My Dearest Oldest Love,
Moses is dead. He was a full 120 and to the end, the vigor of a man one quarter his age. People say he was carried on a chariot to heaven, but he very well may have simply jumped off the cliffs of Moriah. For forty years, I saw him eat nothing, drink only water, sit in contemplation of the divine voice within him, and walk the tents of Israel at night at a speed even Joshua found exhausting. He ever spared me but a few words for every hour in his presence. And now he's made me his successor.
Because Moses, the divine instrument, died in rebellion from his god. Moses told us that Yahweh would not permit him to enter the Promised Land because he struck a rock to obtain water which the rock only gave to us in droplets when a droughted nation needed a river. But that was just another of Moses's divinely clever misdirections, imparting to his people the lesson that God believes negotiated settlement is better than war.
And yet Aaron told me, God spoke to Moses precisely the opposite. The only way forward into Israel is war: expulsion, extermination; cleansing the land and watering crops with blood. Moses wanted his people to leave Yahweh and pursue a more divine calling.
No one doubted Moses's goodness during his lifetime, yet we all doubted it - every minute. We doubted his mental faculties, we doubted his administrative aptitude, we doubted his better angels, and even after all those miracles, we doubted his god. With every new miracle we doubted Moses and Him more, not less. So seldom did Moses emerge from his tent for us that many even wondered if Aaron, not Moses, was the true medium of God. Moses was always slow of speech, even in Egypt, and he just seemed to grow taller and stronger every year. Meanwhile, Aaron, who by the last twenty years could barely hold himself up by the shepherd's rod, was three years older than Moses, and not a single Israelite doubted his mental competence for a moment.
And Yahweh knows, we had reason... there were whole years when Moses went unseen, and then he would emerge with a new draconian edict whose logic defied description and proscribed solutions to problems none of us had. Those of us who believed entirely in Yahweh worried that with every new rebellion, Yahweh would punish us, abandon us, scourge us with greater force than he scourged any Eygptian. Those of us who didn't believe rebelled still more.
But for forty years, Moses was the simple fact of Israelite/Hebrew life. How many from either tribe are even alive from the Exodus besides Joshua and me? How did an octogenarian enact such miraculous feats? How could he enact them again and again unless this was the leader who spoke to Yahweh, the leader who spoke for Yahweh? And yet he was a barely visible prophet who communicated all through his older brother until a month before his dying day.
Give or take his like, the world has not seen a leader like Moses in the thousand years since Theseus - at least if that "Dead Sea Scroll" is to be believed, they ruled through exactly that same mixture of vigor, patience, cunning, humility, and terror. They had the same immaculate eye for political theater, and that vision or inspiration for the future which we can only call divine. Moses survived forty years performing the most impossible feats within the most impossible job leading the most impossible people on earth.
I have no divine voice in me. I certainly have no calling to holiness. I have only memories of you, dear Rahab, and I must call upon you again my dear, whom I have not seen in decades and with whom my stream of endless loving correspondence got slower and less urgent every year until seventeen years ago it ceased (and I must ramishly admit that I have counted every year, month, and day), to help me prevail upon the leaders and elders of Canaan's seven nations to give some kind of asylum to a desperate nation of immigrants in this fecund and not overpopulous land.
A land without people; land without people; you cannot understand the tower of privilege, that. As for me, birthed in the Nile banks where population is legion on every inch, and my people of the desert where all is barren, emigrating to a land where wheat and sorghum and corn ripple with the wind, there surely is no holier more bounteous place in all the earth. (You remember our promise of a land of milk and honey, fuck that, we need bread that rises!)
Of course, there are people here. So many... varied people. But so much land without settlement - surely there is space for all and a negotiated accord letting us dwell among Canaanites with a place among the nations.
My dearest Rahab, you remember surely our valley of refuge with its clusters of fruit and mounds of wheat: our ascent alone to the top of Mount Hermon where Gilgamesh killed Humbaba and dwells the palace of Ba'al (and I still have multiple bones to pick with you about that story my dear...), and whereupon this once youthful Caleb could devour entire the loot of the north with his eyes, while you introduced me without payment to all those things Jewish women never do after they're married.
Twelve of us were sent to Canaan, ten prognosticated we could not take it. The eleven others went to the Negev, that disgusting dump of sand and salt where fuckall grows and everything dries and dies. But you showed me what was really there: in the North, the Golan and the Galilee, the ancient ports of Acre and Jaffa that go back to the age of your gods (again, as I said at the time... what??), and especially, oh..., that river's west bank... where all is green and life. THAT is the chosen land, if there is any such thing... fat where the South is lean, weak where the South is strong, few where the South is many.
Between me and you, my oldest and greatest love, I never understood why my people couldn't settle on the other side of Hermon. All things considered, it's been a relatively uneventful forty years and we're probably better off not crossing over to that fucking promised land... but I promised my leader I would settle Canaan. Even among those ample green valleys of Galilee and Jordan, surely there is some small strip the Israelites might call our own that feeds our people. We depend on this awful thing for our diets called manna, a sugary coriander wafer which Aaron constantly told us fell from the sky, but we smell it baking for a week every month and tribal leaders like me have to pretend to our followers that we believe him. There's a week every month when the priestly class disappears and suddenly the entire nation of Israel smells as bitter as burnt molasses. Meanwhile, Moses insisted we continually walk the Sinai Peninsula - back and forth, back and forth, but after our diet switched to manna nobody could shit and every quartogenarian's feet would swell sometimes to twice their size. So I'm sure you understand now that I am not the same Caleb. I'm certain you can still turn heads a third our venerable age, but as a man I'm too old for love now. Isn't everyone over fifty?
I still have my wife, Azubah, dutiful and loving in every way. I have ten concubines from my days of love - Israelite, Hebrew, Midianite and Edomite... and known many harlots besides, but there is only one woman whom ever I worshiped. But now, in the sterility of my dotage, premature only by Mosaic standards, I can offer only a dearest friendship to the woman who was to me most dear, and who can end her days as dreams every harlot, a concubine who rules beside a nation's leader, viceroy in all but name. For good or ill, you and your resourceful ways determined the fate of my people once upon a time - determine it again with me as the only one among us who knows this all too promised land, so that you may save us from our certain starvation.
Remember the palm tree,
Caleb
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Dear Caleb,
Challenge Accepted :). But only if you come to Jericho right away. We'll talk on the roof deck...
<3
Rahab
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Dear Caleb,
Upon receiving this letter, you will have just met up with your dear Rahab for the first time in forty years. I wish I could capture your attention by deflating a much less joyous moment, but this is the only time when I could ever be positive of your whereabouts, and therefore must send you this letter so that I know you will understand what I propose. I have no way of knowing anything about the pronunciation of the Hebrews until I meet you, nor is there reliable information in my day about how other semitic languages of your era are spoken. I therefore have no guarantee of making myself understood in any manner but by writing.
I have learned Ancient Hebrew merely to write you. I realize this may be very difficult to believe, but among a people whose god appears to make all things possible, perhaps you would believe me when I write that I come from exactly 3300 years in the future. My name is Nikola Tesla. I am a practitioner of arts which you have only seen exist within your time in the most rudimentary state. My practice is technology and science, my craft is invention. That which you call magic is in fact the most basic form of science and technology, which is achieved only with a precision and tenacity that far exceeds that required to construct any building you've ever seen. At the moment which you read this, I am being summoned from the outskirts of Jericho so that I may make demonstrations to you of my inventions so that you may see that I am, in fact, who I say I am, and am not, in any sense, a god or spirit but a mere mortal of flesh as yourself.
After moving back and forth throughout a number of centuries in an invention you have no need to understand, I have dwelled in your time for roughly half a year amid what we now call the Judean Desert, and I have learned much which your sacred texts have not related. I have also learned of your great reputation throughout the Levant as both a man of letters and a man of peace. I had further assumed, from reading your sacred texts, that Joshua would be the new leader of the Israelites rather than you. A book is written about precisely your era called the Book of Joshua, and it is Joshua, not you, who leads the Israelites and drives the Hebrews to glory by conquest of the whole of the Canaanite land.
But Rahab shows me the letter you wrote that Moses designated you leader rather than Joshua. I have no reason to suspect that Joshua would lead any sort of insurrection against you: the sacred texts assure us even in my time that Caleb lived to a great old age in a blessed tenure of eldership upon the State of Israel's most prosperous region. However, all other Canaanites must fear Joshua with the most dreadful terror.
The Book of Joshua relates that Joshua successfully pursued a war of extermination against all the Canaanite peoples, and from this moment onward in history, the great virtues of the Israelites are indivisible from the blood which spills from billions from this moment onward. Your people are about to become inflictors of great suffering, causes of suffering in billions of others, and yourselves the longest suffering people upon all the earth - slavery is a mere prelude to the vicissitudes of horror inflicted upon your descendants. Surely you, a member of the now dwindling final generation of Israelite slaves, have all too great a knowledge of the oppression caused by violence and murder. It is particularly at this moment in history, when Jews stand upon the cusp of their historic homeland, that the entire history of all later generations may be rewritten from its inception. There is so much within the story of your people which offers comfort and consolation, surely the story of the future can be rewritten so that mankind may abide in a world of life rather than death. I come from an era of death the likes of which your epoch could never know. Mankind is so powerful that he shall harness the very power of creation itself, and upon a trajectory untutored by morality will have created means to destroy the planet upon which we dwell. If mankind destroys itself, what matters it then if all those coming people who exist in history as my time knows it cease to be? Will your God have wanted all existence for nothing? I cannot imagine so. Such a plan as mine would be worth the alteration of time, the alteration of theism, the alteration of human events itself and the extinction of all humans after you for a better humanity to replace us who follow.
Therefore I propose as follows: We must begin to illuminate the whole world at its inception. Mankind in my day is not ready for the great and the good, but if we can begin the process of extending all the benefits of science in my era to your era, crucible to all the moral aspirations thereafter, we ought be able to illumine everything of the earth; all people fed, all endeavors fulfilled, all spirits raised, all barriers between people mere myths. The nation of Israel would truly become the light unto nations my world still needs them to be.
I come to you in nothing but good will, faith, and peace, so that we may preserve the energy of human light. May the light that shines through the universe and through your god lead us to the better world this world has always been possible to be.
With the greatest anticipation for our meeting,
Nikola Tesla
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Dear Joshua,
You told me not to go, not to trust Rahab, not to trust Nikola-ibn-Tesla, and you were right. Not for the reasons you thought you were, but Reb Tesla and I are literally stuck in a tiny courtyard on Rahab's roof she claims known to no client but us, reached via a secret passageway whose directions only Rahab knows of herself, unable to leave because the Jericho royal guard knows that we're probably hiding somewhere in the house. Please be assured, her house is by an exponent the most sophisticated and secure structure in Jericho.
The Emperor of Jericho, a superstitious and violent man named Shobach, would have no interest in capturing me, but he is convinced that Mr. Tesla is a hostile god, and that since I was seen in his presence (we were discussing how to properly make peace overtures to this great king...) the Israelites must ergo be hostile invaders. Reb Tesla's inventions are far more numerous, innovative, potentially beneficial or destructive than we could possibly have foreseen. Should Reb Tesla and I make it out of this situation alive, we will explain whichever of them survive this siege. The emperor became convinced of Reb Tesla's diabolical character by hearing of a machine that could take pictures of our thoughts.
Reb Tesla did not intend to display such wonders to anyone but me, but the Jerichites, who are as expert at hunting as they are incompetent at building, were tracking his movements for six months. When he came to Rahab to meet with me, they were fully prepared to intercept us to ascertain the nature of the meeting. Reb Tesla was forced to show them a number of inventions; many of which neither they nor I understood. But we surely understood the divine power of how he harnessed lightning bolts to illuminate bulbous glass like a torch from hundreds of cubits away. We surely understood the utility of his ship that flies. We surely understood the power in his ability to make images of our inside bones on pieces of wooden papyrus. And had we not known the secret from when Reb Tesla hails, we would surely have been convinced he was divine when he literally took pictures of our thoughts as though he were an artist who draws them.
Mr. Tesla tells me that he does all this by an undetectable force within all the light around us called 'electricity.' I cannot make tohu or vohu of his explanation, but so far as I can tell, he quite literally summons up the power of Yahweh from the air. These were sights as awesome as anything done by Moses to the Nile or the Red Sea. And like the Red Sea, we surely experienced a moment of transcendent dread when he harnessed the power of Yahweh into beams of light that cause death to every animal to which he aimed them with an explosive mechanism not entirely unlike a bow-and-arrow he calls a 'traben mortis,' or to put it in our language, a Death Beam. This terrifying instrument of wrath was immediately confiscated.
Mr. Tesla assures me that he has a lock on his death beam which is quite secure and unable to be deciphered by what he terms 'primitive men.' But I believe there is a chance, however unlikely, that they will decipher how to use it, in which case the entire nation of Israelites is endangered, along with all the peoples of Canaan and the entirety of the known world. It is quite possible that Yahweh himself would not be immune to the death beam's power. Even if there's but the smallest chance the Jerichites will ascertain its use, it is absolutely imperative you come with an army to Jericho and conquer the city before they conquer us.
Mr. Tesla fortunately has another weapon which he has stored in an extremely secure location called Mount Zion, in almost the exact center of Canaan's west bank. I now turn the remainder of this letter over to Mr. Tesla.
Shibboleth,
Caleb-ben-Jephunneh
Dear Joshua,
It is an honor to write you. My time still hears much of your deeds. In my hubris I did not think them necessary, and for that you have my profoundest apologies.
Realizing that people would see the implement if it did not fit under a robe, I made it very small. Do not be fooled, the device is extremely powerful. I have buried in a cave directly to Mount Zion's east. Realizing someone would have to retrieve it, the burial is just next to the door on the left, two cubits down. All you would need is one person to retrieve it with the simplest gardening implement. The key to this machine is boiling much water and pouring the water into a tank that opens from the back. When enough boiling water is in the tank, steam will escape that powers the machine.
The device, for the record called an 'oscilator', has a series of what we call suction cups that allow the device to be attached to places where they would otherwise fall down.
Here are the very simple instructions.
1. Go anywhere on Jericho's wall.
2. Fasten the suction cups to the wall. You can practice that on any rock and it will quickly become self explanatory.
3. Ignite a very small fire next to it to boil water. Obviously you'll need a pot, preferably three.
4. Pour the boiling water into the small tank.
5. Make sure every Israelite stands a safe distance away from the oscilator, about 2000 cubits, far away enough that they will not be hit when the wall crumbles.
I wish you all the best of luck, but unless the historical record is entirely false, I believe you needn't have my luck for what follows,
Nikola Tesla
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Rahab,
This is foolish and dangerous even for a woman and inevitably what happens when women get involved in politics. You have no idea what you're doing and you have no idea how much danger you just let into our borders.
They say this Yahweh of theirs is invisible. That's the biggest load of shit west of the Fertile Crescent. Think about it for two regas: Tesla is Yahweh! This 'science' thing he does, this is how he got those slave people out of Egypt! He found a whole race of guinea pigs to try his experiments on who'd just be grateful to be free of their chains, and now they're going to make us the guinea pigs in their place!
This guy might be a spirit, he might be a man, we don't know, but if he's a man we have to act on any opportunity to kill him before he does Ba'al knows what to us. He's no more interested in peace than the Acheans!
If you have them, try to kill Tesla and if you can't, kill Caleb to send him a message and kill any messenger that comes to them. Do not let them do anything before we destroy these machines of theirs.
If you want any payment for services rendered in the future, you'll do this right away.
Shobach
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Dear Joshua,
I will bring you Tesla-bin-Nikola. His weapons are too dangerous without himself to operate them. I will bring him to you beyond the wall through a secret passageway dug by a deceased client many years ago. Meet him five cubits from the wall to the northwest.
I love Caleb as much as he loves me, but regretfully I must hold Caleb hostage unless you make me a promise;
I pray you, swear to me by your Lord, since I have shown you kindness, that you will show kindness to my father's house and give me a true token of your promise: that you will save the life of my father, and my mother, and my brothers, and my sisters, and all that they have, and deliver our lives from death.
If you fulfill this promise, then according to your words, so be it and shibboleth.
Rahab
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Dear Rahab,
Our life for yours, if you utter not this our business. And it shall be, when the Lord have given us the land, that we will deal kindly and truly with you.
Unfortunately, it shall be that whosoever shall go out of the doors of your house, his blood shall be on his head, and we will be guiltless: and whosoever shall be with you in the house, his blood shall be on our head if any hand be upon them. And if you utter this our business, then we will be quit of your oath which you have made us swear.
But Caleb was a fool to lose you,
Joshua
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Dear Joshua,
There remains the problem of crossing the Jordan River. The book of your name claims that your God parted the waters, but I'm told by Caleb rumors that Moses was able to cross the Red Sea because of Aaron's knowledge of the tides.
Should your god unexpectedly fail to provide the miracle of crossing the Jordan, I have an invention I buried right next to the Jordan riverbank. All you need do is send someone to sail over the river to dig it up. It is right on the embankment due exactly west of what will eventually be the Israelite capital, the Jebusite settlement currently known to various tribes as either 'Jebus' or 'Rushalmem'.
It is an artificial tidal wave generator. Unfortunately it will cause the banks to significantly overflow, but the Israelites will be able to cross the inlet of dry land it generates.
I take it you know what a bouy is and if you don't, some members of your tribe do that once were children who worked as slaves upon the Nile or upon mining in the Sinai mountains.
Those of you familiar with mining must cut the rock of Mt. Hermon, and those of your artisans familiar with sculpting must fashion them into a bouy. These bouys will compress air, the air will turn the bouy into something called a propeller, the propeller will create an effect called a 'turbine'.
What you need is for your artisans to sculpt bouys and tie them to ropes by the center piece. I take it the older among you learned how to swim on the Nile in Egypt, furthermore I've read that you recently circumcised all the men of Israel under forty. If the men over forty are physically incapable of swimming, I would recommend crossing near the river's origin at the Sea of Galilee, where water is guaranteed to be fresh, rather than further south, where there may be extraordinarily painful runoff from the Dead Sea. Please have the most physically capable Israelites who can swim swim to the opposite embankment. Upon getting there, they will hold the rope as tautly as possible. As time measurement in your era is approximate, it would be pointless to convey the amount of time required for it to take effect, but please be absolutely patient.
Should Yahweh be delayed in his miracle, I highly recommend this as an alternative.
Shibboleth and still with great hope for the future,
Nikola Tesla
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My Deareast Rahab,
It is to my crippling shame that you have chosen Joshua over me. I can understand your need for the security I cannot provide, but tell me not you love him, not me. I never would believe it.
I understand, I vouched for Achan, and you're angry for it. I had no idea he would execute Jericho to a man, woman, child and livestock, and I hear through contacts it was Yahweh's commandment, but the idea Achan did this without Joshua's blessing is a naivete I never believed you to have. I expected more from you, but I'm out of power, and now you're the wife and viceroy of a tribe that slaughtered your entire peoplehood. This is not madness, this is evil. If Joshua reads this and kills me for saying it, I'm prepared to die, but you now collaborate with men who'll kill everyone Moses fought to save.
I also hear that Yahweh commanded our people to take no plunder but coin: no rainment or fabric, no cattle, neither food nor crop. And yet Achan stole a dress from the chamber of Shobach's wife with silver and gold, and now the entire nation sees you wear it. Whether or not Yahweh wanted war or peace, you have all three committed an abomination in His eyes, and if Yahweh is real, then we all shall pay.
Please indulge an old man foolish with a young man's love. Leave Joshua. He may exceed this old man in the means of lovemaking, but he's also a soldier who fornicated his way through the people of Israel. Practically one seventh of this generation might be his sons, and he will leave you at Israel's mercy when he finds someone else; someone, dare I suggest, younger than all three of us.
My weak heart can't but yearn for your return, even as I know the impossibility.
You are, as ever, my memory, my valley of refuge, my greatest, oldest love,
Caleb
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Dear Joshua,
As you know, the city of Ai is very small. We took as you commanded us: three thousand men to capture and slaughter it. We were met on the battlefield by literally but thirty six. Eighteen men, eighteen women. The men of Israel laughed, as you might had you seen it.
But these Aites are like unto gods themselves. They slew 1,200 of us by high noon and not a single among them wounded. They followed us from before the gate unto Shebarim and smote us in the going down. Many a brave Israelite soiled himself in awful terror. Yet when we reached the bottom of the quarry, they simply walked back and there yet is no trace of them beyond their gates. I would say they are a terrible threat to us, but none of Ai has come to meet us, however distantly we encamp.
We should not take Ai, for if we try again, that much more will we be slaughtered.
Shibboleth,
Othniel
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Dear Yahweh,
I still do not understand how the Israelites pray, and furthermore there would seem a taboo against women praying, therefore am I writing to you.
My husband Joshua rents his clothes and falls to the earth upon his face before the ark of the Lord until the eventide, he and the elders of Israel, and put dust upon their heads.
Here is a direct transcription of one paragraph of his speech before the elders:
"Alas, o Lord our God, wherefore have you at all brought this people over Jordan, to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites, to destroy us? would to God we had been content, and dwelt on the other side of the Jordan! O Lord, what shall I say, when Israel turneth their backs before their enemies. For the Canaanites and all their inhabitants shall hear of it, and shall environ us round, and cut off our name from the earth: and what wilt thou do unto thy great name?"
I do not know how the people of Israel are run, but please, speak to him as you spoke to Moses.
Devotedly yours,
Rahab
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Joshua, Care of Rahab:
GET THEE UP; wherefore liest thou thus upon thy face?
Israel hath sinned, and they have also transgressed my covenant which I commanded them: for they have even taken of the accursed thing, and have also stolen, and dissembled also, and they have put it even among their own stuff. Therefore the children of Israel could not stand before their enemies, because they were accursed: neither will I be with you, except ye destroy the accursed from among you.
Up, sanctify the people, and say, Sanctify yourselves against tomorrow: for thus saith the Lord God of Israel, There is an accursed thing in the midst of thee, O Israel: thou canst not stand before thine enemies, until ye take away the accursed thing from among you. In the morning therefore ye shall be brought according to your tribes: and it shall be, that the tribe which the Lord taketh shall come according to the families thereof, and the family which the Lord shall take shall come by households; and the household that the Lord shall take shall come man by man.
And it shall be, that he that is taken with the accursed thing shall be burnt with fire, he and all he hath: because he hath transgressed the covenant of the Lord, and because he hath wrought folly in Israel.
I will present myself when I choose to present myself,
Elohim
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