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Ch. 12: Urim and Thummin

Ch. 12: Urim and Thummin Page of 377 Ch. 14: New Jerusalem Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
THE URIM AND THUMMIM.                   333
sequent fate there are three conflicting accounts ; the first that they were sent off by Genseric to Carthage upon the sack of Rome, but that the ship, with them on board, was lost on the voyage. But some at least, if not all, must have fallen into Alaric's hands when he sacked the city some fifty years before, if there were any foundation for the belief mentioned by Procopius. He states that the main reason why the Franks in the sixth century pressed the siege of Narbonne, the Visi-Gothic capital, with such eager­ness, was the being there deposited the treasure of King Ataulphus, which boasted, amongst its other incalculable riches, of vases formed out of Emeralds (prasini, he uses the contemporary Latin term for the precious kind), made of old time for the use of the Temple by King Solomon. The third story rests on better authority than either of the pre­ceding. Procopius, an eye-witness, states that amongst the innumerable spoils of Carthage, carried in his Vändalic triumph by Belisarius through Constantinople, were the vessels of the Temple of Jerusalem, formerly the prey of Gen­serie (Bell. Vand. xi. 9). Justinian deposited them in the sacristy of Sta. Sophia ; but hearing of a remark made by a Jew how these spoils brought ruin upon all who presumed to detain them from the place for which they had been made, being struck with the fear of sacrilege, sent them off with all possible dispatch to the Christian church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem. In this case they must soon after have fallen again into the hands of another Persian conqueror, Chosroes II,, when he took the Holy City in 615, and abundantly verified the Jews' prediction by the speedy destruction they brought upon the Sassanian dynasty, ex­tinguished in blood A.D. 632. Hence there is good reason to suppose them still buried in some unknown treasure-chamber of one of the old Persian capitals, and to have a chance of emerging from oblivion at no very distant day
Ch. 12: Urim and Thummin Page of 377 Ch. 14: New Jerusalem
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