THE ARCANE SCHOOLS - Fort Myers Beach Masonic Lodge No. 362

With this understanding of their meaning, let us proceed to a collation
of
these legends.
In that blasphemous work, the "_Toldoth Jeshu_" or _Life of Jesus_,
written, it is supposed, in the thirteenth or fourteenth century, we
find
the following account of this wonderful stone:--
"At that time [the time of Jesus] there was in the House of the
Sanctuary
[that is, the temple] a Stone of Foundation, which is the very stone
that
our father Jacob anointed with oil, as it is described in the
twenty-eighth chapter of the book of Genesis. On that stone the letters
of
the tetragrammaton were inscribed, and whosoever of the Israelites
should
learn that name would be able to master the world. To prevent,
therefore,
any one from learning these letters, two iron dogs were placed upon two
columns in front of the Sanctuary. If any person, having acquired the
knowledge of these letters, desired to depart from the Sanctuary, the
barking of the dogs, by magical power, inspired so much fear, that he
suddenly forgot what he had acquired."
This passage is cited by the learned Buxtorf, in his "_Lexicon
Talmudicum_;" [221] but in the copy of the "_Toldoth Jeshu_" which I
have
the good fortune to possess (for it is among the rarest of books), I
find
another passage which gives some additional particulars, in the
following
words:--
"At that time there was in the temple the ineffable name of God,
inscribed
upon the Stone of Foundation. For when King David was digging the
foundation for the temple, he found in the depths of the excavation a
certain stone, on which the name of God was inscribed. This stone he
removed, and deposited it in the Holy of Holies." [222]
The same puerile story of the barking dogs is repeated, still more at
length. It is not pertinent to the present inquiry, but it may be
stated
as a mere matter of curious information, that this scandalous book,
which
is throughout a blasphemous defamation of our Saviour, proceeds to say,
that he cunningly obtained a knowledge of the tetragrammaton from the
Stone of Foundation, and by its mystical influence was enabled to
perform
his miracles.
The masonic legends of the Stone of Foundation, based on these and
other
rabbinical reveries, are of the most extraordinary character, if they