The Eleventh Commandment

By Mario Martinez

While on an archaeological dig in Northern Arizona, Marcus Machado unearths the journals of a sixteenth century priest. The contents make reference to the existence of the Book of Aaron, a missing book of the Bible. It also suggests a possible location of the book along the Exodus Trail in the Middle East. Marc travels to another dig site in the Middle Eastern desert where, along with the help of an Egyptian guide, they uncover the actual Book of Aaron, the brother of Moses. The book reveals an even greater secretthe existence of an eleventh commandment. They soon discover the fabled tablet and after deciphering accompanying information about the commandment. Marcus is torn between delivering it to the world and burying it deeper than where he found it. He knows that in the wrong hands, it could have earth-shattering ramifications. Follow along as Marc deals with the dilemma thrust upon him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Feb 20, 2015
• ISBN: 9781496971227

Mario Martinez

Dr. Mario Martinez is a US clinical neuropsychologist who lectures worldwide on how cultural beliefs affect health and longevity. He is the founder of biocognitive science, a new paradigm that investigates the causes of health and the learning of illnesses. More importantly, biocognition identifies complex discoveries of how our cultural beliefs affect our immune, nervous and endocrine systems, and translates them to practical applications. Dr. Martinez has investigated cases of alleged stigmata for the Catholic Church, the BBC and National Geographic. He lives in Montevideo, Uruguay.

Book preview

Chapter

1

Surrounded by a modest set of digging tools and a pair of rock hammers, archaeologist Marcus Machado was in his own element - on his hands and knees digging amid the ruins of an ancient Kiowa settlement fifty miles east of Las Vegas, New Mexico. His company for the day included sage brush, tumble weeds, lizards and scorpions. Some days he would unearth bits of pottery or animal bones but most days resulted in finding nothing. Still, he considered those days as good days. To Marcus, any day spent outside was a blessing and he would take those days over any day spent indoors.

He was strikingly handsome due mainly to his bloodlines from a Scandinavian mother. The harsher features from his Mexican father were softened to where it was difficult to guess his nationality. His thirty-two years of age seemed lost in his boyish good looks and most women in his age group agreed that he had won the genetic lotto. Being a college professor of archaeology and an associate dean only added to this complete package of a man who was also well-liked. It was a good life.

Archaeology is not a science that gives up treasures too freely but Marcus was aware of that fact since his youth and that was just fine with him. He equated its meager findings to a fisherman who sits in a boat all day, catches nothing yet sees it as a successful day in the sense that he spent quality time alone with his thoughts and doing what he enjoyed.

Marcus was a patient man, more so than his two sisters Ana and Sylvia and his brother Michael. Ana, the oldest, moved to California and attended UCLA where she met a man, dropped out of school and quickly started a family in Santa Monica. The proximity to the ocean was such a welcomed change for her. She often lamented, I don’t know how I ever lived in New Mexico. It’s so…so… landlocked! The second oldest was Michael and he stayed closer to home. A community college degree garnered him the qualifications to become an Albuquerque police officer. The youngest was Sylvia and she was a career college student. She was currently in her sixth year at Colorado State University with not nearly enough credits to graduate. Her interests were in film production but, except for one shining moment in which she spent a month in Guadalajara, Mexico documenting Mariachi groups, her projects never seemed to go beyond the planning stages. Yet, things always seemed to fall in her lap rather than for her to pursue a specific goal. Unfortunately, she seldom capitalized on her good fortune, unable to appreciate serendipitous events. For this, Marcus had his doubts about her dedication or commitment to any task and she was embarrassingly aware of it. She saw herself as a disappointment to her family and she especially felt that Marcus did not respect her. Although untrue, no one could tell her otherwise. Her confidence level was in dire need of a big boost.

Marcus was born in Albuquerque and, following high school, he enrolled at New Mexico Highlands University in Las Vegas. That is, Las Vegas, New Mexico, not Nevada, something he had to clarify more often that he wished, to those who thought there was only one Las Vegas. ‘LV’, as it was known to the locals, was a small town of just over fourteen thousand people but it had a colorful past with claims to fame as well as disclaimers to historically shameful events. During the railroad era of the 1880s, Las Vegas became one of the largest cities in the American Southwest. At the turn of the century, Las Vegas had all the modern amenities such as an electric street car, an opera house, a Carnegie library, a well known major hotel and the New Mexico Normal School which later became New Mexico Highlands University.

Progress brought along businesses and more people, including many of the dubious variety. Some of the shady characters to spend some time in Las Vegas included Doc Holliday, Billy the Kid, Wyatt Earp and the self-named Durango Kid (a local outlaw), among other less notable characters. Murderers, thieves, gamblers, tramps, vagrants and gunmen poured in to Las Vegas’ east side which became mostly lawless. That prompted a local historian to proclaim, Without exception, there was no town which harbored a more disreputable gang of desperadoes and outlaws than did Las Vegas. That was the root of their shame. However, in later years, Hollywood became enamored with the quaint look of Las Vegas’ Main Street and historical section of town and filmed many silent era westerns there. That trend continued for several decades. Later, other movies were filmed in Las Vegas including Diamonds are Forever, Red Dawn, No Country for Old Men, The Astronaut Farmer and a parade scene from Easy Rider, which locals were quick to share with visitors. Las Vegas had the look and feel of a friendly town and that is what prompted Marcus to remain in LV following college graduation. Las Vegas had a knack for opening itself up to non-locals and it was a place where most outsiders felt welcomed. It was a town where visitors often proclaimed, I could live here. It was also a town that did not challenge individuals to excel which is why Sylvia spent her summers there. She was an underachiever and the thing she was best at was easily accepting failure.

As for Marcus, along with archaeology, he also had a passion for the Bible, especially hoping to discover obscure passages in the Old Testament or perhaps finding omitted text in the form of scrolls or tablets. He was aware of many books being left out of the Old Testament and it was his hope to discover more. His fascination with the Dead Sea Scrolls encouraged him to believe there were indeed more hidden books somewhere, he just did not know where. To date, no one had found such a cache but Marcus was certain that if anyone could, it would be him. He was not lacking in confidence, he was just lacking in results.

A former altar boy at his local parish in Albuquerque, Our Lady of Perpetual Hope, he learned from a very progressive and open-minded nun in his catechism classes, Sister Rosa, to think of the Bible stories as only possibly having happened, only not as described. He learned from her that when the Bible was written, the majority of people were too uneducated to believe in scientific explanations and natural occurrences, instead choosing to believe in miracles. She taught Marcus to expand his thinking process and to use logic to explain many of the Bible stories. That was not to say that the Bible was full of fairy tales but that the scholars who wrote the passages were more concerned with making their writings believable for the masses to understand. Thus, it was easier to believe that a miracle had occurred to show God’s greatness instead of merely witnessing a total eclipse and explaining that it was the Earth moving between the sun and the moon. Those were still the days where people believed in a flat Earth. A monsoon or a tornado led people to believe it was God’s anger at them which resulted in total devastation. Marcus believed the Bible was full of many fairy tale-like explanations for earthquakes, floods and famine, most with wrath of God implications. It was what the people expected and it was what they got.

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Chapter

2

Las Vegas was 117 miles north of Albuquerque and Marcus was a devoted son, visiting his parents Jesse and Mary every other weekend. The visits were always enjoyable and Marc, as he was known to most people who knew him, was always glad to get some of his mother’s home cooking. The tortillas were always homemade and fresh and there was always a pot of beans ready to accompany anything from enchiladas to fried steaks. Despite her Norwegian roots, Mary Machado was a great cook of Mexican cuisine having perfected her skills at an old neighborhood restaurant called El Arroyo Seco, The Dry Creek. It was there that she met Jesse Machado and where she learned to prepare Mexican food, an unusual skill for a non-Hispanic woman.

On many occasions Marc would bring along a friend or two on his visits back home. His friends were usually graduate students learning from Marc who, as the Associate Dean of the Archaeology Department, strongly influenced his students. One such student and friend was Janine Davis, a local girl who had the same respect for family, cultural upbringing and the safe preservation of antiquities. Marc had a fondness for Janine but never verbalized them it her. She had stronger feelings for Marc but she was from the old school that taught her to wait for the man to make the first move. So, any time she had the chance to be near him, she took advantage of those opportunities. Always the professional, Marc refrained from intimate teacher/student relationships. That was a kiss-of-death to any budding career so Marc kept the relationship platonic.

When there were times for serious discussion, Marc would tell Janine about how he believed the relationship between God and Moses was less than cordial and often strained, contrary to the popular belief that Moses was an obedient disciple and God was an infallible deity. He also believed that, while God was supposedly omniscient, he had little experience with how people reacted to external stimuli such as love, fear and temptation. He explained how he believed that God put too much confidence in people always trying to do the right thing. The truth was that if people could find an easy way around something, they would take the path of least resistance. And Marcus was right. Janine was impressed with how Marc could confidently rationalize what people thought and did in biblical times but Marc merely passed it off as it being human nature. He believed that throughout history, people were always the same. Again, he was correct. But, the one thing Janine could not reconcile was Marc’s belief that God and Moses did not always agree. She thought, How could anyone disagree with God? He knows everything! Marc explained his belief that, as the spokesperson for the chosen people, Moses had the confidence to voice an opposing opinion to God. At first that was not the case but the more times Moses ascended Sinai to speak with God, he realized God did not have all the answers or at least not all the answers Moses sought. In Marc’s seemingly blasphemous opinion, God was fallible. And Moses seized upon those opportunities to express his own experiences and opinions on God, strange as that seemed. Marc even suggested that sometimes God listened. Janine said, Oh my goodness, if that’s true, God has humility! She was amazed at Marc’s ability to rationalize what could be possible and now saw him as having sage wisdom. She was in awe of him.

Chapter

3

Back in Las Vegas, Marc was asked to teach a class for one of his department’s professors. It was a second year class and Marc was eager to share his knowledge with new students in the field. During a rousing discussion on what diggers, as they fondly called themselves, should do when uncovering important artifacts, one student, eager to earn extra points for providing new information, shared that she had read in an archaeology magazine that there was going to be a dig in the Sinai region and that one or two lucky southwestern schools were going to be asked to participate. They discussed the qualifications and filled out the application for consideration. The deciding factor would be an essay on why their school should be selected. Their essay was on Marcus’ opinions regarding Moses’ relationship with God. Marc had his own ideas which he shared with the class. Radical as Marc’s ideas were, the contest sponsors were looking for something controversial and Marc’s ideas were just that. They submitted the questionnaire and hoped they would garner consideration. It would take three months for the sponsors to decide upon a winner. Following the submission of the application, it was relegated to the backs of their minds and classes resumed. After three months, and by then long forgotten, the Archaeology Department received an invitation to join a six month long multi-national dig in Sinai starting that summer. Marc was allowed to bring three students. He chose grad students Dan Scott, Allison Creel and Janine Davis. The dig was fully funded by the foundation conducting the dig, the Institute for Accuracy in Archaeological Antiquities, which had branches throughout the country with the main base located in Chicago. Marcus hoped to apply some of the techniques he learned in the ancient burial grounds of eastern New Mexico and Arizona. Plus, he hoped to test theories he had regarding the possibility of buried scrolls containing unprinted Old Testament scripture.

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Chapter

4

Marcus’ department received the specifics of the upcoming dig. The plan was to excavate within thirty of the forty-two known campsites along the Exodus trail. There would be ten teams of eight which included seven diggers and a team leader. The team leader was to be not only a department head at his or her respective university but also a well-respected and proven archaeologist. The one exception was a man, Doctor Arnold Ledbetter and as luck would have it, Marcus and his contingent were assigned to him. Ledbetter was a man of little integrity and had an inflated ego yet he barely met the qualifications to lead any type of group. Through a network of contacts with archaeological colleagues, Marcus questioned why Ledbetter was on the dig. He trusted Doctor Louis Ishimoto from the University of Colorado to shed some light on his concerns. Dr. Ishimoto was a man who was not impressed with titles. Instead, he looked at accomplishments without