The Aleppo Code (The Jerusalem Prophecies) (66 page)

While
The Aleppo Code
is a work of fiction, several plot elements are based on fact.

The Aleppo Codex—safe in a vault in Jerusalem’s Israel Museum—is, in fact, the oldest, most accurate, and most comprehensive compilation of the Hebrew scriptures. It is written as a Masoretic text, meaning notes were added in the margins of the text to help with pronunciation and to provide explanation. Its history as presented in this book is true—begun by a group of rabbinical scholars in Tiberias, near the Sea of Galilee, the codex was completed around AD 930, captured by the crusaders, ransomed to the Jewish community in Alexandria, Egypt, and in the fourteenth century, taken to Aleppo, Syria, where it was hidden in a cave below the Great Aleppo Synagogue.

But only half of the codex now resides in the Israel Museum. The most fascinating element of the codex’s history is what became of it after a riot in 1947 destroyed the Aleppo Synagogue. Was part of the codex destroyed in a fire? Or were parts of the codex stolen by those who conspired to return the codex to Israel? That mystery remains unsolved and is at the center of a book written by Canadian-Israeli journalist Matti Friedman,
The Aleppo Codex: A True Story of Obsession, Faith, and the Pursuit of an Ancient Bible.
In 2012, the
New York Times Magazine
ran a fascinating story about the codex and Friedman’s research—“A High Holy Whodunit” by Ronen Bergman,
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/29/magazine/the-aleppo-codex-mystery.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
.

The Great Synagogue Ades of the Glorious Aleppo Community
actually exists in the Nahla’ot neighborhood of Jerusalem, just west of the Old City. Nondescript on the outside, the interior of the Ades Synagogue, founded in 1901 by Jews emigrating from Aleppo, Syria, is ornately decorated.

The biblical history of Aaron’s staff and the tradition and teaching of Jewish scholars is faithfully communicated in the book, including the literature that asserts Aaron’s staff is a fragment from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the garden of Eden and that it is to be used as a scepter of authority when Messiah arrives. There is nothing in Scripture or in Judeo-Christian teaching, however, which asserts that Aaron’s staff, or even the Ark of the Covenant, contained a power that was exclusively its own. The staff and the ark are only objects. God used these objects to display his power … but it is always God’s power at work through his created objects. Aaron’s staff, were it ever to be found, would not be the most powerful weapon in the history of the world. It would be a really old stick.

Sir General Charles Warren was a larger-than-life character who, in fact, had an incredible impact on the lore of nineteenth-century England. Both a war hero and a criticized military leader, General Warren commanded the British military forces in Singapore and later the Thames District outside London. But his two most memorable exploits were his clandestine tunneling under Jerusalem’s Temple Mount in 1867 and his three-year service as commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service (Scotland Yard) in London during the Jack the Ripper murders. London newspapers at one time even theorized that Warren himself was a suspect in the serial killings.

The US Navy has actually deployed its Laser Weapons System (LaWS) on the warship USS
Ponce,
the navy’s first Afloat Forward Staging Base, which patrols in the Persian Gulf. The Laser Weapons System marks, illuminates, and obliterates its targets within seconds.

The Jewish prophets Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel were all in Babylon at the same time, while Daniel was chancellor to the great Chaldean Emperor, Nebuchadnezzar, who ordered the great tower to be built near his palace in Babylon. The foundation pit of the “Tower of Babylon” is visible from the air today.

In 2006, thirty Sunni tribes who called the Great Anbar Desert in western Iraq their home, rose up in opposition to a radical, Islamic terror group—Al Qaeda in Iraq—and its violently fanatic religious extremism. Led by the Albu Mahals, the Sons of Iraq, as they called themselves, allied with US Marines. For the next three years, the Sunni fighters of the Anbar Awakening engaged in some of the bloodiest and brutal battles of the Iraq war and were critical to the marines driving Al Qaeda in Iraq over into Syria. Al Qaeda in Iraq merged with Syrian jihadists and became known as the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS).

The Bowery Mission (
http://bowery.org
) has served the lost, the least, and the lonely of New York City since 1878. It is the third-oldest rescue mission in the United States and one of its most effective. Besides serving more than 250,000 meals yearly to the homeless and poor, the Bowery Mission’s nine-month, faith-based residential recovery program has guided thousands of men in transforming themselves from addiction and hopelessness to productive and healthy lives. There are more than three hundred rescue missions in the United States helping the poor and homeless with a combined one million donors and more than four hundred thousand volunteers. Most of them belong to the Association of Gospel Rescue Missions (
http://agrm.org
).

Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834–92) was England’s best-known preacher for most of the second half of the nineteenth century and pastor of London’s famed New Park Street Chapel. Spurgeon’s
All of Grace
was the first book published by Moody Press and is still its all-time bestseller. Three of his works have sold more than one million copies, and there is more of Spurgeon’s work in print than any other Christian author (
http://www.pilgrimpublications.com
).