The Lamps as a Witness of Dialogue: the Christian Lamps of the Holy Land and its Cultural Context

Abstract

Among the Christian lamps of the Byzantine period there is a group with the words from the liturgy of presanctified gifts and the palm branch décor around the nozzle. I will compare them to the contemporary Jewish lamps and will show that the palm branch design is artistically and culturally dependent on the menorah as the first tree of life, which was a predecessor of the Christian tree of life. The text on the Byzantine lamps helps to show, how the Old Testament parallels played an important role in formation of the Christian attitudes to the Cross as the Tree of Life, as witnessed by the text on the lamps.