About Precious Stones and the Bible

The twelve apostles were represented symbolically by precious stones, and they were called the "Apostle" gems: jasper, St. Peter; sapphire, St. Andrew; chalcedony, St. James; emerald, St. John; sardonyx, St. Philip; carnelian, St. Bartholomew; chrysolite, St. Matthew; beryl, St. Thomas; chrysoprase, St. Thaddeus; topaz, St. James the Less; hyacinth, St. Simeon; amethyst, St. Matthias.

The superstitions of the Jews with regard to precious stones became engrafted into the Arabian philosophy, from which they were propagated all over Europe, and continued to operate so late as the visionary experiments of the famous Drs. Dee and Kelly, in the last quarter of the sixteenth century.

It is not at all improbable that the Druidical doctrines concerning the virtues of precious stones were derived from the Magii, and they are still to be traced among the traditions of the vulgar in those parts of Britain and Ireland where Druidism retained its latest established haunts. Some curious remarks on this subject may be found in Toland's "History of the Druids." To return to the Arabians, according to one of their traditions, Ishmael, by God's command, undertook to rebuild the Kaaba, or Kaaba (from the Arabic "Square house"), the name of a great oblong stone building within the great mosque of Mecca, on the precise site of the original tabernacle of radiant clouds, which, on the supplication of Adam, our first parent, was lowered down, a heaven-descended shrine, by the hands of angels, and placed immediately below its present prototype in the celestial paradise. In this pious work he was assisted by his father, Abraham. A miraculous stone served the latter as a scaffold, rising and sinking with him as he built the walls of the sacred edifice.

While Abraham and Ishmael were thus occupied, the angel Gabriel brought them a stone, about which traditional accounts are greatly at variance: by some it is said to have been one of the precious stones of paradise, which fell to the earth with Adam, and was afterwards lost in the slime of the Deluge, until retrieved by the angel Gabriel. "The more received tradition," observes Washington Irving, "is that it was originally the guardian angel appointed to watch over Adam in paradise, but changed into a stone, and ejected thence with him at his fall, as a punishment for not having been more vigilant." This stone Abraham and Ishmael received with proper reverence, and inserted it in one of the corner walls of the Kaaba. When first fixed in the wall, it was, we are told, a single jacinth of dazzling whiteness, but became gradually blackened by the kisses of sinful mortals. At the Resurrection it will recover its angelic form, and stand forth a testimony before God in favour of those who have performed the rites of pilgrimage to Mecca.