upon the fourth ram, then the third, the second, and the first. They all joined the procession. In the distance ahead was the same mountain as in the last vision, with streams of people still ascending it and Moses at the end. The rams approached and began ascending it as well. They were soon just behind Moses. He led them, as a shepherd would lead his sheep, up to the mountain’s summit. I watched as the procession came to its end, and all the ascenders entered into the golden radiance on the mountaintop. And the vision ended.”
Chapter 54
THE ORACLE’S TENT
IT WAS AN especially hot day. I decided to go to the oasis to cool myself in the waters of the pool. I was floating on my back with my eyes closed when I heard a noise. I looked up. And there he was.”
“The boy?”
“The boy . . . standing on the rock at the edge of the water, looking down at me with a smile. How he found me, I have no idea. So I got out of the water, changed my clothes, and followed him. I was taken again through scenery I had never seen before. Much of the sand in the desert was hard and crusted. But he now led me into a valley where the sand was soft and loose, what you would expect to find on a beach. It was in that valley that I first saw the tent.”
“The tent.”
“The Oracle’s tent. I had expected something much more ornate. From the outside there was nothing to distinguish it, just coarse black and brown cloth. Cautiously I parted the curtains of its entrance.”
“Welcome,” said the Oracle. “Come in.”
So I did. It was on the inside that it looked more like what one might expect of a desert chieftain’s tent, with carpets, pillows, and cushions all covered in Middle Eastern embroidery, along with household vessels of molded clay and beaten metal, oil lamps, ornamented chests, old books, and other miscellaneous items too numerous to mention. He offered me some tea and refreshments. And I told him the vision.
“So,” he said, “behind the sixth door you saw not only the sixth ram but all the others. The sixth door is unlike the doors before it. It concerns all of their mysteries, their origins and ends.”
“Their ends?”
“That to which they lead . . . and that which they bring about in the end.”
“The next time I saw the Oracle, he would reveal the secret behind all the Jubilean years I had been shown. He would open up their matrix.”
Chapter 55
THE MATRIX OF YEARS
I RETURNED TO the Oracle’s tent. It was mid-afternoon. He was sitting in the shade just outside the curtains that formed the tent’s entrance. He beckoned me to join him inside. So we entered the tent and sat down on its embroidered cushions.”
“Is it possible,” he asked, “that behind everything we’ve seen, all the Jubilean manifestations, lies a mystery that binds them all together?”
“You mean beyond Leviticus and the mystery of the Jubilee itself?”
“Yes. What is it,” he asked, “that the Jubilee undoes?”
“The loss of one’s ancestral possession, one’s land.”
“And what loss was it that lay behind everything we’ve seen?”
“The land of Israel and Jerusalem.”
“Which happened when?”
“In AD 70 with the destruction of Israel.”
“Yes and no,” he replied. “The loss and the destruction began earlier than that. It all began in AD 66 when the Jewish people in Judea revolted against Roman rule. In response the Roman governor Cestius Gallus invaded the land to end the revolt. After a nine-day siege of Jerusalem that ended in failure, Gallus withdrew his army. In the midst of that withdrawal his troops were ambushed and suffered heavy losses. The Roman forces were driven out, and a revolutionary provisional government was set up in Jerusalem.
“It was then that the Roman emperor Nero sent one of his generals, Vespasian, to crush the revolt. Vespasian entered the land from the north and focused first on the land of Galilee. In the subsequent months he and his son, Titus, waged a military campaign of destruction, obliterating rebel strongholds and decimating the civilian population.”
“Those were the two men I saw on horseback, Titus and Vespasian.”
“Yes. So Galilee was the first of lands to be lost to the Jewish people. The nation’s destruction would begin there. It was there that those who resisted Roman rule were first crushed and where the survivors were first taken prisoner and led captive into the nations. The coming two thousand years