Chapter 8: Visible Objects of Superstitious Worship and Sacred Stones

The progress of idolatry — The first visible objects of superstitious worship — Pointed columns (pyramidal pillars), rough unhewn stones, stelae, their meaning — The testimony of Clement, of Phoronides, of Eumelos — The origin of stelae according to Clement — A truer opinion — A columnar stone in the field of Colchester — Rough stones (argoi) — The testimonies of Pausanias, Maximus of Tyre, Suidas — The term theandros — Stonehenge — Agabalus; the mother-idea — The Persians destroy and mock images (agalmata) — The image of Diana of the Ephesians — The idols of the Germans; sacred groves devoid of images: oaks — The most ancient temples without images — No images (agalmata) in antiquity — Rough and square stones — Baityloi — Sacred stones — The testimony of Sanchuniathon — He feigns that stones called living were invented by Uranus — Most of what Eusebius draws from him is ridiculous — The ancients feigned that certain stones were life-bearing (psychikoi) — Baitylos in Hesychius: the proverb "fallen from heaven" and its origin — Baitylos in Damascius and Photius — What ovarion means — Anointed stones in Clement and Arnobius — From where the name Baitylai is derived — The conjecture of Scaliger — The erection of the stone at Bethel by Jacob — What the word signifies — The nature of Jacob's act — And to what end? Why the common interpreter renders the title — The epiphanies of the gods: Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Cicero — The feast of the Christians — The Bethulic stone worshipped among the Phoenicians — The progress of idolatry — Images dedicated to the sun in the likeness of a human face, and many other things

I. Credibility is lent to what we have said concerning the progress of idolatry in the invention of the worship of present visible objects by that which survives from the monuments of things —

— as the memory of the earliest visible objects of worship survives in the records of things. These were of two kinds in antiquity: namely, pointed pyramidal columns (kiones pyramoeideis), that is, tapering columns; and rough unhewn stones (lithoi argoi), crude and unformed stones, to which the Baityloi may be added. Only after a long subsequent course of time were images fashioned in human form, namely when the cult of the dead had been introduced through Hellenism.

II. The Greeks call sacred columns stelai. The LXX (Septuagint) thus renders the Hebrew word matzevah; these are prohibited in (Leviticus 26:1, Deuteronomy 16:22). "Matzevah," says Kimchi, "is a stone erected for the purpose of worship." The root is natzav, "he set up." Thus the Aguieus of Apollo was a pyramid, according to Hesychius, that is, a column tapering to a point at the top. Concerning these things Clement of Alexandria writes, in book i.: "For before the forms of statues (agalmaton) were distinguished, the ancients set up columns and regarded them as images of the deity." An agalma of this kind is an image that serves as, so to speak, the seat of a divinity. This is what we said: since images (agalmata) were not yet accurately fashioned, they erected columns to receive the power of absent divine beings and so to become, as it were, the seats of the gods. An agalma, on the other hand, is an image artfully fabricated. "That by which one is delighted" (agalletai), says Suidas; that is, that which so feeds the eyes as to affect the mind with a certain joy.

III. To this point tend the things which the same Clement reports from the author of the Phoronides, concerning Callithoe, the first priestess of Juno:

The janitrix who precedes the Olympian queen —

— the Argive Hera, whom they adorned with fillets and headbands —

— first adorned her around the tall upright column. "Callithoe, the doorkeeper of Argive Juno, whom they first adorned with priestly bands and fillets, around the column of the queen." The poet calls it tall (makron), because the stele was erected upright in its full length; unlike the rough stones (lithoi argoi). Thus in Homer the word kion is sometimes called makros (tall) and sometimes hupsos (high). He also cites similar things from Eumelos, namely:

— who at the mountain's peak and the topmost heights —

— hung trophies from beams and from a mortal column. Although perhaps Eumelos meant nothing other than that akrothinia (first-fruits and spoils) were customarily hung from pilasters and columns; which is a most well-known practice.

IV. But Clement writes that demons invented these things in imitation of that column which went before the Israelites in the desert. Others may judge of this; I do not doubt that at the very time when the tabernacle was erected, columns of this kind and stelai were in common use among many nations. From this source perhaps arose the Anthelian gods, presiders over doorways; small columns placed at the doors of temples and other houses. Hesychius: "Anthelian gods are those found before the doors," and Athenaeus, book x., upon the forecourt; that is, at the first entrance of a house under the open sky. The making of statues (agalmatopoiia) or the making of images (eikonopoiia) had not yet entered into human minds when they first set up columns and stelai for religious purposes. For since they regarded only the celestial bodies as divinities, there was no reason why they should erect images fashioned and fabricated in human form to represent them. This indeed came about as superstition grew stronger, when, for example, the sun was at the same time identified with some —

— Apollo; but since the idolaters had nothing else in mind than to make absent divine powers present by some visible sign, there was no need to represent any animal in that sign. I recall that I have seen a column of this kind in the field of Colchester, among the Trinobantes —

— to see; upon which subsequent centuries imposed the image of the cross, and once again consecrated it for the use of a new superstition.

V. Then, along with those pointed pillars, they used rough stones for the same purpose. Thus Pausanias in the Achaica says — an illustrious testimony: "Near the image, approximately thirty stones are erected, quadrangular in shape; the Pharenses venerate each one, calling them by the names of certain gods; and indeed it was the ancestral custom among the Greeks to worship rough stones in place of images of the gods." He also makes mention of such stones in the Boeotia. This, I say, was the custom of those most ancient Greeks, whom we have shown from Plato to have worshipped the sun, the moon, and the other stars of heaven, and these alone. And Maximus of Tyre, on the Arabs, Dissertation 38, says: the Arabs venerate some deity whose image they have never seen, but which they saw was a quadrangular stone. The sign of the unknown God was a quadrangular stone. But that God was called Dusares. This is, says Suidas, the god Ares, that is, the god Mars — in which interpretation he is without doubt mistaken; he adds, however, whoever that one among the gods was: "The image is a black stone, square, having no figure carved into it, that is, rough, four feet in height, two in breadth, resting on a golden base; to this they sacrifice and pour out the blood of victims, and this is their libation."

VI. Of this kind were perhaps the stones here in England in the Salisbury plain — huge and rough stones, rough stones, as Pausanias calls them. Jones, a most skilled architect, proves by a special treatise that these were sacred places. That the ancient Britons worshipped the moon under the name of Andraste —

that they worshipped her — Dio Cassius is the authority, Histories, Book 12. And to the sun and the moon, stones of this kind were erected.

VII. We have shown above that the worshippers of the stars erected these stones and pillars so that they might have at hand in them the power and energy of the divine beings they worshipped — the power of protecting and of doing good. They believed this could occur through the descent of the Ethereal Spirit. Eventually the stones themselves came to be called gods or divine beings. Lampridius, in the Life of Heliogabalus, writes: "He wished to carry away the stones, which are called Divine, from the temple of Diana of Laodicea, and the image from its inner sanctuary, in which Orestes had placed it." Nothing but

stones of this kind — rough stones consecrated to the sun and the moon — does the historian understand; which in the course of time came to be reckoned under the name of gods. Hence arose the custom of swearing by Jupiter the Stone. And concerning the idol Agabalus, from which that monster of a man, the pseudo-Antoninus, took his name, Herodian writes: a stone

— "a very great stone, rounded on top, tapering to a point at the base" — that is, "the greatest stone, with a circular base, coming to a cone." Also, Elagabalus means the round lord; by which name they denoted the sun itself; unless the sun was rather called El-Gabal in Syriac, that is, God of the Gabalites, the name taken from the place of worship — as Baal Peor. The Idaean mother, whom with such great religious devotion the whole city placed in the temple of Victory after she had been brought from Pessinus to Rome, was a stone of this kind, as Livy testifies, Book 29, Chapter 11.

VIII. Thus in ancient times among many nations, images were in no use, nor were they known, and by some they were even held in hatred. Concerning the Persians, Herodotus in the Clio says — an illustrious testimony, Chapter 131: "It is not their custom to erect images, nor temples, nor altars; indeed they charge those who do so with folly, because, as it seems to me, they do not believe, as the Greeks do, that the gods are of human origin." We showed above that the Persians pursued the worship of the sun and moon with religious devotion. Holding fast to that superstition received from the first practitioners of idolatry, they never admitted the divine beings that Hellenism introduced, and for that reason they had no images. Hence they relate that Xerxes, in the European expedition, rightfully removed images — "took down the images according to the discipline of the Magi" — as those who wrote the history of the Magi report, in Diogenes Laertius in the preface of his work. Indeed, they not only removed such images, but also gently mocked them. For when Cambyses entered the temple of Vulcan at Memphis, he laughed greatly at the image — Herodotus, Book 3: "He received the image with much laughter"; and in the shrine of the Cabiri, "he burned the images, mocking them greatly" — "He burned the images, making many jokes at them." He burned them according to ancestral custom, because they were images of men; he mocked them because they were ridiculously made. For the same reason he gave all the Asian temples to the fire, as Solinus testifies, except only that of Diana of Ephesus, whose image was a pointed trunk of elm or beech. So Callimachus teaches us, in the hymn to Artemis.

and the shoot of the elm, pointing upward, the image of the child-nourishing goddess

"Once in Ephesus the Amazons set up, beneath an elm tree, an image." But the father of history does not say that the Persians had no statues whatever; they had no images because they did not believe that the gods were of human origin. But he does not say, nor is it true, that they repudiated all pillars and stelae. Tacitus says the same concerning the Germans, On the Customs of Germany, Chapter 9: "Moreover, they do not think it consistent with the greatness of heavenly beings to confine gods within walls, or to represent them in any likeness of the human face; they consecrate groves and woodlands, and they call by the names of gods that mystery which they perceive only through reverence." But a little earlier he had said: "They believe God is present with those fighting, and they carry certain images and standards, taken from the groves, into battle," ibid., Chapter 7. Therefore, they were not without all effigies or standards, but only without those of the kind that are formed into any likeness of the human face.

IX. Perhaps also in place of the stones and pillars that the eastern peoples erected, the Germans made use of living oaks or ancient trunks of oak trees. For we have shown from Maimonides that the heavenly stars were also worshipped in trees. Hence Claudian, In Praise of Stilicho: "So that one may hunt safely far off through the vast silences of the Hercynian forest, and through the groves fierce with ancient religion, and the oaks that stand in the likeness of the barbarian deity." Also: "The oaks, inhabited by the Greeks, gave oracles" — Virgil, Georgics, Book 2, line 16. And the Gauls, in Lucan, Book 3, line 412: "And the gloomy images of the gods lack artistic skill, and stand shapeless from hewn trunks."

"The very location, and the squalor of the now rotting oak, strikes them with awe."

Maximus of Tyre also teaches that the Celts, that is, the Gauls, worship Jupiter, whose symbol is the tallest oak. Procopius of Caesarea likewise, in his History of the Goths, book iv, affirms that the Abasgi, a people situated from the Pontic Sea to the foothills of the Caucasus, "right up to his own time," that is, the time of the Emperor Justinian, "had venerated groves and sacred woods with superstition, and in their barbarous simplicity had believed trees to be gods." Similarly, the earliest Huns, who drove the Goths from their ancient Scythian seats, and whom Jordanes in his On the Deeds of the Goths, ch. xxiv, seized by remarkable credulity, reports as having been begotten by wicked women, whom they called Aliorumas, from unclean spirits; the remnants of these people in Lithuania are reported by historians to have worshipped trees down to a late period, until King Jagello cut them down with his own hand. Philostratus also relates that a most ancient temple dedicated to Hercules existed at Gades. In it, he says, there were no images, but only divine altars. He further shows that the inhabitants of that place had stelae inscribed with unknown letters; and these were quadrangular, like anvils. See Apollonius, book v, ch. i. Silius Italicus writes of the same temple: "But no likeness or well-known images of the gods." Curtius, book iv, ch. i, relates that the Tyrians, from whom the people of Gades descend, worshipped Apollo or the sun in Hercules. So true is what Themistius says in Oration xv: that before Daedalus, not only were the images of Mercury fashioned in a rough and shapeless mass, but the rest of the statues of men were also made by Daedalus in the same crude way; but when Daedalus distinguished the feet of the statues, he was believed to fashion them alive and breathing. More on these things later.

X. To these first principles also belong the baetyls. The first to mention them is Sanchuniathon in Eusebius, in the Theology of the Phoenicians.

"Moreover," he says, "the god Uranus devised baetyls, animated stones fashioned by art." A most learned scholar judges that Sanchuniathon did not write "living stones," but rather (with B and Y transposed) "anointed stones," as he says. For it is absurd, he argues, to imagine that Uranus made "animated stones." And indeed it is truly absurd; yet it does not thereby follow that Sanchuniathon did not write it thus, since everything that Eusebius produces in that place from Sanchuniathon is wholly absurd and ridiculous, arising partly from a dreadful confusion and partly from a mixture of the most monstrous trifles; nor are they cited for any other purpose than to make plain how absurd they are, and how abhorrent to all theology, indeed to reason itself. Furthermore, Uranus devised these stones so that they might be ready at hand and of assistance to him in the war he was contriving against Saturn for the recovery of his kingdom; for which he had need of living stones rather than anointed ones. It is also very well known that the ancients feigned such stones to be animated, no less than the self-moving statues of Daedalus. Hesychius derives the word differently: "Baetylus: this is the name given to the stone that was given to Saturn in place of Jupiter."

A very well-known fable. Hence the proverb, "You would even swallow a Baetylus"—

"You would even swallow the Baetylus"; which Erasmus explains from this passage in Hesychius in his Adages. "Baetylus," he says, "is the name given to that stone wrapped in swaddling bands which Saturn devoured in place of Jupiter."

XI. It is certain, however, that there were other stones appointed for sacred uses and called baetyls, besides the one given to Saturn in place of Jupiter. The author of the life of the philosopher Isidore, cited by Photius, whom Suidas identifies as Damascius, in Codex 242, says that he himself had seen the Baetylus moved through the air, at times concealed within garments, and sometimes also carried in the hands of the attendant; and that the name of the one who ministered to the Baetylus was Eusebius. So those words are quite absurdly interpreted by Andreas Scottus, otherwise a learned man: "The Baetylus moved in the air, sometimes covered with garments, sometimes also carried in the hands of the physician. The name of the physician who carried the Baetylus was Eusebius." For what does a physician have to do with a Baetylus? They know quite well what it means to minister to the gods and to perform sacred service around the gods. This Eusebius was a temple-servant who ministered in the sacred rites of the Baetylus; he sometimes carried it in his hands, and at other times pretended that it moved of itself through the air. The name of the one who ministered to the Baetylus in the sacred rites was Eusebius. Julius Pollux, Onomasticon, book i, on sacred service: "The names of those who minister to the gods are: temple-ministers, priests, temple-wardens." Damascius himself further teaches how this Eusebius worshipped the Baetylus with religious devotion and drew oracles from it. And this stone was of the class called sacred stones; Isidore asserted that it was moved and as it were animated by a demon not of the worst sort: for there was a certain demon, he said, who moved it, neither one of the destructive kind nor one of the exceedingly mischievous. For as time went on, wherever an idol of this sort was erected, demons at once took possession of it, as we shall show later. Damascius mentions shortly afterward other stones also dedicated to the Sun, which he calls heliotropes.

XII. It must be acknowledged, however, that the ancient idolaters were accustomed to anoint these stones, so that they could be called anointed no less than living. Clement, in Stromata vii, says they worshipped every smooth stone, and what is called Astarte. And Arnobius, speaking of himself when he was still a pagan: "Whenever I had caught sight of a polished stone, smeared with olive oil, I would pay it homage as though some present power resided in it."

XIII. The first, as far as I know, to conjecture most acutely that these stones were called baetyls from the stone which Jacob erected at Bethel, or from Bethel, as the place where he erected it has been called from that time forward, was the admirable Joseph Scaliger; others judge that from this the whole practice of erecting rough stones for superstitious uses arose out of Satan's malicious imitation. Jacob's act is recorded in (Genesis 28:18, 19). He took the stone he had placed under his head, and set it up as a pillar; the Latin Vulgate renders it "in titulum," and the Greeks render it as a stele. The Hebrew word translated "he set up" is the same as the word for "statue," as we noted earlier; the same term is used in the prohibition of idolatry in (Leviticus 26:1); (Deuteronomy 7:5, 12:3). A rough stone found by chance in the field, erected in this manner, he anointed with oil; and he was the first of mortals to make a formal vow to God expressed in explicit words. He promises, among other things, that this stone shall henceforth be to him a house of God (Genesis 28:22), that is, that he would solemnly perform the worship of God in that place when he had at hand the things he might offer to God, of all of which he was then entirely destitute. Afterward, admonished by God, he discharged his vow (ch. 35:6, 7).

XIV. Whether Jacob acted rightly or otherwise in erecting the pillar, interpreters ask. Abulensis gives two answers. First, that this was lawful before the law, and afterward prohibited. Second, that Jacob erected this pillar as a memorial of the event, not in order to worship it. A great many others concur with his opinion. There was, without doubt, before the law was given, a lawful practice for godly men to erect altars in any place and to offer sacrifices upon them. That Jacob erected this stone as a memorial of the angelic vision granted to him there, and did not employ it in religious worship, is established by the fact that long afterward, admonished by God concerning his vow, he built an altar in the same place (ch. 35:7). The Latin interpreter renders it "titulum," from the customary practice of inscribing such sacred stones with titles indicating to which god they were dedicated. So also Damascius: "He also showed us letters inscribed on the stone, that is, on the baetyl, written in the color they call tingabaric."

XV. From this act of Jacob, who was calling to remembrance a vision of the true God, there afterward emanated the superstitious custom of erecting pillars in honor of the feigned appearances of the gods. Many have recorded the appearances of the gods. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, book 2, ch. 68:

218. The Origin and Progress of Idolatry. [Book 3.

He recounts how the goddess, appearing to virgins in danger, brought them aid. "That is remarkable, how the goddess appearing brought help to the virgins who were in peril." To this he appends the mockery of the Epicureans, who, since they denied the gods any governance, and called God himself merely by that name, scoffed at the appearances of the gods, denying the presences of the gods, as Cicero explains that expression. Athenaeus also, book 12, from Carystius of Pergamon, reports that Demetrius Phalereus observed the appearance of his brother Himerus, who had been killed by Antipater, with religious veneration, which stirred up great hatred of him among the Athenians. For after he had pretended, as it seems, that his dead brother had appeared to him, he paid him religious honor, and thereby introduced a strange demon, which was unlawful at Athens, as (Acts 17:18). On these epiphanies, Cicero in the second book On the Nature of the Gods, ch. 2: "And so, both among our own people and among others, the worship of the gods and the sanctities of religion grow greater and better day by day. And this happens not rashly, nor by chance, but because the divine beings often declare their own presence." And let us take note from what workshop that festival came forth among Christians which they call Epiphany; concerning which a certain priest was in doubt whether it was male or female, but boldly declared it to have been a great holy thing.

XVI. The Jews affirm that the Phoenicians afterward worshipped this Bethylian stone; and it is quite probable that those rough rocks which they erected to their gods were called Baetylian from Bethel. XVII. In this manner, therefore, the worship of the sun grew: to simple adoration were added columns and Bethylian stones, to which first anointing was joined, then the offering of fruits and flowers, and lastly sacrifices of animals.

XVIII. In the course of time it came about that the sun itself was worshipped by means of statues fashioned in the likeness of a human face. Of this kind was the Colossus of Rhodes, seventy cubits high. Macrobius also records that the Egyptians and Assyrians were accustomed to carry in solemn procession a statue of the sun holding a thunderbolt and stalks of grain in its left hand, and raising its right hand with a whip after the manner of a charioteer — Saturnalia, Book 1, Chapter 23. And Pliny, Book 34, Chapter 7, says: "Zenodorus made the Colossus destined to be a statue of the Emperor Nero, one hundred and ten feet in length; it was dedicated to the veneration of the sun, after the crimes of that emperor had been condemned." This was done by Vespasian, as Suetonius attests, Life of Vespasian, Chapter 17: "He rewarded the restorer of the Colossus with a distinguished gift and great pay." Upon the restored colossus the sun's head, bearing seven rays, was placed in the position where Nero's had been. This was afterward removed by Commodus, who placed his own head upon it, as Herodian attests, Chapter 48: removing the head from that greatest colossal statue which the Romans venerate as bearing the image of the Sun, he set up his own in its place. The corrupt passage is supplemented by Scaliger with the words "and substituting his own." But this was not done until after deceased men had been admitted into the number of the gods, and some Apollo or other had been substituted for the sun.

Just as Jeroboam erected golden calves, lest the people, deprived of every visible sign of the divine presence, should return to Jerusalem to perform the true worship of God — perhaps to the great harm and ruin of his kingdom — so Satan, consulting the interests of his own kingdom, which he had obtained in the world by so many varied arts and manifold deceit, lest those who were set amid the dangers of idolatry, and anxious for help, attending to the voice of nature itself crying out to the Lord of nature, should begin to seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after Him and find Him, though He is not far from every one of them, as the apostle says — lest they should thus withdraw themselves from Satan's dominion — he grafted this new error upon the other, by which, being raised up to a false hope, they could not be removed from their wicked prejudice.

Clement of Alexandria excellently expounds this progress of superstition in his Oration to the Gentiles: "The Scythians," he says, "in ancient times worshipped a scimitar, the Arabs a stone, the Persians a river; and among other men, those who were yet more ancient, erected notable wooden posts and set up columns of stone — which were also called Xoana, because they were scraped and smoothed out of the raw material. On the island of Icarus, certainly, the image of Diana was an unworked piece of wood, and the Juno of Cithaeron at Thespiae was a hewn-out tree trunk; and the Juno of Samos (as Aethlius says) was at first a plank, but afterward, when Procleus was archon, was fashioned into the form of a statue. After statues began to be formed, they were called bretas, from brotoi, because they were made to resemble men. At Rome, moreover, the writer Varro says that the ancient statue of Mars was a spear, since the craftsmen had not yet attained to this art, beautiful indeed in appearance, but dishonest in its purpose. But after the art flourished, the error increased. That they therefore made images from stones and wood resembling men is now plain." So he; and he then enumerates in order who in each place were the first makers of images.

And this was the first success and good fortune of Satan's war against the human race, left destitute of divine revelations and abandoned to itself. This was the origin of the total defection from the foundation of natural theology. Here the prince of darkness laid the foundations of that dominion which he exercised far and wide over the greater part of mankind through an innumerable succession of years.