The eighth scroll By Dr. Laurence B. Brown pdf

The eighth scroll By Dr. Laurence B. Brown

THE EIGHTH SCROLL

The Eighth Scroll is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters except well-known historical and public figures, are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

 Where real-life historical or public figures appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the fictional nature of the work.

Some historical events and quotations are represented as real, and in these cases, readers are encouraged to verify sources and come to their conclusions regarding the veracity of such passages. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental 

When death approaches, your life will play before your eyes. The elder who told Jacob this, years before, now lay crumpled in a bloody heap before him, nestled in ringlets of his intestines and oozing the stink of disembowelment.

Jacob tore his gaze from the twitching corpse, locked eyes with the Roman legionnaire who lifted his weapon from the lifeless body, and froze when the legionnaire raised his gore-streaked sword for the stroke that would sever Jacob’s neck. As though with a mind already detached, as though time itself paused to honor him with one last memory, Jacob recalled not his whole life, but only the last hour:

 He had been hunched over in the bowl of his cave, working frantically to hide the Essenes’ library of scrolls. One glance out the mouth of the cave at the darkening sky, mirrored in the vast expanse of the Dead Sea below, told him he had run out of time.

Why did I ever join the sect of Essene Jews? If they knew my Christian beliefs, they would banish me forever. The instant he conceived the thought, his mind conjured up memories of slashing swords, screams, and bodies