“The name sounds familiar.”
“He was one of the leaders of the first Jewish revolt against Rome, in 66.”
Daniel filled Ted in on the details, as he had with Sarit.
“And you think this really was the same man?”
“It seems very unlikely that he would have gone to Britain. There’s no obvious reason why he would have done. On the other hand, as I was telling Sarit, we know very little about him.”
“Telling who?”
Daniel blushed as he heard sniggering from the driver’s seat.
“Okay, you got me there.”
“I won’t pry,” said Ted. “But regarding travelling from Judea to Roman Britain, remember that both Britain and Judea were parts of the Roman empire. And the Romans did encourage trade between different parts of their empire. That was one of the main reasons for having an empire.”
“But I thought the trade was supposed to be for the benefit of Rome.”
“As long as they got their cut, they didn’t mind the locals making a profit too. It kept the natives docile and made them all the more servile to Rome.”
“But Bar Giora wasn’t a merchant, Ted. He was a soldier — or at least a rebel leader.”
“Maybe he started off as a disgruntled merchant who became a rebel. The thing I don’t understand is who did he marry? It’s unlikely that he would have brought his betrothed with him to Britain while travelling for trade purposes.”
“Well it’s hard to read actual names, especially names that are not normally written in Hebrew script, because the Hebrew alphabet doesn’t use vowels. But the name of the woman appeared to be something like Lanevshiah which isn’t exactly an ancient Jewish name that I recognize. And her father was called something like Farashotagesh, which sounds vaguely Persian.”
Ted thought about this for a while.
“I was going to say, it’s more likely that he married a local girl. If he felt strongly about it, and if he was wealthy, her father might have agreed to her converting to Judaism in exchange for a high bride price.”
“The trouble is that in Jewish marriages, the bride price was a kind of promise in the event of divorce. A sort of ancient prenuptial agreement. But then again, if he was a wealthy man generally, then maybe mammon and love would have overcome religious objections. Did the ancient Britons have strong objections to religious conversion?”
“No not really. They were pagans like the Romans and they followed the general pagan tradition of worshipping the local Gods — often even finding equivalence between their Gods and other people’s Gods. But the problem is those names don’t sound too much like iron age British names… or Roman names.”
“The ketuba was signed by two witnesses. One of them had a Jewish sounding name — presumably a member of Bar Giora’s entourage.”
“Who was that?”
“Barach.”
“That sounds familiar.”
“It sounds like the Hebrew word Baruch meaning blessed. I suppose it could be considered like the name Benedict. But if it was Baruch, it would have had a Hebrew letter vav to serve as a placeholder for the oo vowel.”
“Wait a minute,” said Sarit, from in front of them. “What was that Hebrew name again?”
“Well the name on the ketuba looked like Barach, which in modern Hebrew would mean ‘he ran away’.”
“Now I remember!” said Sarit excitedly. “I thought it sounded familiar. There’s a character called Barach in the Ulster Cycle of Irish mythology.”
“Of course!” Ted exclaimed. “I thought I recognized your accent!”
“What’s the Ulster Cycle?” asked Daniel.
Sarit spoke again.
“It’s a collection of myths and tales dating from around the seventh century but set round about the time of Jesus. Barach was a Druid priest who advised Conchobar Mac Nessa, the greatest king of Ulster. The story goes that Barach saw the sky getting dark and interpreted it as an omen telling of the death of Christ. And when he told this to Conchobar the king was overwhelmed with grief.”
“That’s right,” said Ted. “You certainly know your Celtic legends. I think there was something about him hacking at a tree in grief and anger until an old wound from his head started bleeding again and he died. That’s Conchobar I mean, not Barach.”
“Well presumably this is all just coincidence,” said Daniel.
“Oh yes,” said Ted. “I don’t think anyone’s suggesting the legends were true. They were originally oral pagan legends, but by the time they were transcribed, they’d probably been edited somewhat by monks to bring them into line with Christian beliefs. But the point is that the name Barach could be a local name. It doesn’t have to be this…”
“Baruch,” Daniel added.
“Okay but you said there were two witnesses.”
“Well the other was a name was very easy to read. It’s a name of Hellenic origin, but it was a name that was found in several members of Herod’s family. Aristobulos.”
Daniel was expecting some comment from Ted in response to this — expecting anything but the reaction that he actually got. For when Daniel said the name, he noticed that the look on Ted’s face was one of shock — the man was absolutely shaken to the core.
Chapter 49
“Why can’t we go through there?” asked Shir.
She was pointing to a bank of machines at the far right end of passport control where people were just placing their right hands and then walking through. Julia thought about how to explain it to an eight-year-old.
“It’s a special machine that can read people’s hand prints.”
“What do you mean ‘reading’ them?”
“It can tell who they are by their handprint. And if it recognizes them, it lets them through automatically, so they don’t have to stand in the queue like us.”
The queue was long and didn’t seem to be moving, so as usual the girls were getting impatient.
“So why can’t we use it?”
“Because it’s only for Israelis.”
“That’s not fair,” said May.
“In order to use it, you have to register with them beforehand and they can only register people who live in Israel.”
Romy was pointing in another direction.
“Then why can’t we stand in that line over there?”
Julia looked round, wondering if she had indeed missed the chance to stand in a shorter queue. Of course the problem was you could never really tell. You could join what looked like the shortest queue only to discover that another queue was moving faster. In fact in Julia’s experience, that was usually the case.
“That’s a queue for Israelis only too.”
“But why can’t they use the machine? Then we could stand in that line?”
“Because not all Israelis have registered to use the machine. And if they haven’t registered, then it hasn’t got their records.”
The discussion fizzled out, but the twins and Romy kept looking over at the hand-scanner wistfully, as if wishing that they too could use it. Julia relied on the scanner to keep them distracted and pre-occupied while the queue crawled slowly forward. She knew that it would be another long wait at the baggage reclaim, but she remembered that the carousel had held the girls spellbound at LAX on their way to Disneyland and she assumed — translation: hoped — that it would be the same here in Ben Gurion Airport.
It was over an hour later that she passed through customs with the suitcase on a trolley and the girls on the suitcases, having relegated airport safety rules to obscurity. By that stage her mother, Helen, was going frantic with worry, as Julia had forgotten to switch her mobile phone back on after the flight. When the Sasson’s finally emerged groundside, it was Shir and May who spotted their grandmother first, followed a second later by Romy. But it was Romy who tugged at her mother’s arm and pointed to alert her.