God's Gold (12 page)

The disappearance of the vast collection of art and money that Rome plundered from the Temple of Jerusalem is easily explained. Vespasian systematically liquidated the bulk of the Jewish treasure into ready cash for the imperial coffers exhausted by his predecessor, Nero. Some of this new income was invested in building the Colosseum in Rome, while an inscription from the theater of Daphne in Antioch, modern Turkey, reading “Ex praeda Iudaea” (“From the Judean Booty”), reveals that the new emperor publicly showcased his wealth across the empire. The fate of the greatest symbols of the Jewish faith, however, is far more complicated. The Arch of Titus displays the looted gold menorah, the gold Table of the Divine Presence, and a pair of silver trumpets. But what did these objects mean to Judaism and Rome, and were the images depicted on the arch real or imagined?

Although the Star of David is Judaism's most popular symbol today, the menorah remains the ultimate symbol of faith, the most powerful image connected with the lost Temple. Whereas the Star of David became popular only in the last two hundred years, the menorah is steeped in history. It is the most characteristic and prevalent motif of ancient Jewish art, recorded 216 times in Israel and at 270 other locations throughout the Mediterranean basin. Wherever great ancient cities have been excavated, such as Ostia in Italy, Sardis in Turkey, and Saranda in Albania, the menorah flourished.

This symbol was also adopted by Israel in 1948 as the official insig
nia of state, which, in an act of supreme irony, plucked the image from the Arch of Titus in Rome. Quite simply, this was considered a faithful representation of the original menorah from Jerusalem's Temple. So a depiction commissioned in the Eternal City by a pagan emperor, and plastered across one of its greatest victory monuments as a graphic expression of Israel's destruction, ended up resurrected by twentieth-century conquerors, a phoenix rising from the ashes. But is the Arch of Titus menorah an accurate depiction of the Temple candelabrum, and what did this object really mean to Judaism?

The menorah carried aloft by celebratory hands on the Arch of Titus was Rome's ultimate prize. What may seem to us incorrectly today a simply designed object of limited function, restricted to Temple worship in Judaism, had a deep value to the conquerors. This twenty-eight-inch-tall form of primitive lighting was far more than just a shining piece of war booty. Rome was fully aware that the candelabrum was impregnated with symbolic importance beyond the physical and functional. For this was the very light of the Jewish people extinguished.

Both the post-Hellenistic and modern image of the menorah in art is conservative, always comprising a one-piece base and central shaft flanked by six branches divided symmetrically into two sets of three. The arms of the candelabrum rise in a semicircular fashion (although less frequently more angular with a V-shaped anatomy). Light fixtures traditionally holding sacred oil and lit with wicks were fitted onto the ends. This is the earliest form of the menorah depicted in ancient art and represented on the Arch of Titus, and allegedly the form that graced the Holy of Holies in Herod's Second Temple.

However, a careful look at the 486 artistic representations, and immersion among the literary texts, actually reveals a dizzying array of different menorah shapes and styles potentially used in Temple times. But which one illuminated Jerusalem in AD 70? Was this an original Solomonic antique dating back a thousand years or a later form? What type of menorah does Israel accuse the Vatican of imprisoning in its vaults?

The major reason for the menorah's spiritual mystique is its im
mense antiquity as a religious concept and object. From the pivotal moment of revelation, when God carefully instructed Moses on how to create a menorah on Mount Sinai, until the dark days when Rome looted the Second Temple, like its people the Jewish menorah suffered a tortuous history. The prototype described in the book of Exodus was a pre-Israelite design crafted and used in the desert after Moses led the flight from Egypt across the Red Sea, if you accept the biblical tradition. As with all aspects of Jewish worship, not least the plan of the Temple itself, the Bible furnishes precise regulations about the requisite shape of the prototype:

At the end of the period of the Exodus, dated between 1250 and 1200 BC, this candelabrum shone in the Tabernacle, a temporary tent-like sanctuary, and its oil lamps were burned from evening to morning
before God (Exodus 27:21) as a “statute for ever throughout your generations” (Leviticus 24:3).

When King Solomon built the first permanent Jewish Temple in Jerusalem between 965 and 925 BC, he is credited with equipping the Holy House with a multitude of “lampstands of pure gold, five on the south side and five on the north, in front of the inner sanctuary; the flowers, the lamps, and the tongs, of gold” (1 Kings 7:49). To complicate the picture further, Flavius Josephus undoubtedly exaggerated wildly by claiming that Solomon crafted ten thousand candelabrums according to the laws of Moses, with one dedicated specifically to Temple worship “that it might burn in the daytime, according to the law” (
AJ
8.90).

In the days of the Exodus wandering in Sinai, when the oil necessary to keep the Tabernacle menorah burning was a rare commodity, the lamp was understandably only lit between sunset and sunrise. In the tenth century BC, King Solomon commanded great wealth and lush agricultural lands throughout Israel, especially in the Galilee. Abundant sacred olive oil could now be pressed, not only to keep the holy menorah burning around the clock, but to create an immense spectacle by displaying a whole host of additional burning lamps on golden stands. The Judaic concept of the perpetually lit lamp was born.

Despite the detailed commandments handed to Moses on Mount Sinai, the question of the shape of the Tabernacle and Solomonic menorah remains a matter of intense speculation. Rabbinical scholars maintain that the modern shape emerged fully formed and seven-branched. To skeptical academics, however, the Exodus is nothing more than a priestly legend of dubious historical content edited in the sixth or fifth century BC to legitimize and rationalize later religious practice. In other words, the priests fabricated a Jewish foundation myth to validate the centrality to Judaism of Temple worship based on sacrifice in Jerusalem.

A major problem that continues to obscure the matter is an absence of physical evidence. Of the 486 ancient artistic images recorded, not one dates to the periods of the Tabernacle or Solomonic Temples. Even
though casual graffiti was relatively less common at the time, lavish royal art still adorns contemporary temples, palaces, and tombs across Egypt, Iran, and Iraq. The absence of traditionally shaped menorahs in these contexts is distinctly strange because Judaism would have based its prototype on current fashions.

Contrary to the modern assumption that the style of the Arch of Titus candelabrum, and the menorah of modern Judaism, stretches back into the mists of time, the earliest forms were unmistakably different in concept. Archaeological research conducted across the Near East leaves no doubt that lamps shaped like a seven-branched menorah did not exist during the desert wanderings of the proto-Israelite Exodus in the Late Bronze Age period (1400–1200 BC).

Dozens of ancient settlements, tombs, and temples of this period have been excavated in the Near East and Egypt, revealing a wealth of religious paraphernalia, but nothing resembling the traditional menorah. The modern mind has created a major misconception by approaching the book of Exodus with a preconceived image. Another underlying problem is flaws in biblical translation. The term “base and shaft” is actually a mistranslation that should read “base-forming shaft” or “thickened shaft” because the Hebrew word employed,
yerakh,
derives from the anatomical term for a thigh. The image implies a cylindrical object flaring at its base, not a branched object at all.

Whereas candelabra with branching arms are entirely unknown in this period, cultic stands used to support incense bowls, libation vessels, offering tables, and sacred ritual objects were common. The Tabernacle candelabrum of the Late Bronze Age can only have resembled this form. At the time Egypt was the dominant political and cultural superpower, and it is south toward the fertile banks of the Nile that we should seek the menorah's original artistic inspiration. The Nile was the source of all life to Egyptians, and so all things Nilotic were elevated to the sacred plane and mirrored in contemporary art and architecture. At least one element of the vegetal symbolic decoration of the Tabernacle menorah was inspired by Egyptian culture.

If the lamp of the Late Bronze Age Tabernacle sanctuary was a tall,
flaring cylindrical object, did the seven-branched form evolve under the Early Iron Age inspiration of King Solomon? Contrary to tradition, once again this is improbable. The fully formed Jewish candelabrum remained a futuristic design in ancient art, yet to be invented. Instead, cult lamps of this era tended to be flat based, or slightly convex, with seven spouts rather than seven branches. Such an oil-lamp bowl would have sat atop a cylindrical cult stand, numerous examples of which have been excavated across the Near East. This style dovetails neatly with a contemporary Temple lamp description handed down by the prophet Zechariah who, in a dream, saw a “lampstand all of gold, with a bowl on top of it; there are seven lamps on it, with seven lips on each of the lamps that are on the top of it” (Zechariah 4:2). The cylindrical candelabrum remained the dominant shape beyond the period of the United Monarchy and is clearly depicted on wall reliefs preserved in the royal palace of Nineveh in modern Iraq. Here looters cart off various religious objects from the city of Lachish in Palestine, including a cylindrical cult stand, during King Sennacherib's conquest of Judah in 701 BC.

Historically, like all world religions, Judaism has consciously sought out umbilical links to create continuity between the religion that emerged in the wilderness years of the Sinai and the religion of the modern day. Just as Greek myth crucially transmitted “historical” explanations for the imponderable perplexities of life to a predominantly illiterate society—how the planet was formed, the origins of life, love, and culture—so Jewish symbols of the post-Roman era served as psychological reminders that despite the destruction of Jerusalem and life in the Diaspora, not all links with the past were severed. Ever since the destruction of the Temple in AD 70, the menorah has symbolized hope for the future. To some Jews it is a flickering light keeping the messianic dream on a low burn, to others a daily reminder of the divine presence that must be remembered and kept alive.

As uncomfortably as the truth may sit with modern Judaism, however, the preeminent physical image of faith did not exist throughout much of the period of the Old Testament. If the Second Temple me
norah immortalized on the Arch of Titus bears no physical resemblance to the lamps of the Tabernacle or Solomon's Temple, what exactly is the antiquity of this holy vessel?

Both 2 Kings (24:13–15) and Jeremiah (52:17–23) emphatically describe the plunder and destruction of the Temple treasures by King Nebuchadnezzar's henchmen in 587–586 BC, when the Jews of Israel were expelled to Babylon. Although one Old Testament tradition subsequently sees some Temple vessels liberated by King Cyrus of Persia returned to Jerusalem for use in a new Temple (Ezra 1:7–11), there is absolutely no tangible proof to confirm this wishful thinking. Once again, priests writing centuries after the event tried to spin history to legitimize and, to an extent, mythologize the Jewish present—not for political reasons linked to territorial wrangling, but simply to bolster the historical and religious substance of biblical Judaism. Such revisionism typifies the foundation myths of all religions across the globe.

The earliest appearance of the traditional seven-armed menorah in art turns up on coins struck by Mattathias Antigonos, the last king and High Priest of Judea's Hasmonean dynasty. The reverse side of issues struck from 40 to 37 BC featured a seven-branched lampstand with a triangular base. Just how long the form had graced Temple worship is uncertain, but one specific moment in time demands attention.

In 168 BC Antiochus Epiphanes attacked Jerusalem with a strong force and desecrated the Temple. At this time of anguish the Bible specifically confirms that “he arrogantly entered the sanctuary and took the golden altar, the candelabrum for the light, and all its utensils…. Taking them all, he went into his own land” (1 Maccabees 1:21–24). The reality of their looting is confirmed by Josephus (
AJ
12.250). Three years later, Jerusalem was reconquered by Judah Maccabee, who purified and renovated the Temple. For this occasion a new menorah was crafted (1 Maccabees 4:48–50;
AJ
12.318), according to the Babylonian Talmud from melted-down weapons. After a lapse of two years without sacrifice and worship, the lamp was once again relit on 25 Kislev 164 BC, a major moment of joy that led to eight days of celebrations, a tradition commemorated today as the winter festival of Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights.