Stac'te {^pi.nalaph; Sept. ffra»crrj ; Nulg. stacte), the name of one of the sweet spices which composed the holy incense (see Exod. xxx, 34) : " And the Lord said unto Moses, Take unto thee sweet spices, stacte (natdph), and onycha, and galbanum ; these sweet spices with pure frankincense. Thou shalt make it a perfume after the art of the apothecary" (ver. 35). The Heb. word occurs once again (Job xxxvi, 27), where it is used to denote simply " a drop" of water. Nutuph has been va- riously translated — balsam, liquid styrax, benzoin, costus, mastich, bdellium. Celsius is of opinion that it means the purest kind of myrrh, called stacte by the Greeks. See MoR. He adduces Pliny (xii, 35) as saying of the myrrh-trees, "Sudant sponte stacten dictam," and re- marks, " El)ra?is "-3 mithcfest stillare" — adding, as an argument, that if you do not translate it myrrh in this place, you will exclude myrrh altogether from the sa- cred perfume {llierob. i, 529). But Rosenmliller says, " This, however, would not be suited for the preparation of the perfume, and it also has another Hebrew name, for it is called mor deror. But the (ireeks also called stakte a species of storax gum, which I )ioscorides. de- scribes as transparent like a tear and resembling myrrh (see Pliny, xiii, 2; Athen. xv, G88; Dioscor. i, 73, 77). This agrees well with the Hebrew name" (Bibl. Hot. p. 164). The Sept, araKrr] (from ard'CoJ, "to drop") is
STACY
976
STAFF
the exact translation of the Hebrew word. Now Di- oscorides describes f*'o kinds of (murrrj — one is tlic fresh gum of the niyrrli-tree (BuL<t(imodendton tnynha) mix- ed with water and squeezed out through a press (i, 74) ; the other kind, which he calls, from the manner in which it is prepared, (TKut\i)KtTiit; (TTi'pai, denotes the resin of the stt)rax adulterated with wax ami fat (i, 79). The true stacte of the (ircek writers points to the dis- tillation from the mvrrh-treo, of which, according to Thcophrastus {t'l: iv, 29. cd. Schneider), both a nat- ural and an artificial kind were known. l*erhai)S the luituph denotes the storax gum, but all that is positively known is that it signifies an odorous distillation from some plant. The Arai)9 apply the term netaf to a sweetmeat composed of sugar, tlour, and butter, in eijual parts, with the addition of aromatics (see Hoda;i a Stapel C'lmnunl. ad Tlnopli. p. 984; llartmann, lle- bi at rill, i, 307; vi, 110 sq.; Gcsenius, Thtmitr. p. 879; Tristram, .V<//. Hist, oftht Bible, p. 395). See Anoint- ixu Oil; SricK.
The storax {Styrax officinale) is a native of Syria. Willi its leaves like the poplar, downy underneath, and
Storax (Styrax officinale).
with Rwopt-scenfcd snow-white flowers cliisterpd on the extremities of the brandies, ii grows to a height of fif- teen or twenty feet. The reddish -yellow gum -resin which exudes from the bark, and which is highly fra- fcrant. contains l)enzoic anil cinnamic aciils. From the kinilred plant, S/i/rux iMiizoiii, a native of Horneo and Java, is ol)tained the benzoin or l)enjamin which the Hindus burn in their temples — a circumstance strongly in favor of tlie hypothesis that the stacte of E.xodus is a btornx. See I'oim.ah.
Stacy, Aaron G.. a minister of the Methodist Episcopal t'hurch. Souili. was born near INIorgantown, Kurkc Oi., N.C., Nov. 15, 1«J_>. He joined the Church Jan. 1, IKW, and professed conversion July 29, 1839. He waH educated at Cokesbiiry, S. C, was licensotl to preach S«-pteml)cr, 1844, and in 1847 entered the South Car')linn Coiiftrence. He continued in the pastoral work until l«ihJ. when he was ilected president of the Daveu|Hirt Female (Jollege, N. (". In 1873 he was tranitferred to the Texan Conference, and liecame presi- dent of the Austin Female College, where he died April
8, 1875. See Minutes of Annual Conferences of the M. E. Church, South, 1875, p. 260.
Stacy, James, a minister of the Methodist Epis- copal Church, South, was born in Lincolnton, N. C, Nov. 18, 1807, where he was converted September, 1822, li- censed to preach July, 1829, and admitted into the South Carolina Conference in 1830. He gave the Church thirty-eight years of laborious and unremit- ting labor, one year of which he was the agent for Cokesbury School and Kandoli)h Macon College. He was several times a member of the General Conference. His death took place May 28, 1868. See Minutes of Annual Confer, of the M. E. Church, South, 1868, p. 213.
Stade (ara^tov), the proper designation of a term used in two senses in the Bible,
1. A '"furlong," a Greek measure of distance univer- sally current in the East from the time of Alexander the Great, and hence occasionally occurring in the Apocrj-pha (2 Mace, x, 16, 29; xi, 5; xii, 9, 17) and the New Test. (Luke xxiv, 13; John vi, 19; xi, 18; Rev. xiv, 20; xxi, 16), but regularly in Josephus for the determination of the location of places. One (Olympic) stadium, as a measure, contained, accord- ing to Herodotus (ii, 149), 600 Greek feet, i. e., accord- ing to Pliny (ii, 21 ; comp. Censorinus, p. 13), 125 Ro- man paces or 625 feet, so that eight stadia made up a Roman mile (comp. Strabo, vii, 322; Pliny, iii, 39, 8). According to late researches (see Ukert, Geogr. d. Griechen, I, ii, 73 sq. ; Forbiger, Handb. i, 551 sq.), 600 Greek feet = 570 feet 3 inches 4 lines, Paris measure, or 606f feet English. It appears, likewise, from the above passages of Luke, that 60 stadia were reckoned as Ii mile, and John (xi, 18) reckons 15 stadia as f of a mile. In the Talmud the stadium is called C"! or Oil, of which 7i went to the Roman mile (Reland, Palcest. p. 408). See JIetkology.