Introduction to the History of Religions Handbooks on the...

286. Like all other objects stones have been regarded, in all parts of the world, as living, as psychologically anthropomorphic (that is, as having soul, emotion, will), and, in some cases, as possessing superhuman powers.520 The term 'sacred,' as applied to them, may mean either that they are in themselves endowed with peculiar powers, or that they have special relations with divine beings; the first meaning is the earlier, the second belongs to a period when the lesser revered objects have been subordinated to the greater.

287. The basis of the special belief in their sacredness was, probably, the mystery of their forms and qualities, their hardness, brilliancy, solidity. They seem to have been accepted, in the earliest known stages of human life, as ultimate facts. When explanations of their presence were sought, they were supposed to have been deposited by ancestors or other beings, sometimes as depositories of their souls.521 Meteorites, having fallen from the sky, needed no other explanation. Popular science (that is, popular imagination), perhaps from fancied resemblances to the human form, assumed of some stones that they were human beings turned to stone, and stories grew up to account for the metamorphoses. In many different ways, according to differences of physical surroundings and of social conceptions, men accounted for such of these objects as interested them particularly.

288. That stones were believed to be alive and akin to men is shown by the stories of the birth of men and gods from stones,522 the turning of human beings to stone (Niobe, Lot's wife), the accounts of their movements (rocks in Brittany).523

289. Small stones, especially such as are of peculiar shape, are in many parts of the world regarded as having magic power; the peculiarity of shape seems mysterious and therefore connected with power. Doubtless accidental circumstances, such as the occurrence of a piece of good fortune, have often endowed a particular stone with a reputation for power. Certain forms, especially flat disks with a hole in the center, have preserved this reputation down to the present day. The Roman lapis manalis is said by Festus to have been employed to get rain.524

290. Magical stones were, doubtless, believed to possess souls. In accordance with the general law such stones and others were regarded later as the abodes of independent movable spirits.525When the power of a fetish seems to be exhausted, and a new object is chosen and by appropriate ceremonies a spirit is induced to take up its abode in it, there seems to be no theory as to whether the incoming spirit is the old one or a new one, or, if it be a new one, what becomes of the old one, about which little or no interest is felt.526 The pneumatology is vague; the general view is that the air is full of spirits, whose movements may be controlled by magical means: spirits, that is, are subject to laws, and these laws are known to properly trained men.

291. Reverence for divine stones continues into the period of the rise of the true gods. When god and stone stand together in a community, both revered, they may be and generally are combined into a cultic unity: the stone becomes the symbol or the abode or the person of the god.527 It was, doubtless, in some such way as this that a stone came to be identified with the Magna Mater of Pessinus. When this stone was brought to Rome toward the end of the Second Punic War, the Roman leaders may have regarded it simply as a symbol of the goddess, but the people probably looked on it as itself a divine defense against Hannibal.528 The Israelite ark, carried out to the battle against the Philistines,529 appears to have contained a stone, possibly a meteorite, possibly a piece taken from the sacred mountain Sinai, itself divine, but in the Old Testament narrative regarded as the abode of Yahweh (a Sinaitic god), though it was probably of independent origin and only gradually brought into association with the local god of the mountain.

292. Similar interpretations may be given of other stones identified or connected with deities, as that of Zeus at Seleucia,530 that of Aphrodite at Paphos,531 that of Jupiter Lapis,532 and the black stone that represented the Syrian Elagabalos at Emesa.533 The remark of Pausanias, after he has described the thirty sacred stones of Pheræ, that the early Greeks paid divine honors to unhewn stones, doubtless expresses the traditions and beliefs of his time;534 and it is probable that in antiquity there were many divine stones, and that these were frequently in later times identified with local gods. In many cases, however, there was no identification, only a collocation and subordination: the stone became the symbol of the deity, or a sacred object associated with the deity.535

293. This seems to be the later conception of the character of the sacred stones mentioned in the Old Testament, as the one that Jacob is said to have set up as a masseba and anointed.536 The Canaanite massebas, adopted as cultic objects by the Israelites,537 were stone pillars standing by shrines and regarded as a normal if not a necessary element of worship; originally divine in themselves (as may be inferred from the general history of such objects), they came to be regarded as mere accessories; there is no indication in the Old Testament that they were looked on as gods, though they may have been so regarded by the people538—their presence at the Canaanite shrines, as a part of foreign, non-Yahwistic worship, sufficiently explains the denunciation of them by the prophets.539

294. In the story of Jacob he is said to have given the name Bethel to the place where he anointed the stone. It does not appear that he so called the stone itself; Bethel (in Hebrew, "house of God"540) seems to have been an old sacred place, and terms compounded with 'beth' in Hebrew are names of shrines. The relation between this name and the Semitic word whence, probably, comes Greek baitulos541 (Latin baetulus) is not clear; this last is the designation of a sacred stone held to have fallen from heaven (meteoric). Such an one is called by Philo of Byblos "empsuchos," 'endowed with life or with soul.'542 Pliny describes the baetulus as a species of ceraunia (thunderstone).543 The Greek word is now commonly derived from betel ('bethel')—a derivation possible so far as the form of the word is concerned.544 According to this view the stone is the abode of a deity—a conception common in early religion. Such an object would be revered, and would ultimately be brought into connection with a local god.545 If Hebrew bethel was originally a stone considered as the abode of a deity, then in the Old Testament the earlier form of the conception has been effaced by the later thought—the word 'bethel' has become the name of a place, a shrine, the dwelling place of God.546

295. The origin of the black stone of the Kaaba at Mecca is unknown—it was doubtless either a meteorite or in some way connected with a sacred place; it was, and is, regarded as in itself sacred, but whether it represented originally a deity, and if so what deity, is not known.547

296. The belief in the sacred character of stones may account, at least in part, for the custom of casting stones on the grave of a chieftain (as in Northern Arabia), though this may be merely intended to preserve the grave. So also the stones thrown at the foot of a Hermes pillar may have been meant as a waymark, yet with the feeling that the stone heap had a sacred character of its own.548 The stone circles at Stonehenge and Avebury may have had a religious significance, but their function is not clear. Boundary stones seem to have had at first simply a political function, but were naturally dedicated to the deities who were guardians of tribal boundaries (Roman Terminus, various Babylonian gods, etc.).

297. It is by virtue of their divine character that stones came to be used as altars.549 As things divine in themselves or as representing a deity they receive the blood of the sacred (that is, divine) sacrificial animal, which is the food of the god. Originally a part of the blood is applied to the stone, and the rest poured out or eaten (as sacred food) by the worshiper. In process of time, when the god has been divorced from the stone, the latter becomes a table on which the victim is offered;550 the old conception survives in the custom of slaying the victim by the side of the altar, and applying the blood to the horns of the altar as a representative part of the sacred structure. In the late Jewish ritual this application of blood is interpreted as a purification of the altar from ceremonial defilements.551

298. Originally, it seems, it was only natural stones that were sacred or divine and were employed as representatives of deities; but by a natural process of thought the custom arose of using artificial stones in the same way. By means of certain ceremonies, it was held, the deity could be induced to accept an altar or a house, or to take up his abode in an image, as a spirit is introduced by the savage into a fetish object.552 The basis of this sort of procedure is first the belief in the amenableness of the deity to magical laws, and, later, the belief in his friendly disposition, his willingness to accede to the wishes of his worshipers provided they offer the proper tribute; but even in very late ceremonies a trace of the magical element remains.

299. The significance of the high pillars, of stone or of metal, that stood at the entrance of certain Semitic temples, is not clear. Examples are: in Tyre, the temple of the local Baal (Melkart);553 Solomon's temple of Yahweh in Jerusalem, and the temple planned by Ezekiel in imitation of that of Solomon;554 compare the temple of the Carthaginian Tanit-Artemis, a form of Ashtart, the votive stela from the temple of Aphrodite in Idalium (in Cyprus), and similar figures on Cyprian coins.555 Of the various explanations offered of these pillars that which regards them as phallic symbols may be set aside as lacking proof.556 It is not probable that they were merely decorative; the details of ancient temples, as a rule, were connected with worship. It has been suggested that they were fire altars,557 in support of which view may be cited the figures on Cyprian coins (mentioned above), and the fact that sailors sacrificed at Gades at a place where there were two high pillars;558 but such a custom does not prove that the sacrifices were offered on the pillars, and these latter are generally too high to serve such a purpose; they are too high also to be convenient candelabra.559 It seems more probable that they were developments from sacred stones (such as the Canaanite massebas), which originally represented the deity, came to be conventional attachments to temples, and then were treated in accordance with architectural principles.

They would be placed in pairs, one pillar on each side of the temple door, for the sake of symmetry, and dignity would be sought by giving them a considerable height.560 They might also be utilized, when they were not too high, as stands for lamps or cressets, but this would be a secondary use. The obelisks that stood in front of Egyptian temples, likewise, were probably sacred monuments reared in honor of deities.561

300. Images of gods and other extrahuman beings arise through the natural human impulse to represent familiar objects of thought. Very rude tribes have stone or wood carvings of spirits and gods, good and bad. These images are generally in human shape, because all Powers are thought of as anthropomorphic. Sometimes, as Réville suggests, a root, or branch of a tree, bearing some resemblance to the human face or figure, may have led to the making of an image; but the general natural artistic tendency is sufficient to account for the fact.562