a few attempts, it became obvious that the intruder didn’t have the right key and, out of frustration, walked away. Amal raised the index finger of his right hand to his still pressed lips, while holding his left hand out, in the palm down attitude, to indicate that no one was to say a word or move until the coast was clear. As the sandal bearers footsteps faded away up the stairs, Amals’ whisper finally broke the silence, “That was close. We must keep our voices down and our meeting to a minimum of time.”
“Lucky for us he had a wrong set of keys,” I interjected in a low voice.
“No, Mr. Stanton, lucky for us we know how to jam locks from the inside so that his keys would appear to him as the wrong one,” responded Amal. Standing up, Amal slowly made his way over to a wall deeper in the room. He went about 15 paces, stopped and reached up for a stone that appeared to jut out slightly from the balance of the other stones on the wall. Wiggling it just slightly, it loosened enough for Amal to extract it from its un-cemented position, leaving in its wake, an apparent cavity in the wall. Reaching in to the empty chamber, Amal retrieved a tube of what appeared to be rolled up parchment paper. Walking back over to where we were seated, Amal began to speak in a low voice. “I want to show you, Mr. Stanton, what we believe. This is a copy of a sacred scroll. As commoners, we are not suppose to have personal copies of God’s words, at least that’s according to our religious leaders. The members of the Sanhedrin, forbid having any part, or parts, of the Torah in the public’s hands for they believe that only they have the power from God to read, understand and thus interpret it for the common populace. So, Mr. Stanton, I am sure you can appreciate our position in the need to protect our copy, right?”
“Amal,” I began, “I’m a journalist, my readers must feel that they can trust me and what I write. My sources have to feel that they can trust me to protect them as a source. I have the double duty of double trust. I don’t reveal my sources of information. I can’t reveal my sources or else I would eventually lose credibility and have to change careers. It’s not only a tradition among journalists, but it’s a celebrated and controversial aspect of our trade. We would not get many stories if people didn’t trust us. For what it’s worth, I appreciate your trust in me.”
Through my little soliloquy on trust, Amal remained motionless as he tenderly held the scrolls of paper under his left arm, sort of shielding them from me with his body. Feeling convinced that I had earned the right to see the scrolls, Amal retrieved them from under his arm and carefully laid them out on the table before us. I reached for my laptop, opened it up on the table also. I was going to be sure that I left nothing to memory and noted everything that he had to say about this messiah guy.
Reverently making motions with his hands and mumbling some sort of Jewish prayer under his breath, Amal began to unroll the papers. “The Torah is our holy text,” Amal said as he began his religious instruction to me. His face took on a whole new tone of reverence. His wry smile was replaced with deadpan seriousness, which created an even more ominous tone in the dingy and damp room, “Authorship has been ascribed to Moses. The scrolls speak to us of the beginning of time and of the history of the Jewish people and the Laws of God for man. There are those who believe that the Torah and the writings of Moses subtly speak of God’s ultimate plan for man, that of saving man from his own sin. However, it is the latter writings of the prophets that speak to us of a coming messiah, the one who is to be sent by God Himself, to rescue us from the curse placed on man from earlier sins.”
The serious look on his face as he spoke confirmed his convictions to this as truth in his mind. He began to point out specific sentences of words that were revealed on the papers. “While we have not yet secured the full document, and to be sure we are working on that, what we have here is a partial scroll of the later prophets that I spoke of,” he began, “I am not going to take you through all the history of the Jews, whether as a nation, or as a people, I will simply get to your interest point, is that all right Mr. Stanton?”
I’m a naturally curious person as it is, but his tone of voice, body language and serious expressions drew me in to want to learn more from him, but time was precious, and we were in a dangerous place.
“Amal, I am fascinated, and want to hear it from the beginning, but I believe you are correct in getting to the point, any veering off course may expose us to a greater probability of discovery here, and I don’t wish to experience a cross.”
“We are in agreement about that, to be sure,” responded Amal. “The prophets speak of the messiah as a king. A man of peace, a savior from sin, and our protector from an eternity of separation from God in sheol. The members of the Sanhedrin perceive any testimony of a king of the Jewish people that is alive today as a threat to their own power over the people. That’s why we must keep our conversations to ourselves and to others who believe He is alive today. You may consider us a secret society if you will. The local conversations are full of conjectures and controversy, but it is from these scrolls that we get the real truth.”
“The information that I’ve gathered so far,” I interrupted, “is that he was supposedly born here in Bethlehem, and that apparently he currently lives and has lived for a while now in Nazareth. They say he was a common boy there, working with his dad as a carpenter. I’ve gathered that his name is Yeshua, and that he has already begun to gather followers, a band of men whom they say he approached and asked to join his group, or who were personally hand-picked by the carpenter. And now that he’s grown up, he’s picked up the mantle of messiah. Am I close?”
“When you consider the awesomeness of God, it is not too preposterous, nor beyond the realm of human belief that the messiah could have been born here in Bethlehem. The latter prophets spoke of Bethlehem as the birthplace of the coming messiah. Additionally, it is my strong suggestion, Mr. Stanton, that you speak to some other friends of mine,” Amal interjected. I could detect a tone of defensiveness; somehow, he thinks my question was condescending his beliefs. “These friends of mine,” he continued, “are former professional sheep herders. They’ve long since retired, but they’ll confirm that there was a flurry of public activity about thirty years ago. But what’s so extra special about these men is that each and every one of them, to a man, is willing to go to the grave, claiming to have seen the messiah. They speak of that evening that he was born and how angels certified the birth and where to find the infant messiah. To an outsider, or skeptic, Mr. Stanton, it’s a wild story, but they stick by it. And, I stick by them and their story. Their whole lives changed. Truth does that to a person. To live all your life being told to look forward to great things, and for centuries of lifetimes, that great hope never develops. Until, one day!” Typical of the middle-eastern man, his hands flew up in the air as he emphasized his words, he continued his animations as he finished his sentence. “Up until then, Jewish women prayed that they would be the bearers of the “Meshiach,” the Hebrew name for messiah. But God’s timing is not man’s timing. Then all of a sudden, while minding your own business, tending to and protecting your flock of sheep, God sends angels to appear before you, right in the middle of the night, with a birth announcement that is from out of this world. And not just before your very eyes, but to all that were in the field that night. Can you imagine the feeling as they stood at the very spot?”
Amal was getting quite pumped up. “And there he is, the Meshiach, within arms reach, the very one that the prophets have been speaking of simply lying there, only one stride away from all that man has hoped for.” He hesitated to find the right words, “Since the beginning of man.”
He was on a roll now, “There he was, the one that was on his way to rid us of the Roman domination, even of future domination from interfering world powers! The awesome reality of it; truth, hope and eternity, alive in the manger. God becoming man, to save man from himself.” Stopping at that point, Amal raised his hand to his mouth, and began to apologize, “I am sorry Mr. Stanton. I got off track. In my zeal to get you the facts, I got caught up in the excitement of our movement.” He continued rather sheepishly, “However, I believe every word of what I just told you. Would you like to meet them, the shepherds
