Brian Lumley  Tor Books  Part I Chapter One Late August, 1936.
The year in which the Oriental Institute of Chicago extended its
activities to include a dig at Meggido in (then) Palestine ...
The four came out of the desert as evening turned to night. They
might have been wandering Arabs, coming to the ruins with their
donkeys, finding a place to camp through the hours of darkness.
They might have been Arabs. But they came silently, the hooves
of their beasts muffled with rags, and their silhouettes furtive
against the early stars as they crossed a ridge and plodded down
toward the shining inland sea. And though unwittingly they
followed more or less a path Jesus of Nazareth had followed some
nineteen centuries before them, that was the single way in which
it could be said that they 'walked in the Ways of the Lord.' For
in all other respects they were ungodly indeed, and one of them
especially so. Now they picked their way carefully through
rubble on the outskirts of what had been, long, long ago, a
village. L