Diamonds

Diamond is a form of carbon, differing from common graphite only in its molecular structure. Using extremes of heat and pressure, artificial diamonds have been produced from graphite. By implication it is concluded that naturally found diamonds might have originated from coal, but under what conditions is not known.

Diamonds are regularly found as single crystals with no signs of previous attachment to any other mineral. They are found in several places in the world, in sands and gravels; in South Africa they are found in the “blue ground.” The nature and origin of the “blue ground” is not known; it contains splinters of minerals some of which are of the nature of the rocks in the neighborhood, and some of which cannot be traced to the surrounding formations. But in the neighboring rocks diamonds are not found. Similarly with the gravel and sands: they are only partly related to the rock formations in their vicinity; and diamonds are not found in these formations. Diamond is a form of carbon foreign to the surroundings in which it is found. Thus it is spoken of the “mystery which surrounds the natural origin of this remarkable mineral.⁽¹⁾

The clouds which encompassed the Earth at the time of the Exodus contained carbon in abundance. There were frequent discharges of potentials at that time between the clouds and the ground. Let us make a surmise: did not diamonds originate in these clouds?

In the Tractate Yoma it is said that precious stones fell every morning with manna from the clouds.⁽²⁾

Did diamonds drop from the sky? In this connection significant is the fact that diamonds are occasionally found in meteorites.⁽³⁾

The “blue ground” of South Africa was thrown together in a catastrophe: this is well recognized. But the catastrophe appeas to have been of cosmic nature.

If we are to believe the Talmud, diamonds were found in the Desert of Wandering.⁽⁴⁾ So far no diamonds are known to have been discovered in the desert of Arabia. If transformation of the carbon of the clouds into diamonds, through powerful electrical discharges, whether originating in the clouds themselves or from other planets, was facilitated by the atmospheric conditions over the desert. Possibly diamonds will yet be found in the desert of Arabia, and also possibly in the sands of the Sahara.⁽⁵⁾

Article “Diamond” in Encyclopaedia Britannica, 14th edition.
Yoma 75a.
Diamonds were found in the meteorites which fell in 1886 at Novo_urei near Penza in Russia; in the stone discovered at Carcote, Peru, and in the iron meteorite found at Canon Daiblo in Arizona. Also “graphitic carbons” found in meteorites are regarded as metamorphosed diamonds.
See “The Great and Terrible Desert.”
[Alexander Humbold concluded “that the formation of gold veins, and consequently of diamonds, is comparatively of recent date, and scarcely anterior to the destruction of the mammoths.” See J. Timbs, Curiosities of Science (London, 1859), pp. 122f. The same conlusion was reached by Sir Roderick I. Murchison in his Siluria.]