Forlong - Rivers of Life

Serpent and Phallic Worship.
Rephidim, to contain the two later stones, which the leader is said to have taken up
to the Jhavh” to be engraved by him, and also probably to contain the previously
worshipped or revered articles—viz., the Eduth, or first testimony of Exodus xvi. 34;
the pot of mann; rod, or Baton; the sprig of almond tree, and other articles of divination.
Bishop Colenso makes it abundantly clear 1 that we had no grand ark and
paraphernalia, as alluded to in the closing chapters of Exodus by some interpolating,
though no doubt pious and zealous adherent of a later faith; all this is foreign to the
ideas and knowledge of the first Elohistic writer. 2
The Bishop truly says, “There is no record of the construction” of any such
article as Jews and Christians commonly believe in! The original story, he con-
siders, is a very clear and simple on, if we try to see it as given to us by Elohistic
writers. Thus, when Moses required two more stones to replace the first heavenly
ones, “the Jhavh said to me, ‘Hew these two tablets of stone like the first, and come
up unto me into the mountain, and make thee an ark of wood.’ ” This was probably
to prevent a second fracture. Moses replied, “So I made an art of shittim wood.”
Then we are unceremoniously told in Num. x. 33 that they took up this ark-box and
departed from the mount, with no doubt the Eduth and the two stones in it. At
this time it may be inferred that neither Moses nor others knew of any representative
of the terrible nature-God of Sinai, gave the two stones, the Eduth, and his
outside representation—the “man of God’s” rod, baton, or Nissi. I look upon it that
the Jewish Eduth represented the temple obelisk, Moses’ rod, the magic rod of Egyptian
priests, and. the Nissi, Bet-el, Betulus or Standard—usually of stone, which this
people erected and worshipped all over their land as soon as they settled down.
Adam seems to have been the first God-like idea, and was natumlly sym-
bolised in the Lingam. The word still means a Lingam, more especially with Shemites
and Mahommedans; whilst Seth or Set became to Jews, as their own special progenitor,
their Adām or Linga, which Greeks called Betuli. Noh or Noah then
took the place of Seth, and Abraham and Moses followed Noah. All these
received in their lifetime intense reverence, and posthumous worship. Adam and
Abraham are atill spoken of as the intimate “friends of God,” and only men-
tioned by all Shemites with that reverence with which Christians allude to Christ.
As statuary was impossible in these ages, I have said it was only a natural
necessity that a lingam or column should rerpresent a male, and a cavity, ark, dome,
or oval-shaped object, a female progenitor; so that all worship of these parents at once
became arkite or lingaite and therefore exhibited itself in worship of these forms.
Numerous old writers assure us of the worship of Adam. Seth, Noah, and others, by
which we must understand the. worship of pillars or Matsebas (Bible “Images"), as the
only possible representations of these great old fathers, remembering that whatever may
have been the meaning of pillars and arks (Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah) in
1 “Lec. on Pent. and Moabite Stone:” Lon., 1873. Chap. xviii.
2 P. 236. Ex. xxiv.; Deut x.
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