Dressed in ancient robes and a breastplate encasing twelve magical gemstones, the high priests of Solomon's temple in Jerusalem blessed the hundreds of thousands of Israelites that assembled there to celebrate Jewish holy days. The high priest held up his hands in a special configuration: palms facing out, middle and ring fingers split apart, the thumbs of each hand touching. Eons earlier, a group of deities employed the same hand configuration in creating tens of thousands of tablets containing the blueprint for the creation of human life on earth. It was to be a grand experiment: humans were to be given the conflicting instincts for good and for evil. The question posed was whether humanity's desire for love and goodness would overcome its "inclination to evil"-whether humans would accept and obey the only one of the ten commandments that outlaws a particular state of mind: The tenth commandment: Thou Shalt Not Covet.
One of the deities, Alo'el, dissented from the agreed-upon design. She fashioned eighteen tablets setting forth thousands of additional and different coded symbols. The tablets would be given to humanity if, as Alo'el predicted, the original design proved unbalanced, with the traits of greed and envy overpowering those motivating a moral and peaceful life.
Daniel Ornstein is born with birthmarks on each shoulder, inexplicably in the exact shape of the iconic hand configuration. After years of mountaineering as a guide on Mount Rainier, and otherwise fleeing a traditional Jewish upbringing in New York, Daniel is confronted by surreal dreams, visions, and events. They convince him to find out what his birthmarks mean. He moves to Jerusalem and attends the Hebrew University. There, he falls in love with Yael, a former Israeli army captain who helps Daniel in his quest. Following a series of clues, they unearth a brass cylinder containing a scroll written in 586 BCE by Zadok, the last high priest of Solomon's temple. In the scroll, Zadok reveals that he has hidden a chest holding the breastplate and other priestly vestments in a cave on Elephantine Island in Egypt. The chest can only be opened, and the breastplate can only be worn, by a person born with the birthmarks. When word of the magical breastplate's possible location leaks out, Evangelical extremists embedded at the highest levels of the United States Government launch an all-out effort to find and use the breastplate as a rallying cry for rebuilding the ancient temple and sp