It was a mystery. Hezekiah, the twelfth king of Judah, the father of Manasseh, asked around about the mysterious bronze snake, named Nehushtan, on display in a corner of the temple. Encouraged by the prophet Micah, Hezekiah wanted to restore and strengthen the monotheistic religion of his forefathers. The veneration of such a "graven image" was inconsistent with the worship of the one God, the God of Abraham and Moses. No one knew the origin of the thing. Hezekiah didn't research the matter. He ordered that the snake be destroyed. That was the end of idol worship on the side within the very walls of the temple.

Much later, some Jewish rabbis took the dusty case records out of the files and more earnestly did the research. They concluded that the destroyed bronze serpent had something to d…