The Boudicca Parchments

Chapter 85

“It was sold to us by a corrupt Jordanian official — for a large sum of money, I might add. We spent many months studying it. We knew that it was the work of a Jewish traitor, but we wanted to know how much truth — or how little — there was in it.”

“And?”

“What it told us was a horror story. It was not just Boudicca’s daughter who came here from Britain, but a whole host of her people. Maybe not a vast army, but certainly more than just a small party. She came with a large entourage of handmaids and ladies in waiting. There were some men to — or at least boys who soon grew into men, cutting their teeth in a guerrilla war in Rome, culminating in the Great Fire of 1964. They weren’t just a small band of followers. Many of the women were the widows of the warrior leaders of the uprising of the Icheni.”

“You knew that they were called Icheni?” Ted intervened.

“Oh yes! And we also realized that it had been misread when translated. Josephus’s handwriting had a peculiarity that caused him to almost completely close off the Kaf, making it look like a Samech. He didn’t just do it once; he did throughout the manuscript, or at least the portions that we found. Thus the myth of the Essenes was born. Until then, the stories about the Essaoi by Philo and Pliny — written and pronounced differently — had been legends about ascetics. Josephus’s Icheni became confused and conflated with them.”

“But there were some ascetics amongst the Judeans,” said Daniel. “Josephus even travelled around Judea in the company of one for about three years.”

“Yes, that is true. There were such people amongst the Judeans, but they were few and far between. However with Josephus’s manuscript being misread by the Greek translator and apparently referring to the Esseni, the floodgates to a new myth were opened.”

Ted was confused by this line of reasoning.

“But why would a few misunderstood references to a relatively small number of refugees from Roman Britain, give rise to such a powerful and sweeping legend?”

“To understand that, you must understand what really happened. The vanquished peoples of Britain didn’t just come here and keep themselves to themselves. They intermarried with some of the Jewish rebels, following the depraved corrupt example of Simon Bar Giora. And this was the cause of the great division among our people that set brother against brother!”

“How so?” asked Ted, still far from convinced.”

“Although our religion permits conversion and receives sincere converts, it must be based on true belief, not just a desire for marriage, And it must be done in a proper way, according to Halacha — Jewish law.”

“And these conversions didn’t?”

“In some cases, there were no conversions. Just impure marriages. But others were against it, even at the time.”

“That’s why they kidnapped his wife,” said Ted. “That’s why the Jerusalem rebels didn’t want to elevate him as a leader of the rebellion — because he was married to a stranger.”

“Exactly,” said HaTzadik. “Just as his followers were married to others in her entourage. They were deemed to be a poison in our system, a leprosy in the camp, a cancer in our midst. And the other rebels wanted to destroy them, to render our people pure again. But Bar Giora used the violent methods that he had learned from a woman — who had learned them in turn from her mother — to force the righteous among us to release the vile woman and her entourage unharmed. And it didn’t end there.”

“What do you mean?” asked Daniel, sensing from HaTzadik’s tone that something terrible and new was coming.

“As I said, many of the entourage married and intermingled. But a DNA study in 2006 showed that forty percent of Ashkenazi Jews are descended from just four women dating back to the first century of the Common Era — four women with a genotype that is more common in Europe than the Middle East. Based on Josephus’s manuscript, we believe that we know the names of those four women. Boudicca’s daughter and three other women in her entourage.”

“But that’s an incredible finding!” Ted blurted out, not quite realizing how Shalom Tikva’s mind was working. “That’s a major discovery that sheds new light on your people.

“Incredible and major to you, but horrendous to us!”

“But why?”

“I would not expect a goy to understand! Our religion is based on the premise of matrilineal transmission or orthodox conversion according to Halacha. We cannot let it be known that forty percent of Ashkenazi Jews are the descendents of non-Jewish women.”

Now it was Daniel’s turn for confusion. He could understand the historic concern with ethnicity in the religion. But why would matter today? The wife of Moses was a convert. Ruth — the grandmother of King David — was a convert. Why should this matter in the modern era?

“But that DNA study has already been published. You can hardly conceal it now.”

“The DNA study says nothing about the identities of those women… or their religion or ethnicity. Or whether or not they converted according to Halacha.”

“Then what’s your problem?”

“The problem is the manuscripts that reveal the origins of those women.”

“Manuscripts? In the plural?”

“The one that gives it away most clearly is the original Aramaic manuscript of Josephus’s Jewish War.”

“But you’ve got that!” said Daniel. “And how come none of that material appeared in the Greek version. I mean the name Esseni appears, but nothing about their origins in Britannia.”

“Presumably, it was redacted,” said HaTzadik.

“By Josephus?”

“Hardly. If it was his own translation, he wouldn’t have made the error of calling them the Esseni. The Greco-Roman translators probably had no vested interest in proclaiming the power of the vanquished tribes of Britain or for that matter the power of women — something that was even more anathema to their way of thinking than it is to ours.”

“So if you’ve got the manuscript, what’s the problem?”

Shalom Tikva’s face took on an ugly appearance.

“The problem — my brother Daniel — is the Domus Aurea and Temple Mount manuscripts.”

“You know about what’s in them?”

“We read about them when they were found. We obviously didn’t know their exact contents, but we had some idea based upon their obvious provenance as Hebrew text in an unrecognized language. And we knew that it would only be a matter of time before they were translated.”

“Then you know there’s nothing you can do to stop it. The truth is out there.”

“Yes it is. But there’s a limit to how much credibility can be placed on it. The real killer — if you’ll excuse the pun — was a ketuba between Lanosea and Bar Giora. But we’ve got that.”

“Your man Sam Morgan,” said Daniel, bitterly.

“That’s right. And now the last piece of the puzzle is that treasure. You see that’s the key to the whole thing. That treasure can prove a link between the manuscripts and Masada… and can effectively authenticate them. So now I must ask you to put the jewels back in the bag and hand it over.”

And just to make it clear how determined he was, he waved the grenade slightly, just enough to remind them that he had it and was ready to use it. Daniel began putting the jewellery back into the jute bag, slowly.

“Hurry up!” snarled HaTzadik angrily.

Ted knelt down to help Daniel. Then Daniel rose to a stooping posture and took a few steps towards HaTzadik, noticing as he drew closer that the pin was still embedded firmly in the grenade. Realizing that he had an opportunity, Daniel practically thrust the bag into HaTzadik’s free hand, knowing that this would momentarily deprive his adversary of the opportunity to pull the pin. In that same split-second he reached over and pressed on Shalom Tikva’s thumb, in an effort to force him to drop the hand grenade. But the manoeuvre failed as HaTzadik jerked his hand back, pulled the pin with the other hand that held the bag and then tossed the grenade behind Daniel.

Daniel spun round to see the grenade land somewhere on the ground. But in this darkened chamber it was hard to tell where. When HaTzadik pulled the bag out, light entered the chamber from outside. Ted shone his torch on the ground to add to the light and help them locate the grenade. But they both knew that with a four second fuse, the chances of survival were slim.

Then the light of Ted’s torch caught the grenade and in an instant, Daniel dived onto the ground, scooped it up, threw it out through the opening and hit the deck. Almost in time with his forearms hitting the ground, there was a massive explosion. In that same split-second, a pile of dirt and an avalanche of rubble rained down upon them.