Forlong - Rivers of Life

Serpent and Phallic Worship.
violent in its working now than formerly. This reviewer, who is a type of a large
number of people, says: “Arnobius, a Christian convert of the 4th century, relates that
in Africa where he resided, he never before his conversion saw a stone upon which oil
had been poured without paying it homage.” 1 Why? Not surely if it did “not typify
something beyond itself.” Arnobius would have answered very differently: This
writer can only fancy that these stones were held to be “Aerolites” or at least to have
come down from heaven in some mysterious manner, for in no other way can he
account for the otherwise unaccountable fact, that “stones smeared with oil and called
Betyls were amongst the earliest objects of devotion,” that Jacob made his pillow-stone
into such a Betyl, and that even according to Acts xix. 3, 5 “the world-famed temple
of Diana at Ephesus commemorated one of these meteoric stones,” and he adds “the
black stone of Meka is such another.” On what authority however either this last
or the Diana image is a meteoric stone I know not. The Greek writer in calling it a
Dio-Petes dio-pet»j, seems only to have meant that it had come from God in the same
manner as most holy gods and images and even Bibles are said to have come, and
this is very commonly said of Lingam stones.
It is here, perhaps, necessary to inform my readers that all conical or erect
stones, and all quaint or rude masses of Rock usually denote the male sex, unless ovate
or well-rounded when they are feminine: Thus, great virility is intended by the rocks
seen in figures 1 and 11 of plate IV., and so also in most places where we see a Hercules
or Apollo leaning against a rock, more especially if a serpent is seen entwined or
crawling near to this. It should not be, but I fear it is, necessary to expIain to mere
English readers of the Old Testament, that the Stone or Rock—Tsur—rwx—was
the real old God of all Arabs, Jews, and Phenicians, and this would be clear to
Christians were the Jewish writings translated according to the first ideas of the people,
and Rock used, as it ought to be, instead of “God,” “Theos,” “Lord,” &c. being written,
where Tsur occurs. In Appendix V. to Dr Oort’s Worship of Baalim in Israel,
translated, with Notes, by Bishop Colenso, we are given no less than twenty-one
instances in a few lines, of addresses to, or adoration of “the Rock,” whose “work
is perfect,” Deut. xxxii. 4, “which begat thee and thou neglectest” (18), of “the Rock in
whom they trusted,” of “Jehovah, my Rock,” “my Elohim, my Rock,” &c. &c., 2 all
of which have been gilded or slurred over by the translators, just as these were
softened down, as Dr. Smith’s Bible Dictionary informs us under the head LXX, where
ever bodily parts and passions were ascribed to “the Jhavah.”
This is the case in all nations, Bibles, and Faiths: Names have ever been true to
one God, else could not humanity have advanced. Tsurs, which at first were no
2 A few texts as to Rock Gods:—Deut. xxxii.
4, 18, 30, 31, to 37; 1 Sam. ii. 2; 2 Sam. xxii.
3, 22-4; and xxiii. 3; Ps. xviii. 2, 31, 46; Ps.
cxliv., 1; Ps. xix. 14; Ps. xxviii. 1; lxii. 2, 6;
1 Adversus Gentes I. 39.
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lxxviii. 35; xxii. 15; Is. xxvi. 4; xxx. 29; xliv.
8; Hab. i. 12; in all of which the Rock is the
name of Israel’s deity, and as we shall see by and by,
the Unhewn Rock.