The Menorah (The oldest continuously used religious symbol in the western world.)

From - History today,

Edited by - Amal Udawatta,

Representation of the Prophet Zachariah’s vision of a menorah between two olive trees, by Joseph Ha-Zarefati in the Cervera Bible, c.1300. Bridgeman Images.

The seven-branched menorah, an instantly recognisable symbol of Judaism, is much older than the Star of David. It has been in continuous use for longer than any other religious symbol in the western world; Rabbinic teaching dates it to the lifetime of the prophet Moses (1391-1271 BC).

We first read about the menorah – meaning ‘candelabrum’ – in Exodus, the second book of the Torah, when it is revealed to Moses on Mount Sinai. Moses is given instructions as to its form, the precise nature of which has caused debate ever since. A menorah should be a hammered work of pure gold and have a central shaft with three branches sprouting from either side. At the top of each branch and central shaft should be a cup shaped like an almond. These cups are to contain pure olive oil, which will light the Temple. It is written that a menorah was placed in the tabernacle that Moses was instructed to build as a portable place of worship for the Israelites after they had been freed from bondage in Egypt; there were ten golden menorot in Solomon’s First Temple in Jerusalem.

The menorah shown here is from the Sephardic Cervera Bible, created around 1300 in the town of that name in Catalonia. Its existence challenges the trope that Judaism is an aniconic religion.

The most widely disseminated representation of a menorah is the one carved in stone on the Arch of Titus in Rome, where a panel shows the menorah and other spoils of war being brought back to Rome following the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in AD 70. In 1949 this menorah was chosen as the basis for the ‘Symbol’ of the State of Israel, marking the metaphorical return of the Temple menorah.

A different type of menorah, a hanukkiah, has eight main branches, plus a ninth, normally in the centre or slightly offset (known as a shamash), which is used to light one other candle each day during the festival of Hanukkah. This festival celebrates the purification and rededication of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in 164 BC, after the successful Maccabean-led revolt against the invading Seleucid Greeks. One day’s sealed pure olive oil in the Temple was enough to light the menorah, which then burned for eight days.

Comments

New Comet SWAN Now Visible in Small Scopes

From :- Sky & Telescope By :- Bob King Edited by :- Amal Udawatta This spectacular image of Comet SWAN (C/2025 F2) was taken on April 6th and shows a bright, condensed coma 5′ across and dual ion tails. The longer one extends for 2° in PA 298° and the other 30′ in PA 303°. Details: 11"/ 2.2 RASA and QHY600 camera. Michael Jaeger Amateur astronomers have done it again — discovered a comet. Not by looking through a telescope but through close study of publicly released, low-resolution images taken by the Solar Wind Anisotropies (SWAN) camera on the orbiting Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). On March 29th, Vladimir Bezugly of Ukraine was the first to report a moving object in SWAN photos taken the week prior. Michael Mattiazzo of Victoria, Australia, independently found "a pretty obvious comet" the same day using the same images, noting that the object was about 11th magnitude and appeared to be brightening. R...

Why did Homo sapiens outlast all other human species?

From - Live Science By Mindy Weisberger Edited by - Amal Udawatta Reproductions of skulls from a Neanderthal (left), Homo sapiens (middle) and Australopithecus afarensis (right) (Image credit: WHPics, Paul Campbell, and Attie Gerber via Getty Images; collage by Marilyn Perkins) Modern humans ( Homo sapiens ) are the sole surviving representatives of the human family tree , but we're the last sentence in an evolutionary story that began approximately 6 million years ago and spawned at least 18 species known collectively as hominins. There were at least nine Homo species — including H. sapiens — distributed around Africa, Europe and Asia by about 300,000 years ago, according to the Smithsonian's National Museum of Nat ural History in Washington, D.C. One by one, all except H. sapiens disappeared. Neanderthals and a Homo group known as the Denisovans lived alongside...

Who Was the Real Marilyn Monroe?

From - Smithsonian Magazine, By - Grant Wong Historian, University of South Carolina, Edited by - Vinuri Randhula Silva, “Blonde,” a heavily fictionalized film by Andrew Dominik, explores the star’s life and legend in a narrative that’s equal parts glamorous and disturbing Marilyn Monroe’s final interview is a heartbreaker. Published in Life magazine on August 3, 1962—just a day before the actress died of a barbiturate overdose at age 36—it found Monroe reflecting on her celebrity status, alternatively thoughtful, frank and witty. “When you’re famous you kind of run into human nature in a raw kind of way,” she observed. “It stirs up envy, fame does. People you run into feel that, well, who is she—who is she, who does she think she is, Marilyn Monroe?” That same question—who was the real Monroe?—has sparked debate among cinema scholars , cultural critics , historians , novelists , filmmakers and th...

Nature Hub

Search This Blog