Steve Berry - The Alexandria Link

“Seven years ago a man named George Haddad, a Palestinian biblical scholar, penned a paper published by Beirut University. In it he postulated that the Old Testament, as translated, was wrong.”

“Quite a premise,” a member said. The heavyset woman stood. “I take the Word of God more seriously than you.”

Hermann seemed amused. “Really? What do you know of this Word of God? You know its history? Its author? Its translator? Those words were written thousands of years ago by unknown scribes in Old Hebrew, a language dead now for more than two thousand years. What do you know of Old Hebrew?”

The woman said nothing.

Hermann nodded. “Your lack of knowledge is understandable. It was a highly inflected language in which the import of words was conveyed by their context rather than their spelling. The same word could, and did, have several distinct meanings, depending on how it was used. Not until centuries after the Old Testament was first written did Jewish scholars translate those words into the Hebrew of the time, and yet those scholars could not even speak Old Hebrew. They simply guessed at the meaning or, even worse, changed the meaning. Then centuries passed, and more scholars, this time Christian, translated the words again. They, too, could not speak Old Hebrew, so they, too, guessed. With all due respect to your beliefs, we have no idea as to the Word of God.”

“You have no faith,” the woman declared.

“On this I do not, since it does not involve God. This is the work of man.”

“What did Haddad argue?” another man asked, his tone suggesting that he was interested.

“Correctly, he postulated that when the stories of the covenant made by God to Abraham were first told, Jews already inhabited their Promised Land-what is now Palestine. Of course, this was many, many centuries after the actual promise was supposedly made. According to the biblical premise, the Promised Land was said to extend from the river of Egypt to the great River Euphrates. Many place-names are given. But when Haddad matched the biblical place-names, translated back into Old Hebrew, with actual locations, he discovered something extraordinary.” Hermann paused, seemingly pleased with himself. “The Promised Land of Moses and the land of Abraham were both located in western Saudi Arabia, in the region of Asir.”

“Where Mecca sits?” came a question from the floor.

Hermann nodded. Thorvaldsen saw that many of the members immediately grasped the significance.

“That’s impossible,” one member said.

“Actually,” Hermann said, “I can show you.”

He motioned, and a viewing screen unwound from a ceiling-mounted holder. A projector came to life. A map of western Saudi Arabia, the Red Sea snaking a jagged shoreline from north to south, appeared. A scale meter showed that the area was roughly four hundred kilometers long and three hundred wide. Mountainous regions spread east over a hundred kilometers from the shore, then flattened to the fringes of the central Arabian desert.

“I knew there’d be skeptics among you.” Hermann smiled as nervous laughter rippled through the Assembly. “This is modern-day Asir.”

He signaled and the screen changed.

“Projecting the boundaries of the biblical Promised Land onto the map, utilizing locations George Haddad precisely identified, the dotted line delineates the land of Abraham, the solid line the land of Moses. The biblical locations, translated back into Old Hebrew, match rivers, towns, and mountains of this region perfectly. Many even still retain their Old Hebrew designations-adapted, of course, to Arabic. Ask yourself, why has no paleographic or archaeological evidence ever been found to substantiate biblical locations in Palestine? The answer is simple. Those locations are not there. They lie hundreds of miles to the south, in Saudi Arabia.”

“And why has no one ever noticed this before?”

Thorvaldsen appreciated the question, as he’d been thinking the same thing.

“There are only half a dozen or so scholars alive who can effectively understand Old Hebrew. None of them, besides Haddad, apparently was curious enough to investigate. But to be certain, I hired one of those experts three years ago to confirm Haddad’s findings. And he did. Down to the last detail.”

“Can we speak with your expert?” a member quickly asked.

“Unfortunately, he was elderly and passed away last year.”

More likely the man was helped into the grave, Thorvaldsen thought. The last thing Hermann needed was a second scholar claiming a spectacular biblical coup.

“But I have a detailed written report that can be studied. It’s quite compelling.”

Another image appeared on the screen. A second illustration of the Asir region.

“Here’s one example to demonstrate Haddad’s point. In Judges 18, the Israelite tribe of Dan established a settlement in a town called Laish, in a region of the same name. The Bible says that this town was close to another called Zidon. Near Zidon lay the fortified city of Zor. Christian historians in the fourth century CE supposedly identified Dan with a village at the headwaters of the Jordan River. In 1838 a team searched and found a mound, which they announced as the remnants of the biblical Dan. That site is now the accepted location of Dan. There’s even a modern Israeli settlement, actually called Dan, that flourishes there today.”

Thorvaldsen noticed that Hermann seemed to be enjoying himself, as if he’d prepared for this moment a long time. But he wondered if perhaps his unanticipated move on Margarete may have accelerated his host’s timetable.

“Archaeologists have explored the mound for the past forty years. Not one piece of evidence has been found to confirm the biblical identity of that site as Dan.” Hermann motioned, and the screen changed again. Names appeared on the second map of Asir.

“This is what Haddad discovered. The biblical Dan can easily be identified with a west Arabian village called al-Danadinah, which is located in a coastal region called al-Lith, the principal town of which is also called al-Lith. Translated, that name is identical with the biblical word Laish. Also, to this day, a village called Zidon lies nearby. Even closer to al-Danadinah stands al-Sur, which, translated, is Zor.”

Thorvaldsen had to admit that the geographic coincidences were intriguing. He removed his rimless glasses and fingered the bridge of his nose, massaging the pinched groove, trying to think.

“And there are more topographical correlations. In 2 Samuel 24:6, the town of Dan was close to a land called Tahtim. No place known as Tahtim survives anywhere in Palestine. But in west Arabia, the village of al-Danadinah stands near a coastal ridge called Jabal Tahyatayn, which is an Arabic form of Tahtim. That cannot be an accident. Haddad wrote that if archaeologists dug in this area, there would be evidence to support the presence of an ancient Jewish settlement. But that has never occurred. The Saudis absolutely forbid digging. In fact, five years ago, when faced with a possible threat from Haddad’s academic conclusions, the Saudis destroyed villages in this area, contaminating the sites, making it nearly impossible for any definitive archaeological evidence ever to be found.”

Thorvaldsen noticed that as the Assembly grew more attentive, Hermann became more confident.

“There’s more. Throughout the Old Testament, Jordan is noted by the Hebrew yarden. But nowhere is that term ever described as a river. The word actually means ”to descend, a fall in the land.“ Yet translation after translation describes the Jordan as a river, its crossing a momentous event. The Palestinian Jordan River is no great waterway. The inhabitants of both banks have waded across it for centuries. But here”-he pointed to mountains that cut across the map-“is the great West Arabian Escarpment. Impossible to cross except where the ranges fold, and even there it’s difficult. Every instance where the Old Testament speaks of Jordan, the geography and the story match what’s on the ground here, in Arabia.”