The Stone: A Symbol of the Jewish God

The Jewish Encyclopedia relates: “The worship of sacred stones constituted one of the most general and ancient forms of religion; but among no other people was this worship so important as among the Semites.” [1]

These stones were called Baetylus or Bethel[2] with comes from the Semitic bet el, “House of God.” They were believed descended from the heavens as meteorites, endowed with life, and, very often, the embodiment of the God himself.

In any case, one of the most common symbols to appear in JEM, whether ancient or contemporary, is the stone. For instance, in contemporary JEM name meanings that refer to stones appear frequently as Jewish identifiers. [3]

The comic book figures Spider-man or Peter Parker, Green Lantern or Alan Scott and Sargent Rock are three examples. Petyr Baelish or Little Finger and Tyrion Lannister in the fantasy book and TV series Game of Thrones are other examples. All five characters have first names or surnames that mean stone or rock. Other contextual clues in these parables, some disclosed in the broader study, establish these figures as Jewish.

What is clear is that the stone or rock, like the ancient Baetylus, is a symbol for the Jewish God himself and thus a symbol for the embodiment of Jewry. The symbol conveys a striking sense of earthliness, as opposed to celestialness. This is characteristic of Semitic Gods as this study discusses.

In Judaism the maẓẓebot, a type of standing stone or pillar, “long served as legitimate symbol of Yhwh.” [4] Here, of course, we understand Yahweh, again, as the embodiment of Jewry. In the Old Testament, God is referred to as the “Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.”[5] In Isaiah 28:16, a passage Peter will quote: “Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a tested stone, a costly cornerstone for the foundation, firmly placed. He who believes in it will not be disturbed.” [6] Famously Peter’s name itself means “rock.”

The proto-Jew Jacob is understood as having used a rock for a pillow. Here, it is believed that god spoke to him from within the rock. A popular Hebrew song ‘the Hakotel’ or the “Western Wall,” written in 1967 after the Six Day War, puts it: “There are people with a heart of stone, there are stones with a human heart.”

It is doubtlessly meaningful as well that important “Jewish” or proto-Jewish deities are associated with the concept of the stone. For instance, most scholars derive “Hermes” from the Greek ἕρμα herma meaning “prop, heap of stones, boundary marker.” Consider that the Herma is generally considered to have developed from the Jewish maẓẓebot. This is itself a profound confirmation of the Jewishness of this God. The name of the important proto-Jewish Goddess Cybele, whose cult might be a key to understanding the ritual of circumcision, may as well mean “stone.”

What is less clear is precisely why? It seems possible if not likely the stone, like the symbol of Apollo, for instance, is a symbol with multiple meanings. To be clear, while it certainly, in every case, refers to Yahweh and is a symbol of Jewry embodied, what it means to be Jewish itself also seems contain in this metaphor of the stone. The same as well could be said about Apollo vis-à-vis Aryans. Hence by understanding the metaphor of the stone as it describes the Jew, we gain as well an understanding of his “attributes,” his “orientation” and, indeed, his very nature.

This is useful. As it is said of Dwarfs in the Norse myth, whom are clearly Jewish figures, when the sun gazed upon them, revealed them, they were turned to stone. As I will assert, this clue comes from Jews or proto-Jews themselves. To know the nature of the deceiver, to define him as he secretly defines himself, is to render him inert.

The Stone: A Symbol of Jewish Abidance, World Inheritance & Phallus

It is perhaps easiest and clearest to understood the symbol of the rock as a symbol of abidance and even cohesiveness, after all a rock is bound more strongly than soil or living matter. We see this especially with the symbolic contrasting of the Jewish Stone with the Aryan Tree in JEM. This sense of abidance clearly conveyed in The Book of Daniel verses 2:42-3.

There, again, Daniel describes his vision from the Jewish God of a great metallic colossus with “feet of mixed iron and clay.” The colossus is leveled by a stone that will than grow into a mountain filling the whole earth. Hence a Religious, cultural cohesiveness is suggested with the metaphor of the rock vis-à-vis a declining and atomized other. It is, of course, incorrect, as our discussion of the Semitic Bride Gathering Cult has made clear, to understand the stone as a symbol of “separatism.”   Indeed, it is useful now to consider the symbol of the Rock as it might be contrasted with the symbol assigned to Aryans, the Tree.

As we come to understood Jews as a Semitic Bride Gathering Cult, the understanding of a metaphor seems to complete itself. The ephemeral organic matter of the Aryan becomes part of Jewry as it dies. In Hebrew we find this curious word I’iben, לְאַבֵּן. In the Modern Hebrew it means “to give birth” but also “change into stone,” “petrify,” “fossilize,” “lapidify” and “transfix.”

Indeed, with the symbol of the rock it seems we find a metaphor for a kind of inheriting of former, outlasted Aryan civilizations. Hence the Rock is “Jews as terminus,” “Jews as last man” or “the son of man” as they indicate themselves in the Biblical works. Here Tonybee’s formulation of Jews as a “fossilized” people comes to mind. Of course, the metaphor of the Vine and the Serpent, also metaphors for Jewry, contrast themselves with this one. They seem different in this way. The Vine kills the Tree, whereas the Rock absorbs the Tree or the Tree becomes the Rock.

On the other hand the stone as a metaphor may also be, at least in the right context, a reference to the Jewish seed, therefore, the seed of The Vine. We consider that the English word stone many mean: “any small, hard seed, as of a date; pit.” Hence it seems at least possible that the metaphor of a stone, at least in the right context, is used to indicate a seed. In Daniel, for instance, it seems possibly indicated the Jewish “stone” or “seed” is stronger than the “common clay” that “combines with one another in the seed of men” and forms the feet of the colossus.

Indeed, the stone as a symbol certainly had a phallic significance. Consider the maẓẓebot was adopted among the Greeks and there was developed in to the Herma which includes a head and phallus. However, while the Herma or even the Egyptian Obelisk, both likely developing from the maẓẓebot, are developed as phallic totems, the stone itself is not exclusively a phallic symbol. Instead, again, the stone persists as a symbol that seems to describe multiple traits of Jews, at least as they perceive themselves. In this sense, perhaps it is an “aspirational symbol,” similar to the symbol of Apollo. Jews compel themselves to think of themselves as the “abiding stone” in order that they might abide and outlast competitors. Apollo vis-à-vis Aryans represents an identical phenomenon. Though with Apollo there is an objective to perfect oneself eugenically. This is REM.

 

[1] E. G. Hirsch, I. Benzinger, Stone and Stone-Worship, Jewish Encyclopedia.com

[2] It’s interesting that the element meaning house, Beth, בֵּית, is close to the word meaning daughter or girl, Bath, בַּת… Here it seems possible an itinerant, Bride Gathering people such as Jews, on a profound symbolic level, regard women themselves as a type of “house” or inhabitation… This may give new meaning to place names like Bethlehem or Bethany where perhaps women more than places per se are being referenced… It would also conform somewhat to the notion of a Semitic Dying and Rising God whom is understood as disappearing into and reappearing from a female earth… On some level, as it concerns continuation, it is, perhaps, a deeply salubrious formulation… If this is the formulation, “inhabited” woman and Jewish lord are found combined in the symbol of the Bethel or stone.

[3] Jewish fictional characters indicated esoterically as Jewish and bearing names that mean “stone” or “rock” include the comic book characters Sargent Rock, the first Green Lantern Alan Scott and the Silver Age Flash Barry Allen.

[4] E. G. Hirsch, I. Benzinger, Stone and Stone-Worship, Jewish Encyclopedia.com

[5] Psalm 19:15

[6] Peter 2:6