Harry Mulisch - The Discovery of Heaven

"Shall I tell you what he's got with him, then?"

"I'd really like to know."

"Moses' two stone tablets with the Ten Commandments on them."

Onno stared at him in astonishment.

"That was the so-called Jewish Law!" cried Quinten vehemently. "How large were those stone tablets?"

Onno bent over a note. "According to R. Berechiah, a rabbi from the fourth century, six tefah long and two tefah wide."

"And how long was a tefah?"

"The width of a hand."

"And how wide is a hand?" said Quinten, looking at his own hand. "Three inches or so? That means? Eighteen inches by six! So that's exactly right!"

"But that Mr. Berechiah never saw them."

"Everything's clear now, isn't it, Dad!?" Quinten began pacing the room passionately. "Listen…" he said, his eyes focused on the floor. "Jeremiah took the ark with him and hid it in a cave, but that doesn't mean that he left those stone tablets in it. Or does it say in that book of the Maccabees that they had to disappear as well?"

"No."

"Right, so he took them out. And they were seen by that priest from that rabbinical legend, who thought that they were raised tiles. They were preserved and later they were placed in the Holy of Holies in the second and third temples. It would be too stupid if that had been really empty for centuries! A high priest who goes in through the curtain every Yom Kippur— and then nothing? An empty cube? Surely he'd look a fool. Just as if God didn't exist. Then that temple would have been in a kind of coma for all those centuries — like Mama."

"What dreadful things are you saying now, Quinten?" asked Onno in dismay.

"In a manner of speaking, of course. Just let me go on for a moment, otherwise I'll lose the thread. So in the Holy of Holies those two tablets were there the whole time with the Ten Commandments on them. Just as those two pillars stood in front of the entrance of the court. Flavius Josephus had simply allowed himself to be convinced by the high priest when he wrote that the debir was empty. They were taken from Jerusalem together with the veil. So then you had the entry here in Rome. Are there any other eyewitness accounts of that?"

"No."

"And how reliable is that Flavius Josephus?"

"Not terribly reliable."

"Well, then I think that in all that tumult and jostling he wasn't able to see everything exactly himself; but afterward when he started writing about it, he used what he heard from other people. And they said something vague about a 'Jewish Law,' which had been carried at the end of the procession; they were Romans, they had no idea about the Jewish religion. But he as a Jew thought immediately of the Torah roll from the temple. The Ten Commandments didn't occur to him, because for him they had disappeared with the ark. But Vespasian was better informed. He had plenty of gold that hadn't meant anything to him for a long time. He only had brought to his palace what was connected with the most holy — and that was the veil and the so-called Jewish Law. A parchment that was only used in the sanctum of the temple wasn't part of that; of course it was an exceptional thing in this case, but not anything unique — you yourself say that a roll like that can be found in every synagogue. No, it was the original manuscript of the Decalogue, noted down by Moses himself on Mount Horeb in the Sinai Desert. The carver of that relief was obviously better informed." Quinten glanced at his father, who was following him about the room with eyes wide open. "And apart from that, things happened as I thought they had happened with the ark. Constantine converted to Christianity and presented the two stones to the pope of his day, who hid them in the treasury under the high altar of his basilica. As a result that came to be known as Sancta Sanctorum; and that Johannes Diaconus wrote about the arca foederis Domini because he had heard the rumor but didn't know the whole story. He didn't have the ark under the high altar of his church, but he did have the contents of the ark. In the thirteenth century the papal chapel was restored, and afterward Moses' stone tablets were transferred to it, after which the name Sancta Sanctorum transferred to that chapel. And when Grisar opened the altar in 1905, he simply overlooked the two flat stones, just like Pompey when he was in the Holy of Holies and just like Flavius Josephus during the procession in Rome, and just like everyone who up to now has looked at that relief on the arch of Titus. So they're still there."

With a triumphant cry Quinten suddenly leaped in the air and let himself fall back on his mattress, where he thrashed his legs in the air excitedly, suddenly got up again, ran to the windowsill with floating dance steps, sat down on it with a twisting leap, and looked at Onno with his hands held between his knees.

Dusk had fallen. The window was open, and Onno saw only Quinten's black silhouette outlined against the purple evening sky, in which the first stars had already appeared.

"A tempting line of argument," he said. "I like that kind of reasoning. Yes, it could have happened like that. But perhaps it didn't happen like that."

"You bet it happened like that!" Now Quinten's mouth could no longer be seen; it was as though his voice were higher-pitched that usual. "Those people who for centuries have been climbing that Scala Santa in that Sancta Sanctorum have been kneeling down before something completely different than they think."

Onno gave a melancholy nod. "It's as though I am listening to myself, Quinten. But I was also once exceptionally certain of a hypothesis — until one day someone fell through a hole in the ground in Arezzo."

"The fact that your hypothesis wasn't true surely doesn't mean that no hypothesis is ever true?" said Quinten indignantly.

"Of course not." Onno made a dismissive gesture. "Don't listen to me."

"Well, state an objection then."

"There aren't that many objections to be made, I think. Why were only the high priests during the time of the second and third temples allowed to know that Moses' stone tablets were in there? That knowledge would surely have been a great motivation for the Jews?"

"Because," said Quinten immediately, "Jeremiah had actually pulled the wool over their eyes. God had made him bury the ark and told him that no one must think about it again. He had said nothing about the tablets. Jeremiah took those out on his own initiative, and of course it is questionable whether that was in God's spirit. Just to be on the safe side, the high priests let that fall under the vow of silence."

"Right," said Onno in amusement. "Let's sum up. On the basis of a number of Hebrew, Greek, and Latin texts you have constructed a theory, and we'll assume that the theory is consistent. It's a big step from the literature to reality, Quinten. And that can only be checked by looking inside that altar. We can only do that with the permission of the pope, as I know from Grisar. And you'll never get that permission — not because it's you, but because no one would be given it on the basis of your theory. Suppose you write and tell the pope what you've discovered. Of course many strange letters are written to him, which he never sees — every madman always writes letters to the pope; but via Cardinal Simonis, the archbishop of Utrecht, opposite whom I once sat at a gala dinner in the Noordeinde palace, and with whom I got on very well, I could ensure that your letter actually got onto his desk. Okay. Papa Wojtyla will read your story with his shrewd eyes. You'd think that he would have known for a long time that those stone tablets are in that altar. Via the camerlengo —that is, the cardinal-treasurer, who is in control in the period between two popes — the popes naturally would of course all have passed on that secret to each other, just as previously the Jewish high priests did. According to your own theory, that continuity must in any case have existed up to the thirteenth century, when the stone tablets were transferred from the basilica to the chapel. But I know for certain that the present pope doesn't know, because at the beginning of the twentieth century Pius X no longer knew. Otherwise he would never have given Grisar permission to open the altar; he could work out very easily that he would inevitably be confronted afterward with Jewish claims and all the fuss that it would entail. That ignorance doesn't itself necessarily argue against your theory, because since the thirteenth century it's quite possible that a camerlengo will have died in the interval between two popes, or was murdered together with his holy father, thus breaking the thread. And for that matter it may be down somewhere in black-and-white, in a deed of gift from Constantine, which then may have gotten lost in Avignon, because take it from me that things are always a complete mess everywhere. But those Jewish claims, Quinten, that's the tricky point. Through the existence of the state of Israel they have meanwhile taken on a political dimension, and our John Paul wouldn't dream of sticking his head in a hornet's nest. He's got enough on his plate with frustrating communism in Eastern Europe, as I learned today. Even if he considered your theory complete rubbish, even then he wouldn't want to take the slightest risk of its being right. Why should he? He can only lose. Suppose the tablets were actually to come to light. What then? Give them back to the Jews? Such a superholy relic? The Holy See hasn't even recognized Israel. Not give them back? Then subsequently to have to hear about the Christian roots of anti-Semitism? About the weak attitude of Pius XII toward the Nazis? About German war criminals who were given asylum in Catholic monasteries after the war? Protests by the Jewish lobby in the United States? Diplomatic problems with Washington? Excommunication of the pope by the chief rabbi? Landing of Israeli paratroopers on the Piazza San Giovanni in Laterano, in order to hijack the Ten Commandments and take them back to Jerusalem? Subsequent triumphalism of ultra-orthodox Judaism vis-a-vis Islam? Driving of the Muslims from the Temple Mount? Founding of a fourth temple for the tablets? Declaration of el-Jihad — Holy War? Rocket attack by Iranian fundamentalists on Tel Aviv? Outbreak of the Third World War? No, lad, take it from me, not even the most famous and most Catholic archaeologist in the world would be given permission. In a polite letter he would be informed on behalf of His Holiness that Professor Hartmann Grisar S.J. had previously investigated the altar with absolute thoroughness and that there was nothing more in it. Forget it. That thing is not going to be opened for another thousand years."