There was a moment of awkward silence, and then Natasha turned and continued.
Bennett looked around as they entered the Shrine.
“The building in which you are standing was opened on April 20, 1965,” Natasha said. “I wasn’t born yet, but my grandfather was here for the big inaugural gala. He actually helped design it, along with two American Jewish architects, and they based it on an ancient interpretation of the War of Gog and Magog.”
“Really,” said Bennett, suddenly intrigued. “How so?”
“Well, you see, the Shrine of the Book is similar, in a sense, to your National Archives Building in Washington,” Natasha explained. “It protects and displays some of Israel’s most important founding documents, namely the Dead Sea Scrolls. Most of the scrolls were written by a Jewish sect called the Essenes, who lived near the Dead Sea around 200 BCE. Now, what’s interesting about the Essenes is that they were convinced that the War of Gog and Magog was imminent. They saw themselves as the Sons of Light squaring off against the Sons of Darkness, and they believed that as soon as the war was over, a new Temple would be erected, and the Messiah would come. So when the architects were looking for a theme for this building, my grandfather suggested this war between good and evil, this War of Gog and Magog. The dome we saw outside symbolizes the lids of the jars in which some of the scrolls were found, and it is painted white to represent the Sons of Light. That large wall you saw upstairs, the one directly opposite the dome, is black to represent the Sons of Darkness, to convey the spiritual tension between the two warring camps.”
Natasha led them down the dark, cavernous hallway to the main exhibits. The air was cool and dry. An ever-so-slight breeze was coming from a state-of-the-art air-conditioning and dehumidification system, and the farther they went, the more intrigued Bennett became. In one display were the actual clay jars in which several of the scrolls had been found, and sure enough, the lids looked exactly like the curvaceous dome they had just seen. In another display were small, ink-stained quills, the very ones used by the Essenes to write the scrolls so many centuries ago.
And then they entered the main exhibit hall, a circular room — directly underneath the great dome — in the center of which was a large, drumlike glass display case lit from within and designed in part, it seemed, to look like the end of a scroll handle.
Bennett let go of his wife’s hand for a moment and bounded up the six steps leading to the curious display. He was stunned by what he found. Inside the case, unfurled and carefully mounted on a large internal drum, was a nine-foot portion of the Isaiah Scroll. Like a kid outside of Macy’s at Christmas, Bennett pressed his face against the glass to see it for himself.
“You are looking at the oldest Bible manuscript ever found,” Natasha said reverently, almost in a whisper. “Written at least two centuries before the birth of Christ, it’s at least one thousand years older than any previously known copy of the book of Isaiah.”
“And this is the real thing?” asked Erin.
“We usually put a replica on display, for security,” Natasha replied, “but we knew you were coming, so we bent the rules a bit. Yes, that’s the real thing.”
“That’s incredible,” said Bennett, peering through the glass at parchment so incredibly well preserved. Here was a scroll penned two hundred years before the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Yet it contained the words of the very Hebrew prophet who had said the Messiah would be born of a virgin, live in Galilee, be a light to the nations, suffer and die for the sins of mankind, and yet rise again and “prolong His days, and the good pleasure of the Lord will prosper.” And Bennett was less than two inches away from it. He could scarcely take it in.
Natasha then led them over to a smaller display case to one side of the rotunda. “This one is called the War Scroll, laying out the Essenes’ vision of the War of Gog and Magog.” She translated a passage from the ancient Hebrew:
“And that’s not all,” said Natasha. “Follow me.”
Now she led them to another case in which a white card mounted in the corner said “4Q285, fragment 4—from The Rule of War.”
Again Natasha translated from the Hebrew:
“Sound familiar?” Natasha asked.
It certainly did, Bennett realized. The words had been seared into his memory in the weeks leading up to their fulfillment. “Ezekiel 39:3 and part of verse 4,” he said in amazement. “Did Dr. Mordechai know these were here?”
“Absolutely,” said Natasha. “These aren’t usually the scrolls and fragments we have on display. But when Uncle Eli published his ‘Ezekiel Option’ memo on the Web, my grandfather called him and invited him over to see these. They’ve been here ever since.”
“They were on display when the firestorm happened?” Erin asked.
“They were,” Natasha confirmed. “My grandfather believed Ezekiel’s prophecy was about to come true and that the War of Gog and Magog would trigger the coming of the Messiah. He and Uncle Eli only disagreed about which coming that would be — the first or the second.”
“How about you?” Bennett asked. “What do you think?”
But they were interrupted by a door they hadn’t even seen opening behind them, and there stood Natasha’s grandfather, motioning them to follow.
22
Now in his eighties, Yossi Barak still had a young man’s zeal.
He wore small a yarmulke, or kipah, atop a shock of silver hair; he had a neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper beard. His wrinkled, wizened face betrayed a lifetime of struggle in a land that had seldom known peace. Standing there in baggy trousers and a slightly frayed blue Oxford button-down shirt covered by a brown cardigan sweater, he was a bit stooped, and he steadied himself on a beautifully carved wooden cane. But it was his green eyes, shining full of passion and curiosity even behind gold-rimmed spectacles, that drew Bennett’s interest.
“Come, follow me,” Dr. Barak said in a thick, gravelly voice that suggested a pipe or cigar was rarely far from his lips.
Natasha waved them forward, and together they slipped out of the Shrine’s main exhibit hall, through the doorway, and down a dim hallway to a cluster of small offices attached to a conference room and a lab of some kind, marked with signs that read Authorized Personnel Only in English and Hebrew. A moment later, the foursome entered a wood-panled conference room, where Dr. Barak directed them all to take a seat in any of the dozen leather executive chairs that surrounded the large, rectangular mahogany table.