“They also took all the pails, scrapers, snuffers, ladles, and all the other bronze vessels used in the service. KINGS 25:14 (THE ISRAEL BIBLE)
A recent initiative may be bringing Rome and Jerusalem closer together as the Vatican has expressed interest to advance a project releasing artifacts from their archives and allowing them to be placed in a museum.
Investigative archaeologist Rabbi Harry Moskoff has been searching for the Ark of the Covenant for decades and though he has yet to discover the holiest Temple artifact, he was recently contacted by the Vatican. In a stunning example of religious largesse, Vatican officials have expressed a willingness to reveal artifacts from the Holy Land that have been in their possession for hundreds of years. To facilitate this, Moskoff established the Vatican Museum Exchange Program.
The remarkable story began almost two years ago when a lawyer representing the Israeli government contacted Moskoff.
“A high profile lawyer, who happened to be religious, was researching a case at the National Library of France,” Moskoff related. “He came across a document recording gifts that were given to Pope Innocent III by Baldwin I, the Emperor of the Latin Empire of Constantinople in the year 1204.”
The document listed the gifts which were, in fact, artifacts taken from the Holy Land.
“The lawyer contacted me on behalf of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs because he knew that I am an investigative archaeologist,” Moskoff told Israel365 News. “He told me that the Vatican may be interested in sharing with the public Byzantine era artifacts from Israel from the 11th, 12th, and even 13th centuries. This includes ancient makhta (incense shovels) and khatzotzroth (silver trumpets), as well as other smaller Jewish cultic items that were used for sacrificial rites.”
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