarters building, put down the phone, a troubled expression on his face.

Picking up the internal line to Chaim Weizmann, he waited for the Director to answer.

‘Maxwell!’ the deep voice echoed on the line. ‘Not more trouble please.’

‘Not trouble yet, but it could become quite serious if the wrong people got hold of the info I’ve just been given.’

‘Sounds serious.’

‘The present contender to the David Line is coming on a visit.’

‘It is serious. Now? Of all times!’

‘His first time, but yes, he’s due any day.’

‘Too late to try and dissuade him I suppose?’

‘Yes. But how in any event do you dissuade a man that doesn’t even know that he is?’

‘Point taken. You’d better come up and see me. We’re going  to  have  to  appoint  a  Nanny. The last thing we can afford is an incident,  given  the  recent  withdrawals from the Strip and the West Bank.’

As he put down the receiver Max, as he was generally known, sighed deeply. His department, far from being just a data collecting and recording facility as the name implied, was, in many ways, one of the Mossad’s most crucial units. Seventeen highly trained professional men and women posted all over the world, reported to him on a nearly weekly basis, their duties mostly unusual and sometimes . . . even bizarre.

The David Line fell in between.

2.

Israel, Sunday, March 19, AD 2006.

In spite of being Jewish, a prize-winning journalist of international repute and in the last few years a highly successful best-selling writer, Joshua Nazareth had never been to Israel. This was his first time.

He was not a tourist. His mission was simple. He was here to do research for a book he was going to write, a very definitive one. Something he’d wanted to do for a very long time. Something he promised the only woman he ever loved.

Gunning the rental round a sloping curve . . . unaware of the grey sedan discreetly tailing him ever since he left Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv . . . he enjoyed the ride.      

   The road he was on wound its way along the side of the Mount of Olives on the east of Jerusalem through Bethany,  down towards Jericho and the Dead Sea.

Barren hills with the odd Bedouin camp it gradually descended to about 3800 feet, 1300 feet below sea level. Exuding a strange kind of magic, an inherent beauty born of lying virtually untouched and undisturbed for centuries, it was a place so ancient it seemed older than the world itself.

Noticing the plaque on the side of the road informing the traveler that this particular spot marked Sea Level he smiled contentedly. It was strange but he felt a perfect peace within himself, something that had eluded him ever since she died.  Perhaps it had something  to do with  being in the land of his ancestors.

Twenty minutes later he traversed a low hill affording him a breathtaking  panoramic  vista  of  the  Jordan  Valley  with far away to his left the ancient city of Jericho.

Pulling off the bitumen road Joshua got out of the car, immediately aware of the thick heavy air clinging to his skin. Unfamiliar with such conditions he found it hard to breathe, perspiration forming on his brow. Not a place for weaklings he thought grimly as he let his gaze wander.

Straight ahead, he could barely discern Jordan  . . .  and in the very distance the Moab Mountains, the road he was on turning southwards.

‘So this Josh my lad is where your ancestors came from,’ he said softly, his ego dwarfed by the idea.

Getting back in the car, he pulled onto the road again. The countryside was now changing into what he thought looked very much like a moonscape, strange little hillocks and bumps vying for space. Several minutes later, going round a long downwards sloping curve, he was suddenly confronted by a whole herd of camels crossing the road. Startled he applied brakes, coming to a stop a few feet from the animals, instantly confronted by an indignant bearded camel driver gesticulating wildly at his window.

Rolling down the window, he asked what the problem was. Not understanding a single phrase of the torrent of words assaulting him he held up his hands. ‘Can you speak English?’ he asked as soon as he could get a word in edgewise.

‘You tourist?’ the annoyed man wanted to know.

‘No. Yes actually. I suppose so. What’s wrong?’

‘What’s wrong? You dunna know?’

‘No I don’t.’

‘You Americano? No? Doesn’t matter. What’s wrong you upset my hanimals!’

‘I upset your animals?’ Joshua asked amazed. ‘I’m driving on a road meant for vehicles. What’s your camels doing here?’

‘What my hanimals doing here?’ the heavily swathed man asked, spit flying from his mouth. ‘I crossing the road! You canna see that? This is my land. You see? My land! You wanna kill my hanimals! What you do now?’

‘I didn’t kill your animals now did I?’ Josh asked amused.

‘You wanna to. You pay!’

Suddenly the penny dropped for Josh.  This guy was out to milk the unsuspecting tourist, a favourite pastime of the locals in most any country.

‘Okay,’ Josh grinned, ‘How much?’

‘Two hundred shekels!’

‘You’re crazy,’ Josh bargained, enjoying the little encounter.

‘Me crazy? You crazy! You go like this,’ the camel driver gestured with his hands, indicating Joshua was recklessly speeding. ‘You nearly kill my hanimals! You crazy! You pay two hundred!’

‘One hundred!’

‘Two hundred!’

‘No deal,’ Joshua said, commencing to roll up the window.

‘Hokay, hokay,’  the man said, seeing he was going to lose the round. ‘One fifty! You make my hanimals scare.’

‘One hundred!’ Josh insisted, reaching for his wallet.

‘Hokay. What I can do?’ the camel driver eyed the money hungrily.

‘Thought so,’ Josh said, handing over the ransom. ‘You guys are all the same.’

‘You go now,’ the driver said, ‘No kill no more hanimals!’

‘Promise!’ Joshua pledged.

‘You want picture?’

‘What?’

‘You take picture my hanimals. One hundred shekels.’

‘No thank you. I don’t have a camera,’ Joshua lied.

‘Too  bad,’  the  driver  mumbled  as  he walked off to shoo the beasts out of Joshua’s way.

Yep! Joshua thought amused. Milk the tourist!

A few minutes later, he’d left the man and his camels behind, the road now circling the northern shore of the famous Dead Sea. Finding himself humming a tune Josh smiled. It was good to be here. He should have done it long ago. In some weird and wonderful way he felt as if he was coming home.

A little while later, he pulled off the road again. Getting out he was struck by the intense colour of everything.

To his right the northern shore of the Dead Sea shimmered, glinting gemlike in the late afternoon sun, its yellow cliffs soaring over 1200 feet into the deep blue sky. Like silent watchers Joshua thought. Sentinels of eternity, voiceless witness to the troubled West Bank . . . source of eternal conflict. But then, this strange barren land had been the seat of contention since before history began, when the gods still walked the earth and traversed the skies in their Shems.

Looking up into the shimmering sky, he wondered if there was truly a god up there somewhere . . . if indeed there was a god at all. If the machinations and abominations of mankind was anything to go by . . . he, whoever he, or it, or what may be, must be either fast asleep or totally uncaring.

What kind of god could allow the atrocities of the twentieth century alone? Never mind the rest of man’s blood soaked history! If he was omnipresent and omnipotent as he was held up to be then why in hell hasn’t he till now intervened . . . even just once? Couldn’t he just one time have said, ‘Enough!’?

As if in answer four massive Israeli Army trucks thundered past, leaving him in no doubt as to where the present State of Israel found itself. He knew that the recent withdrawal from the Gaza strip and the intended disengagement from the West bank was a political time bomb fraught with unforeseen pitfalls. Israel was walking a tightrope at present. Hell no, they’ve been on a tightrope ever since the country was founded. Nothing’s changed.

Getting  back  into  the  car  he  pulled onto  the  road again, smiling grimly, struck by the irony of it all. His family boasted a long line of “Men of God”. His father was a Rabbi, as his father had been, and his father . . . on and on till you could not trace them anymore. If ever there was a tribe of Levi, priests by birth, his must be it. Yet he himself had never felt the need for religion. He had completed his Bar Mitzvah simply be- cause he had to,  to please his Dad he supposed ….  to comply with tradition.

Joshua smiled wryly.  He was fully aware he was a bitter disappointment to his father who had never doubted he, as the eldest son, would follow in his footsteps. When he had renounced the Faith, his father all but had a heart attack. In the end his younger brother had done the duty the father had demanded . . . the young Rabbi Moses Nazareth. And Joshua became an outcast, a man of the world.

And now, as they would see it, to add injury to insult, he was going to write a book about the Jew who became a god, Jesus of Nazareth. Judaism versus Christianity.

In the one corner ladies and gentlemen, weighing in with centuries of tradition, we have the Rabbis Joseph and Aaron Nazareth! In the other corner, the usurper of the Faith, the  corruptible  Joshua  Nazareth, defender of blasphemy and insurrection!

3.

Reaching the cliffs overlooking the Dead Sea Joshua once again pulled off the road.

Somehow, he thought, this enormous salt lake belongs in this strange enigmatic country. It couldn’t be anywhere else. Situated between Israel and Jordan, forming part of the border between the two countries, its surface was 1,340 feet below sea level, the lowest water surface on Earth. Occupying a north portion of the Rift Valley it covered approximately 405 square miles.

Looking east he marvelled at the majestic façade of the plateau of Moab.  Towering 4,400 feet above the sea it was about twice as high as the plateau of Judaea to the west.

Dear Lord he thought, this place is seeped in history. No . . . it is history.   It was here that Jesus walked,  where he taught,  and inadvertently engendered the greatest religion the world has ever known.

It was here his forefathers fought to throw off the hated Roman yoke and establish the 1000 year Jewish Empire. Thousands of years of struggle, suffering, bloodshed, tears, strife . . . epitomized by the mountain-top site of Masada situated more than thirty miles away on the western shore where the Jewish Zealots’ last stand against the Romans in ad 70-72 ended in heart-breaking tragedy.

Joshua smiled wryly. How ironic. Israel was still, after all this time, fighting a daily battle for its survival. The military vehicles on the road almost outnumbered the civilian.

And in its fight to survive it might just in the end obliterate one of the most important and historically significant sites in the world.

The massive projects Jordan and the Israelis mounted to divert water from the Jordan River, the main feed of the Dead Sea, for their water needs and irrigation has caused the surface of the sea to drop alarmingly for the past 40 years.

He knew that in 2002, the two countries agreed to construct a pipeline linking the sea with the Gulf of Aqaba, but if it was ever done, he had no idea. Somewhere he’d read that if the situation was not remedied the Dead Sea would most probably disappear almost completely by the year 2050. He hoped, seeing the lake was important economically for tourism and low-cost extraction of salt and certain chemicals like magnesium and potassium chloride, that somebody would do something   constructive before that transpired.

Looking to his right he saw what he had really come here for, the ancient ruins of Qumran . . . more accurately, Khirbet Qumran . . . source of the contentious Dead Sea Scrolls.

Situated more than a hundred feet above the road on a terrace of fine-grained sedimentary rock containing calcium carbonate, silt, and clay minerals, more commonly known as marl, the ruins were anything but impressive. But then, unlike Masada, its main purpose had not been that of a fortress. It was more of a safe haven, a refuge, where men like Jesus and Simon Magus, and Simon Peter, Judas Iscariot, and of course, the beloved Disciple, John Mark, had conferred, planned, and hidden away from the wrath of the Herods, practicing an alternate form of Judaism, a New Way.

Looking up to the ruins Joshua was struck by an eerie sense of loss, even solitude . . . a remote feeling of déja vu.

A huge multi-wheeled articulated truck roared past rocking his car. From  the other side two tourist buses passed more sedately, followed by a string of smaller vans and three Army trucks.

About to step onto the road another monster of a truck bore down on him causing him to step back smartly. Hell this was a busy road! Wouldn’t it be absolutely ironic if he got himself killed out here?

Like that one terribly appalling never-to-be-forgotten evening. Blood, smelling like hot lead, dripping sluggishly from the walls and the shattered seats, pooling on the debris-strewn floor . . . and hardly recognizable human remains plastered in between in a bizarre cameo of instant death.

Shaking his head to clear his troubled mind Joshua got back into the car. Seconds later, pulling back onto the road he was narrowly missed by another thundering behemoth, its horn blaring like an angry elephant bull in full charge.

‘Hell Nazareth,’ he chided himself, ‘that was close!’

From nowhere, like a furtive shadow in the dead of night, a shudder passed down his spine with cold snake-like fingers, a deep sense of foreboding invading his mind.

Strange . . . he thought  . . . I’ve been here before!