This spring, a bold banner fluttered in the Vatican in front of the Braccio Carlo Magno, a museum space that embraces the south side of St. Peter's Square. The banner was so large it could be seen from three blocks away as one approached along the Via Della Conciliazione, the Vatican's main thoroughfare. It was a black banner, in the center of which was a huge representation of a gold menorah. Amid the 96 statues of saints and martyrs, and the numerous crosses that adorn St. Peter's Square, the menorah stood alone as a symbol of Judaism, a symbol older than the cross, and probably well known to both St. Peter and St. Paul, whose monumental statues flank the entrance to St. Peter's Basilica.
The form of the menorah on the banner was taken from a representation of the Temple menorah carved into the interior of the nearby Arch of Titus that stands adjacent to the Roman Forum. That frieze depicts the spoils of the Judaean War taken as booty by Titus from the destroyed Second Temple in 70 C.E. Among those spoils, and most prominently displayed in the Arch, is the Temple menorah, a seven-branched candelabrum whose shape is prescribed by God to Moses as revealed in Exodus 25:31-39.
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