worship of which traces are very widely diffused over the surface of the globe.[1] The characteristic rite of anointing the stone, originally perhaps a sacrifice to the indwelling numen, was familiar to classical writers.[2] The most instructive parallel is the fact mentioned by Pausanias (x. 24, 6), that on a small stone in the sanctuary of Delphi oil was poured every day: we may conjecture that a similar practice was kept up at Bethel long after its original significance was forgotten. Though the monolith of Bethel is not elsewhere explicitly referred to in OT, we may assume that, stripped of its pagan associations and reduced to the rank of a maẓẓēbāh, it was still recognised in historic times as the chief religious symbol of that great centre of Hebrew worship.
XXIX. 1-30.—Jacob's Marriage with Laban's Daughters (JE, P).
Instead of spending a few days (2744) as Laban's guest, Jacob was destined to pass 20 years of his life with his Aramæan kinsman. The circumstances which led to this prolonged exile are recorded in the two episodes contained in this section; viz. Jacob's meeting with Rachel at the well (1-14), and the peculiar conditions of his marriage to Leah,
- ↑ See Tylor, Prim. Cult.3 ii. 160 ff.; Frazer, Pausan. iv. 154 f., Adonis, 21; RS2, 204 ff., 232 f. The wide distribution of these sacred objects seems fatal to the theory of Lagrange, that they were miniature reproductions of the Babylonian temple-towers, which again were miniature symbols of the earth conceived as a mountain,—a difficulty of which the author himself is conscious (Études2, 192 ff.).
- ↑ On anointed stones ((
Greek characters) lapides uncti, lubricati,
etc.), see Clem. Alex. Strom. vii. 4, 26; and the remarkable statements
of Theophrastus, Char. 16; Lucian, Alexander, 30; and Arnobius,
Adv. Gentes, i. 39,—quoted by Frazer, Pausan. v. 354.—For Assyriological
parallels see KIB, i. 44 f., ii. 113, 151, 261.—A curious development
of the ancient belief appears in the name (Greek characters), Betulus,
applied to small stones (aerolites?), supposed to be self-moving and
endowed with magical properties, which played a considerable part in
the private superstitions of the beginning of the Christian era (Eus.
Præp. Ev. i. 10, 18; Photius, Bibl. [Migne, ciii. 1292 f.]; Pliny, HN,
xxxvii. 135, etc.). The existence of a Canaanitish deity Bait-ili (who
can only be regarded as a personification of the temple or the sacred
stone) is proved by unimpeachable Assyriological evidence (KAT3, 437 f.;
Lagrange, l.c. 196). Since (Greek characters) is also the name of a god in Philo-Byblius,
it seems unreasonable to doubt the etymological and material
connexion between the ancient Semitic (Hebrew characters) and the portable betyl of
the Græco-Roman period, which was so named as the residence of a
spirit; but see the important article of Moore, Journal of the Archæological Institute of America, vii. (1903), No. 2, p. 198 ff.
