| Alpha and Omega | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Genre(s) | Supernatural thriller |
| Publisher | Del Rey |
| Publication date | July 2, 2019 |
Alpha and Omega is a novel by Harry Turtledove (Del Rey, July, 2019). It is a supernatural thriller about the End of Days that posits that the God of the Ibrahamic religions does indeed exist without question.[1] An excerpt may be found at Penguin Random House.[2]
The Reconstruction Alliance, a fundamentalist Jewish organization in Israel dedicated to reconstructing the Third Temple on Temple Mount, were overjoyed to discover a pure Red Heifer in Arkansas of all places. They sent Yitzhak Avigad, along with his nephew Chaim, to confirm it was fully red without any white patches. He confirmed this, making the cow essential for ritual sacrifice so its ashes could purify the Third Temple site along with the construction workers and priests. Avigad made arrangements to ship the cow to Eretz Yisrael kibbutz in Israel.
This news was picked-up by Christian Fundamentalists who also became excited since the reconstruction of the Third Temple was a requirement for the Last Days and the Second Coming of Jesus. Brandon Nesbitt of the Gabriela and Brandon television program also heard of this and managed to convince his producer Saul Buchbinder and his co-host Gabriela Sandoval to film a special on the Red Heifer in Israel.
At the same time Yoram Louvish, an Israeli archaeologist associated with the Reconstruction Alliance, conducted a secret and illicit dig in a tunnel at the base of Temple Mount. Eric Katz and Orly Binur spotted something unusual which turned out to be old stonework that dated from the Babylonian conquest. There was no way to dig through it without alerting the Waqf, the Palestinian organization controlling the Temple Mount site, so Louvish put the dig on hold.
However, after a terrorist Dirty Bomb attack on the main bus station in Tel Aviv, the Israeli government gave Louvish permission to breach the wall along with a heavy Israeli Defense Force presents to protect the dig. The archaeologists worked carefully, chipping away at the mortar around one stone block until it could be removed. Looking inside, Louvish found the Ark of the Covenant. While remarkable in itself, what defied science was that it was floating several inches above the ground.
The Gabriela and Brandon personnel had arrived in Israel just before the dirty bomb attack. This made them the first American news organization on the scene so they broke the story to the U.S. audience. After the Ark was discovered and moved to the Shrine of the Book they filmed the transfer and the Ark at its new location. Gabriela Sandoval then managed to convince the reluctant Rabbi Shlomo Kupferman, the Minister of Religious Affairs to allow her to open the Ark and see what it contained live on television. However, Brandon Nesbitt slipped her a roofy and took her place in the broadcast. As Rabbi Kupferman feared, when Nesbitt touched the Ark, he was struck dead.