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Overview
The Q document—source of the Synoptic Gospels—has long been a mystery. A rumor. A myth. Its pages could threaten the meaning of life and shake the foundations of the world’s major religions—but its existence had never been proved. Until now.
In ancient Cappadocia, legends and parables speak of a divine stream, bubbling up from within the earth. Mateo, as guardian of the stream, hears its call and deciphers its secrets.
In the present day, Farah, hoping to lighten her dark thoughts, journeys to a Pacific island, only to find herself drawn to a mysterious book. Will it hold the answers she seeks or plunge her into a battle for her life and soul?
To Rose, anyone who is not a devout Christian is suspicious, dangerous, and bound for hell. Her son Roger, a theological archeologist, is creeping dangerously close to that fate. Roger has uncovered a buried scroll in modern-day Turkey—a scroll that suggests the document at the root of Judeo-Christian belief was grossly misunderstood, that the politically influenced faith systems that canonized the gospels got it wrong.
The Q document could tear humanity apart. Should it be shared with all mankind to return human spiritual awareness to its purest form? Or should it be destroyed?
Meticulously researched and based on historical truth, Abwûn speaks eloquently to the power of religion to uplift but also to harm, as it leads us through an electrifying unfolding capable of changing the way we view the world, religion—and ourselves.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781947976115 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Cynren Press |
| Publication date: | 04/15/2019 |
| Edition description: | Revised ed. |
| Pages: | 360 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.75(d) |
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
THE FIRST DAY
Mateo
Some of what you learn here will seem familiar.
Cappadocia, 255 B.C.E.
Mateo paused briefly on his descent of the stairwell, smiling as the sound of familiar voices filtered up to him. This is where he learned what it meant to be human. It was a place of secrets and revelations and was alive as a beating heart.
And even though Mateo knew what he would see when he rounded the corner at the base of the stairwell, even though he knew what he would smell — incense and fresh air, sunshine and earth, linen and cotton, prayers and papyrus, wood, woven carpets, and moonlight — none of this familiarity could placate his emotions, and Mateo arrived at the Sanctuary as he always did: with eager anticipation undulating beneath his skin, trailing in scintillating waves behind him.
Older now, he took the steps one at a time, stirring up small clouds of dust that puffed around his ankles. Behind him, the sun broke the top of the stairwell, and he smiled. It was fitting, he thought, that the Way should be lit by early-morning sunlight. Appropriate somehow. For what lay ahead was the Truth That Never Perished — that which was true, had always been true, and would forever be so ab aeterno, ad vitam aeternam, from the beginning of time, for all time.
What lay ahead was the truth about God ...
Farah
And the Lord said, "When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee."
Isaiah 43:2
Farah's breath flowed warm and soft between her lips. Desolation whispered in threads through her lungs. Her lids closed. Let it stop. She exhaled, unfulfilled. Desperate.
For months, a terrible wondering had crept in on her. And again, on this day, she pushed vigorously at it with her hands and feet — away with her might and her mind — watching helplessly as her Will stood aside. She saw it there, her Will, held in the shackles of fear, distracted by the same confusion that made her skin crawl and her spirit heave with alarm: this nervous energy in her chest, these pinpricks of questions.
The Terribleness, or "Mephistopheles," as she had named it, cajoled her at times when she least expected and, because of this, began to own more of Farah's life than she wondered if she could handle.
Like now, he whispered horribly at the edges of her mind — in maleficent tones he irritated, scraped his nail repeatedly over the same spot on her skin, tugged at her attention and began to dictate her heartbeat into irregular rhythms.
This time he arrived with unforgiving swiftness while Farah waited in a crowded line to buy a cup of coffee.
She hadn't seen him coming, but here he was. Taking her breath — outside of her but rising up beneath her skin — it felt like a trick. And she didn't know where to focus her attention.
She wanted to turn the clock back. Only sixty seconds, and never crane her neck to see what the holdup was, to investigate why the queue hadn't moved for some minutes. She wanted just to stand, to continue waiting with everyone else for his turn at the counter, and think only about how cold her hands were. Marveling about the weather and how it could turn from crisp and adventurous, with exhilarating breezes, to insidious, blasting — biting its way through jacket zippers, slipping uncomfortably down napes of necks. Or better still, she wanted to turn the clock back five minutes, back to when she stood on the small, open deck of the ferry, inhaling the ocean air, watching the retreating mainland, wondering whether he and all of her worry could be left behind. Wrapped in the late winter weather, her face bathed in the sinking afternoon sun, Farah had stood. Still. Quiet. Contemplative. And only a little afraid.
But the swell became rough. The ferry tossed. The winds shifted.
Soon, passengers bunched together at the doors, filtered into the cafeteria where they huddled in line, stamping feet and rubbing hands. Children stood close together or hugged between parents' legs. Friends laughed, and men made jokes about shrinking willies, all with the same thought in mind: hot drink. Farah, among them, tucked her hands under her arms and thought the same.
The queue hadn't moved for some minutes, and it was then that Farah craned her neck to see why. Had she known the unfolding that would emerge, she never would have leaned forward, but physiological discomfort breeds impatience, and the comfort of a warm belly beckoned a glance. Ahead she saw a woman counting out in pennies and small change the correct amount to pay for her snacks; normally, this kind of thing wouldn't have been a problem, but the woman at the front of the queue was wearing a cross around her neck. A gold one. One that glinted in the sunlight and caught Farah's eye.
And that was what did it.
What triggered everything.
What brought Mephistopheles skipping to her side. That tiny little cross. That Christian bane.
Farah fidgeted, irritated that she had seen it, but more so because something so small had done it this time. Brought on her panic attack. Triggered the feeling of what she thought was anxiety but feared was insanity. It used to take bigger, more substantial, more overtly influential or invasive religious things: a sermon, a church bell ringing, a glimpse of an early-morning television evangelist before Farah's frantic, fumbling fingers could change the channel. But now, a hint of religious symbolism, a breath of the name "Jesus," a cross around a stranger's neck — and before the queue moved one more step, before the woman had closed her change purse, before Farah could exhale her aversion to the cross, Mephistopheles arrived. On the edges of her consciousness he instantly began to seep. Like black ink, like oil or venom. And he worked as he always did, with enthusiastic vigor, taking over her thoughts and her physiology. When it happened like this, Farah imagined him thrilled, like a vampire invited across his unwitting victim's threshold, and like that unwitting victim, Farah didn't know how to un-invite him.
Five minutes passed. Six. Farah's skin prickled with anxiety, and the deepest breath she could take wasn't deep enough. She shifted back and forth uncomfortably and cracked her knuckles, chewed a bit on her nails, wiggled her toes in her shoes and rubbed her arms ... waiting. Hoping Mephistopheles would depart so that her mind, her body, could settle back into homeostasis, but instead he prodded and pushed her, poked and sneered, reminding her over and over that she was damaged, that God didn't want her, that she was forgotten and as good as dead — like road-kill in periphery vision, like a body after a Terrible End. Why put it off? he would say. You know you can't live like this: tortured, anxious, you'll give yourself cancer by thirty-five at this rate. The body–mind connection isn't a myth, you know, he would lecture, wagging his finger. All that worrying. Come on, he would prod, do yourself a favor ... She could feel him delighting, especially in moments like these, when he and the cross could, together, remind her that she was fundamentally un-right.
Seven minutes passed ... finally, a choice.
Caramel. Mocha. Vanilla cappuccino. Farah scanned the coffee dispenser for a button that said "Just Plain Coffee." There wasn't one. So she opted for a hot chocolate instead; the caffeine wouldn't help her rattled nerves anyway. She dug in her bag for money and found some trapped beneath her Bible, handed the money to the cashier, and willed her hands to stop trembling as she waited for the change. And it was then, while she waited, that it happened.
At the other end of the cafeteria, a souvenir shop buzzed with tourists and ferrygoers, and there in the small crowd of people, under the fluorescent lights, it glittered: silvery and fluid, blue-green and deep. Water. It was a tiny floating patch of ... water? Farah blinked and squinted through hands perusing tacky key chains, between arms marveling at picture postcards, over children's voices shouting, "Mommy, can I ...?" to see if she was hallucinating — surely she had to be. But there it still was, shimmering a quiet mystery that no one else seemed to notice.
Farah dropped her change into a charity box and then walked — without taking her eyes off it — toward the shop, leaving Mephistopheles, her hot chocolate, and her panic attack behind without even a thought.
As she moved closer, the water became matte and stilled in the painting that housed it. Rocks, a blue cape that looked like velvet, skin that glowed in ethereal tones — water flowing forward into a cave from a deep-set background. It was da Vinci's Virgin of the Rocks, impressed pristine on the front cover of a large leather-bound book. She crouched, reaching forward to pick it up. Thick, title-less, Farah turned the book over, its weight resting in her palms. She hovered her fingers, moving them over the images she knew so well: Mother Mary, John the Baptist, Jesus and Uriel (the angel of fire and prophecy, the light of God). Familiarity wrapped itself around her like comfort, and the faintest smile began to warm her lips, until sharply, suddenly, she remembered, and it hit her like the sound of dropping glass — instantly, with a reverberation that didn't echo but threatened to cut her on the inside. Words and images flashed like lightning.
Jesus.
The cross.
Blood.
Flesh and blood.
Pews and hymns and downcast eyes and stained glass shattering.
Eyes that bore in.
Eyes that dismissed.
A gold cross ... Farah glanced fearfully toward the cafeteria for any sign of him there, for any sign of him coming. She closed her eyes, held her breath, and sat.
Waiting.
Waiting.
Waiting.
"Amazing," she whispered, too afraid to look up in case he was standing there, but right then, Mephistopheles felt nowhere near. Tentatively, Farah squinted her eyes open and, through the fuzzy vision of half-closed lids, noticed that no shadow loomed, no figure crept forward. Incredible, she thought, just as the water in the painting again seemed to sparkle and swish like a tide right below her lower lids — a trick of the light, she was sure, but one that stoked Farah's curiosity into flame. She could no longer wait. She opened the cover slowly and, with the scent of leather and paper wafting into the air, Farah smiled at what lay open before her.
Rose
And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
John 8:32
Rose sat in her car, not shaking her knee like most people do when they are nervous, not smoking a cigarette or snacking mindlessly on food. Her thumbs, instead, rubbed the top corners of her Bible — right and left corners with right and left thumbs, respectively. The Good Book was her subconscious comfort — reading it, looking at it, holding it, just knowing it was near brought Rose some kind of solace. Today, however, was different. Today, her hands gripped instead of cradled, clung instead of held. Today, her fingers and palms rubbing persistently were doing more than creating a soothing friction — today they were asking. Begging. Silently pleading as they pressed, hoping to squeeze out any extra ounces of the book's ready-made remedies. The ones meant to calm, soothe, fix, or simply cure by default because they came from a book that was what it was: the Bible.
Again, Rose glanced furtively toward the house outside her window. She wasn't clock watching, but she knew she had been sitting there for a reasonably lengthy time — or rather unreasonably, she thought, biting her lip. Her hands gripped; her thumbs rubbed; she glanced at the key to her son's house on the passenger seat beside her and asked herself again, What are you waiting for? He's gone for three days! That gives you more than enough time to do what you have to do. But still her body wouldn't budge because Rose knew: going into the house would change everything. For as long as she remained in the car, Rose's son would still be who she had always hoped he would be, still be all the good things, still be ... saved. But once she went inside, started searching through his things, finding out, all of that would change. Rose hoped in vain that it wouldn't, but she knew that it would. And it was this very worry — the loss of what she hoped was true — that kept Rose relatively immobile, relatively afraid of picking up the key, relatively content not to enter the house. Just yet. Instead, her hands continued to beg and wait for comfort or the power of God, for the book and its contents to fix everything.
Alvin Boyd Massey Harpur III (or "Alvin," as Rose preferred to call him), however, was oblivious to all this. He only knew that he was hungry, and that Rose (who usually fed him when Roger was away) was still sitting in the car instead of organizing his dinner. He sat large, orange, and purring on the grass, curious as to what the holdup might be before deducing that a closer look might be in order — in particular, Rose getting a closer look at him. Perhaps that would stir her into action. So he hopped his furry, tummy-wagging body onto the hood of the car and blinked affectionately when Rose let out a startled shriek.
"Oh, for goodness sake, Alvin!" she said, holding her hand to her heart. She looked at the cat with exasperated adoration. He purred back at her through the windshield and pressed his paw upon it. Rose realized what he wanted but could only manage a hesitant, apologetic smile. A moment later, Alvin hopped onto the roof of the car and sauntered toward the sun-soaked rear of it — if he was going to have to wait, he wanted to do it in the sunshine. "Where are you off to?" Rose turned in her seat with a guilty chuckle. But as soon as she had, Rose wished she hadn't. Taped to her rear windshield was a piece of paper. Behind it, Alvin's shadow made itself more comfortable.
It was a note. But the writing was illegible, the paper too thick. All Rose could make out was the color of the ink. Red. She swallowed and shifted in her seat uncomfortably. "Please," she whispered desperately to God, "not more to worry about."
She wanted the note to have nothing to do with what happened that morning, with what brought her here, but Rose knew very well that wasn't the case. Stress labored her breathing and rimmed her eyes with tears. She didn't want to read the note. She didn't even want to look at it.
She didn't want to go outside or into the house. She didn't want any of it to be happening at all. She wanted Roger to be good, and Rose wished then with all the devotion she put into prayer that the whole horrible mess would go away. Her knee shook with frustration, and she wondered in that moment if the inevitable was ever avoidable. Could God make it so? Rose closed her eyes and took a deep breath with that very hope filling her lungs.
And she sat still like that, for as long as she could, repeating a summary of Luke 18:27 in her head.
Anything is possible with God.
Anything is possible with God.
Anything is possible with God.
The Bible said so, and Rose believed it. Anything was possible: the parting of the Red Sea, the virgin birth, the resurrection, even miracles for regular people. Rose didn't have leprosy or demons under her skin, she didn't even need to be raised from the dead, but she prayed now to Jesus to heal her life, to change things so that she didn't have to be sitting there in that car not wanting to get out. Rose prayed for Jesus to bring Roger back to God so that none of this would have to go any further. She prayed for all those not on the right path (especially Muslims and Jews and irreligious people) to find their way to Jesus. Around that time, her oxygen began to run out.
Her breath shot out and her chest heaved as her breathing returned to normal. Slowly, she opened her eyes. Slowly, she looked around and then grimaced. The note was still there, Alvin still needed to be fed, and the reality of what she didn't want to face hadn't changed at all. Clearly God was not in the mood to perform a miracle in her life that day.
Just then, a breeze caught an untaped corner of the note and lifted it; the sunlight on the white paper blinded Rose briefly. She watched, hoping, but the paper wasn't torn free, wasn't blown away by an easterly wind. It stayed put, instead, beckoning her to come read it. Reluctantly, she let go of her Bible. Reluctantly, her hands fumbled with the door before grasping for each other, wringing and clenching as she stepped out, until worry began to fall in big invisible drops to the ground, soaking the tops of her shoes as she walked. The words, blazoned in red ink, were not scrawled but written meticulously, not a work of passion but one that was calculated, meant to mean every word. The last sentence was underlined:
Woe to that man who betrays the Son of Man. It would be better for him if he had not been born.
Mark 14:21
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Abwûn"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Natasha M. Freeman.
Excerpted by permission of Cynren Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Prologue, 1,
The First Day, 5,
The Second Day, 181,
The Third Day, 301,
Epilogue, 323,
Notes, 331,
Appendix, 343,
Bibliography &,
Recommended Reading, 347,
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