Chapter One

He hunched his back against the cold, piercing wind. From a crevice between the jagged rocks, sand kicked up in his grimacing face. Only a wooden staff sup-ported his lithe, emaciated body. His flimsy, hooded shawl was all he owned to shield him from the harsh elements. He cringed, shuddering in the stark loneliness of the desert night.

With a faint whisper, he sought comfort from Yahweh in prayer. He thanked the living God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Moses, for this opportunity to confirm his faith in Yahweh, Who had delivered Israel out of bondage in Egypt into the land of Canaan. The test, however, was a covenant of starvation, pain, and humility before his Lord.

“I am thankful, Adonai, that it is midnight,” he prayed aloud, though his voice seemed lost beneath the wind’s lamenting howl. “I’ve no physical assurance to confirm what precise hour it is within the dark void of tonight’s new moon. Yet, Elohim, the glow within my bosom assures my heart of Your presence. It serves as a sign to me that my current suffering is behind me. Even now, the pain of it wanes in the west. This morning’s sun burgeons with hope from the east. Though out of sight, it comforts me with the break of a new day, during which I pledge to serve You. For this assurance of Your watchful presence, Jiveh, I am truly thankful. El Shaddai be praised. “Hallelujah! Amen”

Ellen stopped reading the fragile scroll when a shift in Ted’s breathing betrayed his anticipation of her reaction to its unauthenticated content. Though their faces were close enough to sense the warmth of each other’s breath in the damp cave, the flickering lantern light camouflaged any visible emotions, other than their stoic wonder. “What do you think?” he asked her with a nudge. Her expression was stern, resentful. “I’ve only read a few lines,” she said, squinting to interpret more of the scroll.

Ted was anxious to leave the cave. He was claustrophobic, but even more, he did not trust their Jordanian guide, Khalil, who had not returned from the surface in over an hour. Ted had sent Khalil back to their camp to bring more canteens of water, so he and Ellen could spend more time below in the cave analyzing the day’s mysterious find, two papyrus scrolls miraculously preserved in a clay jug. “Maybe we should just take what we’ve found and bring it back to the camp-site before it gets dark,” Ted said, but Ellen was too engrossed in her reading. “Ellen, I don’t like it down here, not for this long. Why hasn’t Khalil returned?” Ellen took a deep breath. Impatiently, she looked up at Ted. “You knew what it was going to be like. I told you flat out. This is no time to go bad on me. I think we’ve discovered something significant and valuable.”

Ted returned, “I told you yesterday that my analysis of the papyrus, the linen wrappings, and the ink puts the script in a similar time frame as The Dead Sea Scrolls found at Khirbet Qumran in 1947, written somewhere between 25 B.C. and 50 A.D.” Ted was short of breath. His throat was dry in nervous anticipation of his next drink of water. “You’re the paleographer on this half-baked expedition, Ellen. Make your judgment of the writing, then we’ll pack it in for the day, and have cocktails at the tent while we wait for more grant money wired from Princeton to Tel-Aviv.”

Ellen wrinkled her nose as if she smelled something rotten. “You remind me of lazy lab partners I had as an undergraduate, Ted. Get with the program. Our incidental comforts are insignificant in light of this find. If your cocktail is so important, just go back. I’m staying here until I get a true read on what we found.”

“I can’t leave you down here by yourself.” “Oh, really? My hero,” she sighed sarcastically. “Forget about it!” “I can’t, Ellen. It’s in our contract. We can’t enter a dig unassisted. One member of the team must accompany another when entering the site. A third party, whether a team member or a neutral party, must be present to witness all recorded evaluations. So we actually need Khalil.” “Are you a lawyer or an archaeologist, Ted?” she sneered. “A claustrophobic archaeologist. Great combination, huh?” “You may have the date of the materials pinned down, Ted, but I’m not ready to call it a day. The script itself is erratic, especially the language.” Ellen was pensive. “It doesn’t read like anything I’ve seen before, especially not from that period. Admittedly, I’ve been skipping around to get an overview of what the contents might be, but it’s in three languages, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, with some abstract parenthetical indications. See this X at the end of each section. Perhaps it’s a code for early Christians, you know, followers of The Way.” “It’s probably old and has been edited at different times over centuries,” Ted theorized. “We saw that in The Dead Sea Scrolls.” “Yes, in the Book of Daniel found at Wadi Qumran the language shifts from Hebrew to Aramaic, but this part of the text reads more like a novel than the kind of stoic script I’ve been used to reading in my courses.” “You mean we’ve found a page-turner from the past?” Ted scoffed.

“You laugh, but my gut instinct tells me this might’ve been written by a woman.” Ted Stern grinned at Ellen Matthews. He thought she was kidding about the scroll, but the silence between them, counter pointed by the dripping of spring water in the cave, reminded him that this was a serious woman with no apparent sense of humor. “O.K., Ellen, you’ve got my attention. I know the theory that the scribe Luke could’ve been a pseudonym for a woman. What do we have here then, a predecessor to George Sand?” “Fine. Be cynical. I’m just saying there’s something very different about these two scrolls. I get the impression that it was hidden here in a hurry by someone under duress, that the normal precautions that the Qumran scribes took with The Dead Sea Scrolls were not taken here.”

“Yet the papyrus, though loosely contained in the jug, is well-preserved,” Ted held up his lantern to observe the cave walls and ceiling. He put his finger to a stream of dripping water then touched that finger to his tongue. “There have been some earthquakes here over two thousand years, but the condition of this cave is probably much the same as it was when these scrolls were stored in the jug. The moisture from this spring hasn’t adversely affected the condition of the scrolls. The spring water is a more current intrusion.” “The scroll itself is no problem to unravel,” Ellen said. “It’s the mystery of its authorship and the meaning of its content that I’m anxious to unfold.” “Can’t we do that at camp, or even back at the lab in Tel-Aviv? There the Israeli Antiquities Authority will provide us with everything we need to verify the authenticity of our find.”

“I don’t want to let this out of my hands until I have a more precise feel for the essence of its content and its significance in the scheme of modern religion. As a Christian my curiosity is piqued. I’d think, as a Jew, you’d be more enthusiastic about the possibilities here. Doesn’t the atmosphere of this cave excite you, just knowing that we are the first in two thousand years to read this account of ancient times, the Golden Age of Rome, Pax Romana?” “You’re the one who’s reading it. I can only tell you when it was written.” “Well, here’s a break, literally.” She handed Ted a corner of the scroll which had broken off in her fingers. “Hey! Be more careful with that, Ellen.” “It’s O.K. There’s only that curious X indication on it. Do a Carbon-14 test on it when we get to Tel-Aviv. You can analyze the papyrus and the ink together to be sure it isn’t just new writing on old paper. Hopefully, you’ll get a metallic reading on the ink. Listen to the narrative from this scroll. It’s fascinating.” “No cookies and milk with my storytime?” Ted jested as he slipped the small corner of the papyrus with the X written on it into a mylar envelope which he put into his jacket pocket. He snapped the pocket closed and patted his chest. Listen and be serious for once,” she said, then interpreted the Greek with a fluidity that brought a living voice from the past into the cave like a beaming sun ray casting light into every shadow.

After Pompey’s conquest of Palestine, many Hebrews were brought to Rome to serve as slaves in patrician homes. The Hebrew girl, Amanda, was among the first to arrive. She served as a domestic in the Villa de Valens for five years before her beauty caught the eye of Fabius Valens, her master’s only son. Fabius was a handsome soldier just returned from Spain. He was a man of ambition, who reasoned with his father that a Hebrew wife might give him an advantage in seeking the position as proconsul in Judea.

Amanda was twenty years old when Fabius took her for his wife. More fervent than idyllic by nature, Amanda’s exotic beauty was over-shadowed by her manipulative personality. Though charmed by the stately panorama of Roman life, with her raised status from slave to spouse, Amanda was happy to return to her homeland in Judea, where she could flaunt her position over her Jewish friends and relations. In Fabius Valens’s second year as proconsul in Judea, Amanda became pregnant. The news increased the considerable influence which Amanda already had over Fabius. Amanda had been most useful in advising her husband in his dealings with the Jews under his jurisdiction. The marriage had served the young proconsul’s advantage. What’s more, Fabius truly loved Amanda. When her instincts told her that the time was right, Amanda put her request to Fabius. “It is important to the future of your son,” she reminded him. “He must be born in Rome. He must have all of advantages that his Valens heritage can afford him. Perhaps he will be a senator, like his grandfather, or a great soldier and diplomat like you. In any case, he must never be looked down upon because of me. Darling Fabius, though born of Valens blood, our son must be a true citizen of Rome, in the most literal sense, so that no shadow of our mixed marriage will taint his future. I fear there is some truth to the rumors I hear that King Herod will slaughter male Hebrew infants in months to come. He is plagued by his own insecurity and slays his own rightful heirs. Herod believes the messiah of my Hebrew nation is soon to be born. Herod is surrounded by false prophets who drive him to this lunacy.”

“I think your fears are unwarranted, Amanda. But the attention you will get from physicians in Rome in the event of a difficult birth is enough to convince me. A journey home to my father’s house outweighs the importance of any political decisions pending in Judea.” Thus, in the thirty-third year of the Empire under the glorious reign of Caesar Augustus, Fabius Valens and his Jewish wife, Amanda, then six months pregnant, departed by sea from Joppa to Rome. It was an arduous journey for Amanda’s spirit as well as for her body. Rough seas and ill winds, drew their ship off course south of Crete. They were able to outrun Cyrenean pirates to a safe haven at Phoenix on the isle of Crete. Though Amanda withstood the hardships of the sea and storm, Fabius took ill with fever. He died weeks later on the third day after their safe landing in Rome.

Fabius’s father, a widower in his sixtieth year, was grief stricken by his son’s untimely death. Only the prospect of a grandson, gave Senator Antonius Valens the will to live. He set his sorrow aside in giving Amanda every comfort through the final weeks of her pregnancy. Though he felt utterly betrayed by the Fates, Antonius’s emotions were mixed when the midwife lifted his grandchild for his proud viewing. “She’s more beautiful than her mother,” the Greek maid commented to soothe her master’s obvious disappointment. “She takes more after her father and your-self ... such classic lines. Perhaps she’ll be the wife of a great ruler,” the maid continued her flattery. “She could be a queen, or even an empress.”

Antonius looked to his Greek maid, Hyacinth, for advice about the future. She was a soothsayer, the niece of the same who had forewarned Julius Caesar to avoid the senate five decades before. “Will she unite with a great leader of men?” he asked. “The greatest of all time, sire. It is for certain.” When Antonius came to Amanda’s side, he asked, “What will you name her?” “Hannah,” Amanda answered her father-in-law from the bed where she lay. Her face was pale and her sweat-soaked hair clung to her face in black twisted ringlets.

“Anna,” the proud grandfather mispronounced the Hebrew name. As paterfamilias, Antonius Valens’s proclamation carried the stamp of Roman heritage. Amanda’s Hebrew tradition weighed heavily upon her at this moment. The elder male of the family would have given his blessing with this pronouncement. Grandfather, Antonius, added an endearing suffix to give Amanda’s daughter the name which would stay with her for the rest of her inglorious life. “Long live my only grandchild, our precious, Annabella.”