Why did Jesus worship a Stone ( אֶבֶן ) ? Talmud Sanhedrin 107b

Babylonian Talmud: Tractate Sanhedrin : Sanhedrin 107b

 "Yeshu  (Jesus) came before Rabbi Joshua many times pleading, 'Receive me!' But Rabbi Joshua would pay no heed to him. One day R. Joshua was reciting the Shema', when Jesus came before him. He intended to receive him and made a sign to him. Jesus, thinking that it was to repel him, went, put up a stone,( אֶבֶן )and worshipped it.

'Repent,' said R. Joshua to Jesus, and Jesus replied, 'I have thus learned from thee: He who sins and causes others to sin is not afforded the means of repentance.' And a Master has said, 'Jesus the Nazarene practised magic and led Israel astray.'"

And in Sanhedrin 43a we learn that Jesus (Yeshu ha Notzri) was thus sentenced to be stoned to death for Sorcery  (אבן למוות)  :

"On the eve of the Passover Yeshu was hanged. For forty days before the execution took place, a herald went forth and cried, 'He is going forth to be stoned because he has practised sorcery and enticed Israel to apostacy. Any one who can say anything in his favour, let him come forward and plead on his behalf.' But since nothing was brought forward in his favour he was hanged on the eve of the Passover! — Ulla retorted: 'Do you suppose that he was one for whom a defence could be made? Was he not a Mesith [enticer], concerning whom Scripture says, Neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him? With Yeshu however it was different, for he was connected with the government [Royalty, i.e., influential / House of David].'

So what is Jesus trying to teach us here by setting up a stone ( אֶבֶן ) to worship ? What is the mystical Message in this story?


Jesus is showing here that he and the Father are United in one Form. He says this to his disciples "I and the father are One", and to the Pharisees, "the rejected stone (אֶבֶן) shall become the Conerstone" So Jesus is this Stone that is rejected. In Hebrew the word for stone is "Abn" (Ehben) -  אֶבֶן    Significance: AB (אֶבֶ ) is Father and Bn (ֶבֶן) is Son, so Abn (stone) is the Unity of the Father and Son in One Form. - Ron Park


Have there been other Jewish Mystics that have compared God to a Stone (Abn) ?

In fact there are..... Moses Cordovero says : "Do not say "This is a stone and not God." God forbid! Rather, all existence is God, and the stone is a thing pervaded by divinity." 

Is Jesus teaching the same lesson ? All existence is God ? Is Jesus a Pantheist like Spinoza and Einstein after him ?  The Gospel of Thomas and many early 1st Century Sayings and Teachings of Jesus show that indeed he is a Pantheist. A Non Dualist. A great Teacher of the Immanence and Oneness of God.  God is everywhere and within all things, and in fact is all things. God is all that exists.  As the Torah says .... You are all God (Psalm 82:6, John 10:34)

God is One and there is nothing else except God.


Is there an Ancient and original Jewish Tradition that teaches that "Everything is God" ?

This is an excellent book on the Subject: "Everything Is God: The Radical Path of Nondualism by Jay Michaelson http://amzn.to/2nMbtXD


Spinoza says: "Whatsoever is, (ie: everything) is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived." - The Ethics 

Jesus says: " I am the ALL (ie: Everything); the ALL came forth from me, and the ALL attained to me. Split a piece of wood; I am there. Lift up a stone, and you will find me there." Gospel of Thomas(77) 

Spinoza says: "God is the indwelling..." 

Jesus says: "The Kingdom of God is WITHIN you..." - Luke 17:21 

Jesus teaches : "Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you ?" 1 Cor 3:16 

Abraham Abulafia says : "Now we are no longer separated from our Source, and behold we are the Source and the Source is us. We are so intimately United with IT, we cannot by any means be separated from IT, for we are IT." 

Jesus says : " May they be One as we are One, I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete Unity" John 17:23 

Albert Einstein said : "I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals himself in the lawful harmony of the world...." 

Carl Sagan said: "Some people think God is an outsized, light-skinned male with a long white beard, sitting on a throne somewhere up there in the sky, busily tallying the fall of every sparrow. Others - for example Baruch Spinoza and Albert Einstein - considered God to be essentially the sum total of the physical laws which describe the universe. I do not know of any compelling evidence for anthropomorphic patriarchs controlling human destiny from some hidden celestial vantage point, but it would be madness to deny the existence of physical laws." 

Albert Einstein said : ""A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace ALL living creatures and the WHOLE of nature in its beauty."