sunset, December 4, 2007 - sunset, December 12, 2007
“Hanukkah” – by saying this, the very first thing that
comes to our mind’s vision is the Menorah, the candles of Hanukkah.
Hanukkah, the festival of lights is one of the most important of the Jewish
holidays. The holiday goes back almost 2,400 years, and celebrates one of
the greatest miracles in Jewish history. It takes place every year in mid to
late December. While its date varies if you go by the western calendar, in
the Hebrew calendar Hanukkah always falls on the 25th day of Kislev.
Israel's minister of religious affairs, Shimon Shetreet, has asked Pope John
Paul II to help him locate Israel's ancient Menorah - the seven golden
candlesticks (as the Bible calls it). Shetreet met with the Roman Catholic
Pontiff in late January to ask the Pope's assistance. The news article about
this historic request appeared in the January 27, 1996 Jerusalem Post.
Shetreet claimed that recent research at the University of Florence
indicated the Menorah might still be among the treasures in the Vatican's
underground vaults.
Is the golden Menorah preserved in an underground catacomb? What happened to
the Menorah, the golden lamp stand, which graced the early Tabernacle and
the Temple of King Solomon? According to Edward Gibbon, author of ‘The
Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire’, Herod's Temple Menorah now lies at
the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea, somewhere between Italy and the
northern coast of Africa. Gibbon indicated that the spoils of the Jewish
Temple went down with the ship, including the Menorah. Was Gibbon right?
Psalm 96 was the psalm used to celebrate the establishment of Temple liturgy
in Jerusalem in 1004 B.C.- just 3,000 years ago. If the Menorah and perhaps
even other Temple furnishings were returned to Israel during this year, it
would be a highly significant fulfillment of Bible prophecy. Did the Romans
rob Herod's temple of the original lamp stand built at Sinai?
According to some Jewish historians, it may have been one of Solomon's ten
menorahs built to embellish and enhance the original Mosaic Menorah, which
was placed among them. There are many strange stories about the Servant Lamp
that stood in the center of the Menorah.
Though, in the present day, there are many up-to-date explanation of the
Menorah. With the sun as the great Servant Lamp of our universe, and only
eight planets, we have a marvelous Hanukkah Menorah! Concerning the original
seven lamp Menorah, Josephus wrote that it was designed after the sun and
the planets. During the era of the Bible, man could only see seven wanderers
through the heavens - the Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and
Saturn.
But the festival of Hanukkah lends a divine element to the age of Gentile
Christianity. No man could have known that two more planets would be
discovered. Yet two extra lamps were added to the Menorah just before the
advent of the Christian era!
The lamp stand in today's synagogues, called the ner tamid (lit. the
continual lamp; usually translated as the eternal flame), symbolizes the
menorah. The nine-branched menorah used on Hanukkah is commonly patterned
after this Menorah, because Hanukkah commemorates the miracle that a day's
worth of oil for this menorah lasted eight days.
The menorah has the distinction of being the only emblem in either Jewish or
Christian worship and tradition that was designed by God himself. All other
emblems represent man’s response to God’s call, symbols that recall or
memorialize great events of history or serve as material objects needed to
fulfill divine imperatives. Though it was a significant implement in the
tabernacle and temples, the menorah has become more motif than apparatus.
THE ARCH OF TITUS, built in Rome to honor the conqueror of the Jews, shows a
stone carving of the Menorah and other Temple items carried by Jewish slaves
in a parade in downtown Rome following the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D.
70.
