One of the dangers of writing a series where the heroes of your stories go after Biblical artifacts is that you have to make sure the artifacts are known to the reader. In the Foundation series that we are working on, we started off with Salome’s Charger. It told a story of the charger–platter–that held the head of John the Baptist after he was beheaded by King Herod and delivered to Salome. The charger was presumed to have mystical properties, which made the story interesting, or course.
The second story, The Key of Solomon, went a little bit further afield, as I researched a book that actually exists, but not in the way I used it in my novel. The Key of Solomon was presumably a book written by the wisest man who ever lived that held all the mystical knowledge of the ancient world, including the power to summon demons.
In both of these situations, it was pretty obvious that the bad guys were really looking for the objects in question, for, shall I say, nefarious reasons.
In the third book, which came out the beginning of last year, Sola Scriptura, the object in question was a missing book of the Bible. An evangelist’s wife has a vision on live TV calling for America to “return to its Christian roots” and the missing book will presumably support this claim. The book was controversial, coming out right at the election, and the controversy hasn’t let up, but it says important things we all need to hear.
So what am I working on now? It’s called The Stones of Truth, and it’s about the Urim and Thummin from the Old Testament. Now, not everyone has heard of a Urim and Thummin, but if you go back and look it up, they were pretty important objects in the time of Moses, the time of Joshua and for the next couple of hundred years.
They were stones, one white and one black. They had markings on them in Hebrew. The black one had “lights” etched on it, and the white one had “perfection” on it. The high priest would go into the Most Holy Place of the sanctuary and stand in front of the Ark of the Covenant–yes, that one from Indiana Jones–where he would ask God yes or no questions. If it was a yes answer, the white stone would light up. If it was a no answer, a dark cloud would come over the black stone.
It wasn’t as dramatic as the Ark of the Covenant, but it was a way from humans to get direct answers from God. And that’s the crux of my story. In the story, the people who are looking for the Urim and Thummin are using them to influence world politics.
I’m starting on chapter 10 of my first draft, and there is still a long way to go, but I wanted you to understand what I am talking about when I mention these two stones. Because I am going to be talking more about my upcoming book in days to come. It is sizing up to be a good one.
More later, my friends.
