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Document 12 Fragment 1
[This is perhaps the most thought provoking and
certainly the most anamolous of the 12 documents found at the Tarshesh
crypt site. The fragment itself is remarkably whole and clear, allowing a
direct translation of a substantial and uninterrupted manuscript.
Although the speaker and his audience are not identified in the document,
the context is strongly suggestive and probably reflects a societal
response or movement current at the time of its writing. This document
presents certain problems, however. No other fragments from this document
have been identified in the temple jar containing all the documents found
in the Tarshesh crypt. No detritus from the fragment's material has been
identified in the jar, either. which suggests that this fragment was
inserted with the other material as a fragment, not a whole document.
Most curiously, the fragment is written in a dialect of Aramaic known to
be common among Diasporic immigrants to southwestern Anatolia in roughly
85-150 CE. Although archeologists have been known to play games with
each other, inserting anamolous artifacts in sites left for others to
find, we would almost stake our reputations that this is not the case
here. How a post-Diasporic document could be placed in a sealed jar
with other more contemporary documents, in a virgin and unopened crypt
that has been well established to have been sealed two decades before the
time of Christ can only be a matter for future scholarship.]
...cannot know me. All that has been
before is but the seed to the tree. They are the many seeds, but you are
the tree. I have chosen you because you will know me, but you cannot know
me now.
I will soon leave this place and I will
not return to you in this body. But I will come upon you. I will then
travel without feet and I will come upon you quietly like sleep. I will
come upon you suddenly like a gust of wind or a cloud shadow. I will come
upon you blindly like rage against a man or lust for a woman. In that
time I will move upon the air like the scent of an orchard in bloom and in
that moment I will take you like a thief in the night.
And you will say to me, Master, Master,
we yearn to know you already, we thirst to know you. Teach us now to know
you. And I cannot teach you how to know me. I can only teach that
yearning begets desperation, that thirst begets only thirst.
Be not afraid, I will come upon you. In
that moment it will seem a veil lifted from your eyes and you will see as
the first time. I cannot....
END
P.A. Merrill is the co-founder and occasional contributing editor of Canopic Jar. A former teen model, Merrill now lives in semi-seclusion in a house that once served as temporary lodging for Confederate Cavalry General Nathan Bedford Forrest during the Battle of Stones River. (No wait . . . that's not right. Well, somebody lived there before he did, and Merrill lives there now. And it is near the Stones River. I'm almost sure of it. --ed)
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