Home › The High Priest's Breastplate › The High Priest's Breastplate: Jewish

The High Priest's Breastplate: Jewish

A fact which has generally been overlooked by those who have embarked on the sea of conjecture relative to the fate of the breastplate stones is that a large Jewish contingent, numbering some twenty-six thousand men, formed part of the force with which the Sassanian Persians captured Jerusalem, and they might well lay claim to any Jewish vessels or jewels that may have been secured by the conquerors. In this case, however, it is still probable that these precious objects fell into the hands of the Mohammedans who captured Jerusalem in the same year in which they took Ctesiphon. One circumstance which may have contributed to the preservation of these gems in their original form after they fell into the hands of the Romans is the fact that each one was engraved with the name of one of the Jewish tribes, the inscription being probably in the older form of Hebrew writing, which was used in the coinage even as late as the last revolt in 137 A.D. Hence, recutting would have been necessary to fit them for use as ornaments, a process not easily accomplished, and involving a great loss of size. We must also bear in mind that the intrinsic value of the gems may not have been so great as many suppose, since all of them were probably of the less perfect forms of the precious and semi-precious varieties. It is very likely that the enthusiastic statements of Josephus in this connection were dictated by national pride, or arose from the tendency to exaggeration so common among the Oriental writers. Certainly, if the breastplate known to Josephus was made not long after the return of the Jews from the Babylonian Captivity, their financial resources at the time of its fabrication were quite restricted.

Admitting as a possibility that the Arabs may have secured possession of the breastplate, how would they have regarded it? The heroes of the Old Testament, and especially Moses, were such sacred personalities in the eyes of Mohammedans that this relic would have been as precious for them as for us. However, the victorious Arabs who overran the Sassanian Empire, although filled with religious zeal, were no students of archaeology, and would have been quite unable to decipher the strange characters engraved on the stones. They would most probably have supposed them to be Persian characters, and would, therefore, have valued these stones no higher than others in the Persian treasure. This can serve as an explanation of the fact that no allusion to the breastplate with its adornment can be found in the works of those Mohammedan writers, such as Tabari, who treat of the overthrow of the Sassanian Empire. We may be sure that the Persians themselves would have accorded no special honor to objects connected with the Hebrew religion, since their own Zoroastrian faith had no connection with it. In 628, not long before the date of the Arab invasion, the most precious relic of Christendom, the cross discovered by Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, and believed to be the very cross on which Christ died, was surrendered to the Greek Emperor Heraclius by Kobad II, son of Khusrau II, on the conclusion of a treaty of peace between the Eastern and Sassanian Empires. This cross was one of the sacred objects borne away to Persia from Jerusalem by Khusrau in 615 A.D. It is said to have been guarded carefully through the influence of Sira, Khusrau's Christian wife. There is a bare possibility that other objects of religious veneration, taken from Jerusalem, may have been given up by the Persians at the same time, and that the unique character of the most important relic so overshadowed all others that historians have failed to note the fact. The cross was restored to Jerusalem by Heraclius in 629, only to fall into the hands of the Mohammedans when that city was taken by the Arabs under Omar, in 637. Hence, if the jewelled breastplate had also been surrendered by Kobad, it would probably have shared the same fate. We have here a wide field for conjecture,--but, unfortunately, nothing more. Still, in the absence of any definite and trustworthy information, there is a kind of romantic interest in viewing the various possible relations of the mystery surrounding the fate of the most precious gems, historically at least, that have ever existed. More especially is this interest justified in the case of all who are disposed to prize gems and jewels for their symbolic significance, for, as we have shown, this significance, as far as concerns natal stones and the spiritual interpretation of the qualities of the heart and soul symbolized by the color and character of the principal precious and semi-precious stones, has its root in the veneration felt by early Christian writers, beginning with the author of the Apocalypse, for the unforgotten and unforgettable gems that were worn by the Hebrew high-priest. A rather ingenious utilization of the reputed powers of Aaron's breastplate comes to us in a book printed in Portland, Maine.(C. H. Emerson, "Psychocraft" [Portland, Me., 1911]). The writer assumes that the Urim and Thummim enclosed in the folds of the breastplate consisted of twelve stones, duplicates of those engraved with the names of the tribes, and so disposed that, when they were shaken to and fro and then allowed to come to rest, three of them would become visible through an aperture in the ephod just beneath the rows of set stones. The signification of the oracle is given by the various combinations of color offered by the three stones that reveal themselves; to each combination a prearranged meaning is given. That anything of the kind could have been true of the original Urim and Thummim is scarcely worthy the trouble of refutation, but the practical result of this modern experiment is a clever oracle which will probably enjoy a certain vogue.