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“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. |
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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. |
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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? |
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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? |
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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. |
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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. |
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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! |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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