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Chalcedony is the precious stone with which the third foundation of the wall of the New Jerusalem is garnished (Rev_21:19). The ancient meaning of the word is uncertain. In modern mineralogy the chalcedony is ‘a micro-crystalline form of quartz … a translucent substance of rather waxy lustre, presenting great variety of colours, though usually white, grey, yellow or brown’ (Encyclopaedia Britannica 11 v. 803). But the chalcedony of Pliny (Historia Naturalis (Pliny) xxxvii. 72-73) was a green stone-an inferior kind of emerald-from the copper-mines of Chalcedon in Bithynia, whence its name. Flinders Petrie (Hasting's Dictionary of the Bible (5 vols) iv. 621a) suggests that it was ‘dioptase’ or silicate of copper.
James Strahan.