Rabbi Gabrielle Ignites a Tempest (39 page)

Silence was a high price to pay, but, to
Itamar's mind, the return of the original fragments was worth it.
In his negotiation with the Holy Father's secretary of state, he
held a significant trump card. During his first encounter with
Cardinal Fornenti, he revealed that the fragments had already been
assembled and read. In the current discussions, Fornenti repeatedly
asked about what Israeli scholars had deciphered, only to receive
from Itamar courteous refusals. In the end, the Church never
learned exactly what it had bartered away. Had the cardinal learned
about a roster of students and a curriculum taught in a remote
desert yeshiva where Jesus had very likely trained for his
ministry, the agreement might never have been consummated.

Itamar had prevailed upon Zabronski not to
bring up what he had learned about Father Benoit until after the
more important details of the exchange were agreed upon. After a
signal from Itamar, the policeman finally addressed Cardinal
Fornenti, saying, "Your Eminence, it is my duty to relate police
information that is certain to be of interest. No doubt you've
missed your esteemed Father Benoit Matteau here in Vatican City.
It’s hard for us not to believe that you were not aware he's
returned to Israel. What you probably don’t know is that your
priest has made his last journey to the Holy Land. His body was
discovered in the Judean Desert at Qumran."

"I presume that means he’s deceased," the
prelate stated while furrowing his forehead to show that he was
indeed surprised.

"Yes. Shot five times with an automatic
weapon. Our department in Jerusalem received an anonymous call
telling us where his body was discovered."

"Why?" asked the cardinal, no longer
disguising his astonishment.

Zabronski curled his lips outward as a
gesture of theatrical puzzlement before saying, with an equally
disingenuous sigh, "These matters are always complicated.
Particularly when it’s a man of God. You see, Your Excellency, for
several months now, our people have been conducting an
investigation into the death of Dr. Timothy Matternly. In the
course of this investigation, we questioned suspected Bedouin. I
can tell you that their leaders were quite alarmed to learn that
Father Benoit was present at Cave XII in Qumran where one of their
sons was shot.”

“How did they learn that?” the cardinal
interrupted, no longer concealing his suspicion.

“Information travels quickly in the desert
when gossip is the currency of conversation. We fear that the
Bedouin tribe believes Father Benoit bore some responsibility in
the death of their son. Nothing goes unpunished in a tribal
society. "

"The Holy See will expect a thorough
investigation into my priest's demise."

"Of course, why of course, " Zabronski
replied. "Unfortunately, we have already investigated for several
weeks now and can’t offer you much satisfaction. The desert does
strange things to the human brain. People who inhabit the region
are quite insular, you know.” Once again the police officer paused
to assess the prelate before fabricating a false smile. When
Cardinal Fornenti failed to respond, he said, “No one in my line of
work enjoys unsolved homicides, but one could argue how the death
of this priest works to everybody’s benefit. It frees you from
witnessing one of your brethren tried in public for major felonies,
and, of course, now you don’t have to feed him indefinitely in the
papal cafeteria. On the other side
,
my
government would take no pleasure in prosecuting a churchman.
That’s bound to have untoward ramifications.”

The cardinal had to think about that for a
long time. His priest, Benoit Matteau, had died an honorable death
in the service of the Holy Father, a death he most probably would
have wished for himself. There could be no more fitting a venue
than for him to perish in the wilderness he so loved. The Pope's
chief executive said nothing to the Israelis other than to clear
his throat in a series of guttural emissions. He ended their
conversation by delegating his staff to implement the exchange of
sacred fragments.

Itamar and Zabronski remained in Rome for
eight days to work out details. Before releasing its cache of
fragments, the Vatican reserved the right to have scholars examine
the original Jesus document in Paris. It was agreed that Israeli
experts from the Antiquities Authority would inspect the Vatican
texts in Rome where, no more than thirty-days later, the final
transfer would occur.

Flying home to Tel Aviv, Zabronski asked Itamar if,
once the Vatican had taken possession of the Jesus fragment, it
would make the document public.

"My best speculation," Itamar replied, "is
that it will be locked up for years, particularly when we display
Matternly's fragments in the Shrine of the Book. Today's Holy
Father is far too conservative to concede that Jesus trained at a
yeshiva designed to produce prophets. But then again, someday a new
and progressive pope may allow Catholic theology to enter the
twenty-first century."

The two men fell into silence, scanning
reading material they had brought along for the three-hour plane
ride. Eventually, Itamar nudged Zabronski and when he had his
attention, the archeologist asked, "What are you going to tell
Gabrielle about the investigation into Matternly's death?"

"Is there a choice? Would she'd believe me if
I told her we're making progress?"

"Incidentally," Itamar said with a lift of
his eyebrows, "I've been meaning to ask who told the Bedouin about
Father Benoit?"

"When Gabby told us that the Dominican priest
had returned to Jerusalem, I shuddered to think of a long and
probably fruitless search. Who wants to arrest a priest and face
the anger of his fellow clerics? So I decided to cut to the chase
and visit Sheik Telfik banu al-Fahl in the Ta'amireh encampment.
I've had a good working understanding with the old coot for several
years now. We drank many cups of coffee and ate too many kebabs. In
the course of our conversation, I told him that the Uzi that killed
the youth, Mumud banu-Nazeem, was purchased from a gun dealer in
Bethlehem. Then I revealed how we had learned that Benoit
accompanied Tim Matternly to Cave XII on the very day Mumud was
murdered. The poor old sheik looked absolutely devastated. He and
Benoit had been lifelong companions. It's one thing to be betrayed
by a stranger and quite another by a close friend. The next thing I
knew, there was a call telling us where to look for the body of a
dead priest."

***

Gabby ran into trouble with the prime
minister's office. When his staff searched for funds to build a new
wing at the Shrine of the Book in the memory of Tim Matternly, they
were embarrassed to find that monies meant for museum expansions
had been siphoned off to build new religious schools to appease
Orthodox members of the Cabinet. Ezra Raviv's chief-of-staff
pleaded poverty to Gabby, who responded that under the new
circumstances she would write her dissertation at the University of
Chicago. If the prime minister wanted to throw her in jail for the
disclosure of state secrets, so be it. Seasoned politician that he
was, Raviv was accustomed to being threatened. Instead of calling
Gabby's bluff, he personally phoned a Jewish oilman in Edmonton,
Canada, who had long been a generous benefactor of the Israel
Museum and raised the necessary funds.

In the end, Gabby agreed to work with
selected faculty at the Hebrew University, accepting the prime
minister's personal promise that construction of the Timothy
Matternly wing at the Shrine of the Book would commence in the
third quarter of the coming year. This she wanted to happen as soon
as possible because the first fragments looted from Cave XII had
arrived on the scene had just begun to surface in the international
antiquity market.

Itamar confided that an anonymous seller in
Prague approached the deputy-curator at the British Museum in
London to sell a parchment containing eight verses from the Book of
Amos, the earliest of the Hebrew prophets canonized in the Old
Testament. That sounded to Itamar as if it could be a document
stolen from Cave XII before Father Benoit and Tim Matternly
interrupted the looting operation. Under pressure from the
Antiquities Authority, the curator in London made it clear that,
unless the seller could establish the document's provenance, the
Museum wasn't interested.

Designing the Matternly Wing at the Shrine of the
Book began within three months, time Gabby used to rewrite major
portions of her thesis for eventual submission to the faculty at
the Hebrew University. The new working title was:
The Reliance of Hebrew Prophecy Upon Training, Not Divine
Inspiration
.

She took Itamar's advice about scheduling the
release of an article in
Modern Archeology
to coincide with the exhibition of these new texts at the Shrine of
the Book. Sarah Eisenhart had planned the official groundbreaking
for the Timothy Matternly wing to occur simultaneously.

The deciphering of fresh documents from the
time of Jesus attracted international attention. Ezra Raviv
personally invited Donaldo Cardinal Fornenti to the groundbreaking
but was not surprised when his Excellency sent a subordinate to
represent the Church of Rome. Leaders of the Greek Orthodox,
Abyssinian, Anglican, Maronite and Coptic churches, plus Sunni
Muslims and all branches of world Judaism were not as timid,
sending high-ranking emissaries. Tim's family came from New
Bedford, Massachusetts. Eight of his colleagues from the University
of Chicago's School of Archeology traveled to Jerusalem. Gabby
learned that the university's president thought so highly of Tim's
work, and what glory it brought to his institution, that he paid
for their travel from a slush fund he maintained for pet projects.
Archeologists and historians from over forty countries requested
invitations.

Gabby was particularly honored to deliver the
major address, introduced by the prime minister. The police were so
worried about security that they insisted on moving part of the
groundbreaking ceremony indoors, to Binyan ha-Umah, the National
Auditorium. There, Gabby—nervous, but feeling as if she were merely
acting as Tim Matternly's proxy—addressed the packed auditorium in
Hebrew. Simultaneous translations in eight languages were available
for foreign visitors.

"Mr. Prime Minister, dignitaries from around
the world, fellow archeology and history enthusiasts," she began at
a well-practiced pace. "I address you in a language used by the
writers of these scrolls. Mixed with Aramaic, Hebrew survives now
as a spoken tongue to link us with our ancestors. So it is fitting
that, as we touch the past through newly discovered ancient
documents, we do so in the same language.

“The Israel Museum and the Shrine of the Book
have agreed to make CD copies of these fragments available to you,
exactly as they were collected from Cave XII at Qumran. Most of you
have either read or heard about the texts we have assembled. When
you compare these with the raw material, many of you will believe
we have made errors. Feel free to assemble the letters, words, and
phrases as you please. Some of you will probably wish to perform
DNA comparisons, which we have not done, but plan to in the
future.

"I say 'we' because while I struggle to speak
this language, I don't have the knowledge of Aramaic or ancient
Hebrew to have completed this monumental assemblage. The late Dr.
Timothy Matternly and I both depended heavily on a Jewish scholar
whose anonymity we're pledged to maintain. It is sufficient to say
that without his invaluable help our compilation would not have
been possible."

Gabby next outlined the method she and Rabbi
Zechariah Schreiber used to compile the texts, then pledged that,
once a few legal issues were resolved with Tim Matternly's estate,
his software would be released for scholars to use free of
charge.

"I wish to conclude," she said after a pause
to indicate a change of direction, "with a few final observations.
The earliest Hebrew prophets mentioned in Genesis through
Deuteronomy were men, and presumably a few women, who practiced
sorcery, divination, the reading of omens, interpretation of
dreams, acts of clairvoyance, foreseeing the future, and
conferencing with dead spirits. Early prophets, such as Nathan,
Samuel, Elijah, and Elisha, who carried the imprimaturs of
prophetic guilds, claimed to be intermediaries between kings and
Yahweh.

"By the eighth century before the Common Era,
a second group of prophets emerges. Men such as Amos, Isaiah,
Ezekiel, Joel, and Jonah, to name only a few, appear to be
thoroughly independent from the guilds of their predecessors. Like
Moses and Jeremiah, they are often reluctant to speak for God but
appeared to have been inducted to serve as His mouthpieces. We
might consider them co-opted to reveal God's wishes on a vast
number of subjects, from military and political strategy to
personal morality, the treatment of widows, orphans, and the
impoverished. Today, the prophecies of these venerable teachers are
considered ethical bedrock for western civilization.

"Tim Matternly's discovery and research at
Qumran has led me to appreciate that Old Testament prophecy did not
stop in the Persian era with the last of this second group, Ezra,
Haggai and Zephaniah. Quite the contrary. With the advent of harsh
Roman rule in the Middle East, a new prophetic model arises. I
would like to categorize what emerged in Judea-Palestine at the
time as a new form of prophecy. This new breed of prophets no
longer waited for God to possess or inspire them. On the contrary,
these later-day prophets become proactive solicitors of divine
will, volunteering to be God's mouthpieces. And what they propose
is a new covenant with Yahweh, based upon personal not
institutional communication.