Jerusalem’s Temple Treasures: Where Did They Go?

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For thousands of years, people have hunted for the lost treasures of the First and Second Jerusalem Temples. The story begins about 2,500 years ago, when several biblical accounts—2 Kings 25:13-17, 2 Chronicles 36:18-19, and Jeremiah 52:17-23—narrate the removal of treasures from the First Temple by the invading Babylonian armies. Most of these Temple implements (or vessels; Hebrew: kelim) are reported restored in Ezra 1:6-11 and Ezra 5:14-17. Taken together, these biblical passages suggest that some treasures may have had a temporary stay in Babylon, but most returned to Jerusalem and came to rest in the rebuilt Second Temple. […]

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Footnotes

1. Steven Fine, “The Temple Menorah—Where Is It?” BAR, July/August 2005.

2. Joan E. Taylor, “Secrets of the Copper Scroll,” BAR, July/August/September/October 2019.

Endnotes

1. Harry H. Moskoff, “Is There New Evidence of Jewish Temple Treasures in the Vatican?” The Jerusalem Post (February 10, 2022).

2. The treatise received a full English translation only in 2013: James Davila, “The Treatise of the Vessels (Massekhet Kelim),” in Richard Bauckham, James R. Davila, & Alexander Panayotov, eds., Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, vol. 1 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013), pp. 393–409. For more, see Elena Dugan, “Unearthing Babylonian Treasure Caches and Textual Fluidity within Massekhet Kelim,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 28.2 (2021), pp. 111–136.

3. See Jozef T. Milik, “Notes d’épigraphie et de topographie palestiniennes,” Revue Biblique 66.4 (1959), pp. 567–575, plate XIV.

4. For example, the title “Massekhet Kelim” is also the title of a tractate in the Mishnah. Moreover, the Babylon-centric versions even label the treasure-caches as “Mishnah I,” “Mishnah II,” and so on.